Net Zero Conservative MPs Promote Scheme to Cover Ponds With Solar Panels That’s Completely Quackers

Your correspondent has a confession. I need to get up at least two hours earlier to keep abreast of all the current madness that is Net Zero. The un-walked dog will have to go back to resuming her slumbers on the best seat in the house while I digest the latest reports piling trillions of pounds onto the realistic cost of the Net Zero fantasy. Long hours must be spent trying to work out how the sinister Miliband plans to make household energy cheaper by giving billions to useless, unreliable wind and solar, and then sticking the horrendous costs straight onto consumer bills. “Cheaper than gas!” this still-at-large lunatic is apparently still howling. Then I would have time for a good laugh with the really dumb stuff. And none dafter than the recent suggestion from the Green Blob-funded Conservative Environment Network (CEN) to blanket inland water areas with solar panels, killing local aquatic life and tricking diving birds into crashing into them.

If they were bats mistaking floating solar panels for water, hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of pounds would need to be spent constructing elaborate protecting tunnels (okay, I know the Sun will not be able to shine on the panels, but it doesn’t much anyway in the winter, and I am just making it all up, like everyone else in the Net Zero business). The last Conservative government allowed spending of £120 million to protect a few rare bats by building a 1,000-metre tunnel on the new high-speed railway from London to Birmingham. But then perhaps such magic money-tree largesse would not be available for water bird-whacking solar panels – ‘green’ technology is good and different rules apply. Bats are killed in their millions worldwide by giant wind turbines, but nobody gives a flying squeak about that.

The CEN wants the UK Government to cut red tape to “unleash” solar farm developments on “man-made bodies of water” and to help projects selling power to the electricity grid. It is claimed that red tape has put a straitjacket on private investment in the UK floating solar industry. Man-made water areas are said to include disused docks and quarries along with on-farm reservoirs. CEN wants to encourage water companies to build solar farms on the 570 reservoirs that exist in the UK, potentially generating 2.7 terawatt-hours of electricity.

Waiving local planning rules for unreliable energy projects is much in fashion with the national political parties, particularly Labour and the Conservatives, who face forthcoming local election humiliation at the hands of the surging anti-Net Zero Reform Party.

Many long-standing pools of freshwater, whether originally man-made or not, become vibrant centres of aquatic and avian life. Dumping huge solar panels on the surface is a considerable nature killer. A paper published last month in Environmental Science and Technology examined the interaction of birds and floating solar panels and concluded that their industrial structure could pose “significant risk” to certain bird species, especially those with limited visual acuity and flight manoeuvrability adapted to aquatic habitats. Birds most at risk were said to be waterfowl, shorebirds and gulls.

The big danger for birds is one of fatal collision with solar panels that replicate the surface of water. It can affect birds diving for food but is a particular problem for aquatic species that land harder and faster on water. The panels also present problems for birds that require a ‘runway’ to take off. Overall, the survey suggests fatalities of around 11.61 birds per megawatt generated per year. Needless to say, there are other ecological concerns that will need to be ignored by Net Zero fanatics. With even limited panel coverage there will be changes in shading, dissolved oxygen levels and water temperature. These create altered microclimates and disrupt food chains.

The CEN looks forward to generating 2.7 terawatts from panelling over the ponds, a power source that, due to its appalling unreliability, will further destabilise Britain’s already creaking grid. It is the latest quack scheme produced by an operation supported by 49 Conservative MPs that remains dedicated to the Net Zero lunacy. This caucus, which represents a significant 41% of the current parliamentary party, is a substantial roadblock to attempts by the party’s leadership to move away from all the Net Zero hysteria that has engulfed the Conservatives over the last two decades. Attempts last year by the leader Kemi Badenoch to ditch the 2050 Net Zero commitment were met by the CEN director Sam Hall complaining to the Guardian that the move “undermines the significant environment legacy of successive Conservative governments”.

But politics is a fluid business in the modern Conservative party. The CEN parliamentary group includes Simon Hoare and Sir Roger Gale, the two midwit buffers who intended to vote last year for a society-destroying private bill that would have cut all hydrocarbon use in the UK to 10% within 10 years. On the other hand, it also counts Esther McVey, who recently informed Talk Radio that Net Zero was a “dud”.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.