1
Solar power is an ‘unreliable source of energy’
“Solar only produce[s] power when the sun is shining,” as the prominent climate-sceptic commentator Bjorn Lomborg wrote in a 2024 article in Canada’s Financial Post.
Variations of this statement are still regularly found in materials produced by anti-solar groups and in the comment pages of right-leaning newspapers. Critics argue that solar is too “unreliable” or “inefficient” and, thus, an increased reliance on it could result in blackouts, soaring bills and hampered energy security.
The first thing to note is that, despite this negative messaging, solar power is a hugely successful technology that is widely expected to dominate the global electricity system in the coming years.
Global solar capacity is already at least 40-times larger than it was in 2010. The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects it to be the world’s largest power source by 2033, as the chart below shows. (Notably, the IEA has consistently underestimated the growth of solar.)
Global electricity generation by source, terawatt hours (TWh), 2010-2050. Source: World Energy Outlook 2024.
Growth has already been seen around the world, including in areas such as the UK where critics have claimed it is not “sunny enough” for solar generation.
Articles often note that solar panels will be “useless at night and in winter”.
The fact that solar panels need the sun to generate power is a statement of the obvious. Moreover, this argument misunderstands the role that solar will play in the energy system.
Solar and wind are both sources of low-cost variable generation, which act as “fuel savers” by cutting the need for often expensive fossil-fuel generation.
In addition, solar generates electricity during the daytime – when demand is higher than at night. It is particularly beneficial in areas where hot, sunny weather drives up demand due to air conditioning use.
Furthermore, combined with battery energy-storage systems, near-continuous “24/365” solar power is now an economic and technological reality in sunny regions.
While it is true some parts of the world have higher levels of irradiance than others – and can, therefore, generate more power from a given capacity of solar assets – the panels have long been efficient enough to install worldwide. For example, in 2023, Norway installed the world’s most northerly solar farm in Svalbard, just 1,100 kilometres (km) from the North Pole.
Part of the reason for solar power’s success is that it is, in fact, a very reliable source of electricity.
This is because the exact times of sunrise and sunset are known, meaning it is possible to reliably forecast accurate electricity generation each day.
Moreover, the daily and seasonal cycles of solar and wind power are complementary. This is because the two renewable power sources tend to operate best at different times, both within a day and across the whole year.
Additionally, a study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the US found that the annual “failure rate” for solar was, on average, 0.05% between 2000-2015, based on 50,000 US installations and 4,500 globally.
The fossil-fuel industry and its supporters have long argued that coal, oil and gas are “essential” to a reliable energy system.
The ability to store fossil fuels and start up power plants on demand allows, to a certain extent, nations to prepare for periods of high demand or low availability. By contrast, critics say renewables depend on changeable weather.
However, the reliability of fossil fuels is increasingly being called into doubt, in particular given the more extreme weather conditions generation technologies are operating under.
A briefing from the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London highlights that the development of flexibility and storage technologies now means that the variable nature of renewables can be managed. It says that fossil fuels are “not required” for stable supplies:
“All of this means that fossil fuels are not required for a reliable energy system as clean alternatives can help balance the system on short as well as longer time scales.”
A related claim is that high levels of solar power on a nation’s electricity network can make it less reliable. For example, people falsely pointed to large amounts of solar generation as the cause of the recent Iberian blackout.
However, many of the most reliable electricity networks in the world have large shares of renewable energy, including solar power.
A report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that the EU and Japan, with relatively high solar shares, have far more reliable electricity networks than the notably less solar-reliant grids in the US or India, for example.
Elsewhere, Germany’s grid has remained “highly reliable” even as the role of wind and solar in its electricity mix has surged. The head of its federal grid regulator said in November 2024 that these figures showed “we are making successful progress in the energy transition without impacting the security of supply”.
Thinktank Agora Energiewende notes that Germany’s wind and solar share has risen from 2% to 43% over the past 25 years “without degrading power system reliability”.
2
‘Solar and wind power are expensive’
A common complaint in the media is that solar power – often grouped together with wind power for this claim – is “expensive”.
An interlinked criticism is that solar power is entirely reliant on government subsidies and projects would be unviable without this support.
In the UK, where right-leaning commentators have kept up a steady stream of attacks on the “cost of net-zero”, the hard-right populist Reform UK party has been particularly outspoken in its criticism of renewables. The party has called for taxes on solar power to limit its development, with its deputy leader Richard Tice telling GB News:
“Contrary to what we’ve been told by the eco zealots, actually renewable energy is costing more.”
Yet the best solar power projects have been described by the IEA as offering the “cheapest electricity in history”, with unsubsidised solar being cheaper than fossil fuels in most countries. The most recent IEA World Energy Outlook 2024 states:
“It is now cheaper to build…solar power projects than new fossil-fuel plants almost everywhere around the world.”
