TEN UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS

1. Nowhere in the world has a solar farm this vast been built so near to human habitation - and for very good safety and wellbeing reasons. (Learn More)

2. It will remove thousands of tons of food each year at a time of growing concern about food security. (Learn More)

3. Large scale solar ‘farms’ are an inefficient way to produce green energy out of the many more modern alternatives available. (Learn More)

4. Solar panels deliver no biodiversity gains or natural gains for wildlife or the environment. (Learn More)

5. Botley West may never pay back the carbon debt it accumulates in construction and removal; there is a huge amount of carbon generated just in the production of the panels. (Learn More)

6. Botley West will devastate areas around a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a protected Historic Monument, a World Class Site of Special Scientific Interest and a huge swathe of the Oxford Greenbelt. (Learn More)

7. Solar Panels will be highly visible at ground level and will not all be ‘landscaped to only be seen through gaps in the hedges’. The three sites will feature 51 miles of security fencing. (Learn More)

8. 40 years is NOT TEMPORARY! It is impossible to guarantee the fields will be returned to their ‘natural state’ in 40 years time; particularly when the land use status has changed from farm / amenity land to ‘development allowed’. (Learn More)

9. It will bring no direct benefits at all to the residents of Oxfordshire, yet it is the residents whose world is most changed and who seem to be the last to know. (Learn More)

10. The only people who benefit from this industrialisation of the countryside are landowners (mainly Blenheim Palace Estate and Merton College), developers and those to whom they sell on the plot, local government through business rates, traders in Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) ‘credits’ and those who have maintenance contracts, wherever they are from. (Learn More)