The global average levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) – a standardised assessment of electricity generation costs – of utility-scale solar power dropped by 90% between 2010 and 2023, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
A recent report by IRENA found that in 2024, the global average cost of electricity generated by solar PV was, on average, 41% lower than the least-cost new fossil fuel-fired power plant, as shown in the figure below.
Global weighted-average LCOEs from newly commissioned solar PV, onshore and offshore wind, 2010-2023, and a 2023 cost range for new fossil-fuel projects. Source: IRENA Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2024.
Similarly, a report from BloombergNEF said in February 2025 that solar costs would fall by another third by 2035 and that new solar plants are “already undercutting new coal and gas plants on production cost in almost every market globally”.
The report’s lead author said in a statement that this was also close to being true even in the US, where gas-powered generation is much cheaper than elsewhere:
“New solar plants, even without subsidies, are within touching distance of new US gas plants. This is remarkable because US gas prices are only a quarter of prevailing gas prices in Europe and Asia.”
There is a wider cost to integrating variable renewables such as solar into the electricity system as a whole, but these are thought to be modest.
This means that in the UK, for example, variable renewables remain the cheapest way to generate the bulk of the country’s electricity.
3
‘As nations use more solar, bills get more expensive’
In addition to claims about the cost of solar power itself, there is a related argument that high levels of renewable energy drive up power prices overall.
The cost of energy has become a major political issue in recent years, especially since the energy crisis precipitated by post-Covid reopening and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Despite this surge in prices being created predominantly by disruption to the international gas market, which sent energy bills soaring, some right-leaning politicians and commentators have misleadingly claimed that solar and wind power are “to blame”.
This was summarised in a speech in March 2025 given by US energy secretary Chris Wright – who is the former chief executive of a hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) company – at the high-profile oil-and-gas conference CERAWeek:
“Everywhere wind and solar penetration have increased significantly. Prices on the grid went up and stability of the grid went down.”
Similar arguments appear in misleading articles claiming that “‘cheap’ solar and wind is a lie, green countries pay more!” and that “the notion that solar and wind power save money is an environmentalist lie”.
This argument rests on the idea that variable generation sources, such as solar, may be cheap in terms of the electricity they generate, but still drive up the overall cost of the electricity system by necessitating additional sources of flexibility, storage or backup.
Critics often point to places such as the UK and California – which have high prices and renewable shares – as evidence that solar and wind drive up power prices.
In the UK, which has some of the highest electricity prices in Europe, renewables provided a record-high 45% of electricity supplies in 2024, as well as more than half of generation.
Similarly, 32% of California’s electricity was generated by solar power in 2024 and the state also has the second most expensive electricity in the US.
In both cases, however, high prices are largely driven by fossil fuels rather than renewables. In the UK, for example, the wholesale price of power is almost always set by gas.
Electricity prices and how they are set are complex, with numerous factors including electricity market structure, standing charges and wider system costs, as well as generation, filtering into what customers pay.
Importantly, however, there is no clear correlation between high prices and larger renewable shares, according to an article at Sustainability by Numbers.
Source: bluesky
“The argument that solar and wind automatically equals expensive electricity – which people often make by pointing to California – is not supported by this data,” the article notes.
On the contrary, a recent article by Carbon Brief climate science contributor Zeke Hausfather at the Climate Brink looks at 24 years of electricity price data, finding that renewables have in fact decreased electricity prices.
4
Solar farms ‘pump out more carbon over their lifetimes than they save’
A common – but completely false – claim made by opponents of new solar farms is that these projects do not, in fact, help to tackle climate change.
Citizens for Responsible Solar, a US anti-solar campaign group with ties to the Republican party, states on its website:
“Solar energy is NOT clean or free from CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions…If your motive is to protect the environment, you might want to rethink wind, solar and batteries because, like all machines, they’re built from non-renewable materials.”
Related sentiments have been expressed by anti-solar campaigners in the UK. They seek to argue that solar farms may “never pay back” their “carbon debt”. Again, this is false.
Similarly, former Conservative health secretary and West Suffolk MP Matt Hancock penned an article for the Daily Mail in 2022, with the headline:
“Why I am protesting against the UK’s largest solar farm that will pump out more carbon over its lifetime than it saves”
Such false claims rely on the concept of “lifecycle emissions”. While solar panels generate clean electricity, they are often made in factories overseas using emissions-intensive processes, before being shipped long distances to their final destination.
All of these processes use energy, often generated by burning fossil fuels. Given the dominance of China in global solar-panel production, much of the manufacturing will be powered by, as the Wall Street Journal puts it in one article, “a mountain of Chinese coal”.
Anti-solar groups and politicians argue that this negates any advantages of building solar power.
But this is false.
Indeed, the solar panels exported from China in 2024 will have paid off their “carbon debt” within an average of just four months, according to detailed recent analysis for Carbon Brief.
Manufacturing the solar panels will have added some 72m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) to China’s emissions in 2024, but will cut them overseas by 203MtCO2 per year, the analysis found.
In total, these solar panels will save some 4.1GtCO2 over their lifetimes, paying off the upfront “carbon debt” some 57 times over.
Looked at another way, the lifecycle emissions of solar power are far lower than those of fossil fuels, as shown in the chart below, which is based on UN data published in 2021.
(The efficiency of solar panel production is improving rapidly, which is why costs for the technology are falling. This also means that its lifecycle emissions are falling over time.)
Specifically, the UN data shows that a typical ground-mounted solar project produces 19 times fewer emissions than a coal plant and eight times fewer than a gas plant, per unit of electricity generated.
This means solar panels would cut emissions per unit by 88-95% compared with fossil fuels, even after accounting for the CO2 from manufacturing them.
As countries are building solar power to replace electricity generated by burning fossil fuels, this is the comparison that matters when assessing the lifecycle emissions of solar power.
Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of different power sources, including emissions from the burning of fuels, mining of materials and production of energy technologies. Solar power technologies are highlighted in yellow. Source: UN Economic Commission for Europe.
This conclusion is supported by the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment.
It states that “higher efficiencies and manufacturing improvements” mean solar power lifecycle emissions are “an order of magnitude [10 times] lower than coal and natural gas and further decarbonisation of the energy system will make them lower still”.
The range of lifecycle emissions for solar power cited by the IPCC – with central estimates between 20-80kg of CO2 per megawatt hour (MWh) – is consistent with the figures from the UN.
Nevertheless, it has been contested by self-styled “independent researcher and consultant” Enrico Mariutti. His work – titled “the dirty secret of the solar industry” and published on his own website – has been widely cited by climate sceptics and right-leaning publications.
Maruitti claims that the dominance of Chinese coal-based manufacturing pushes solar power’s lifecycle emissions up to 170-250kgCO2/MWh.
Yet Seaver Wang, co-director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, has pointed out that these calculations are based on flawed assumptions, including an outdated assessment from 2006 and incorporating emissions not normally considered in lifecycle emissions studies.
Wang tells Carbon Brief that some researchers and analysts have “raised a valid concern” that frequently cited solar emissions figures may not capture the most emissions-intensive manufacturing.
However, he says that, even using up-to-date, “worst-case” scenarios, it is difficult to produce a figure higher than 90kgCO2/MWh – barely above the IPCC range – noting:
“Remedying such data gaps will in no way alter the common wisdom that, over their lifetime, under most circumstances, solar panels help avert several times more fossil fuel emissions than the emissions required to produce them.”
The expansion of low-carbon electricity in China and other major centres of solar manufacturing will further drive down the lifecycle emissions of solar panels in the coming years.
Indeed, the Chinese government recently issued renewable quotas for industries including polysilicon for the first time, meaning that this key ingredient in solar-panel supply chains will increasingly be made with clean energy.
In the UK, false claims made by campaigners about the inability of solar power to cut emissions broadly derive from a single study commissioned by the anti-solar Say No to Sunnica campaign.
Prof Edgar Hertwich, a researcher of resource efficiency and climate change at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, previously told Carbon Brief that this analysis was based on flawed assumptions and was “conceptually not correct”. (Carbon Brief has factchecked the Say No to Sunnica-commissioned analysis.)
Among other things, the study argued that the project developers had underestimated the lifecycle emissions of the solar project’s battery storage asset. Despite this, another lifecycle emissions analysis of solar projects with batteries concluded:
“[Solar power’s] considerable advantages over all conventional thermal power generators may be expected to remain unaffected by the deployment of even substantial amounts of [battery] storage.”
The study’s lead author, Dr Marco Raugei, who specialises in lifecycle assessments at Oxford Brookes University, tells Carbon Brief that it does not make sense to “arbitrarily” assign any emissions from battery storage to solar power projects:
“In most real-world situations, storage is really a grid-level service and it should be assessed as such.”
5
Solar power is ‘a serious threat to agriculture and food security’
One of the most common claims levelled against new solar projects is that they are being built on “valuable farmland”, supposedly at the expense of domestic food security and farmers’ livelihoods.
This emotive argument has been voiced by protest groups opposing solar projects from Australia to the US. Newspapers carry stories about farms being “swallowed” by solar panels, leaving “devastated” farmers “in crisis”.
Such arguments ignore the fact that farmers themselves often choose to lease their land to solar developers and that farming bodies, including the National Farmers Union of England and Wales (NFU), support this kind of income “diversification”.
Dr Jonathan Scurlock, chief climate adviser at the NFU, tells Carbon Brief the group’s position on this is clear. “There is no threat to national food security from solar,” he says.
Nevertheless, these ideas have been promoted by climate-sceptic lobby groups such as Net Zero Watch, which has described solar expansion as “a serious threat to UK agriculture and food security”.
Many right-leaning political parties, from Reform UK to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), have taken up this cause, framing themselves as “defenders” of farmers and food supplies. In Italy, the hard-right government has banned most solar panels on farmland.
It is true that a lot of solar projects are built on agricultural land. As of 2018, the most recent data available, cropland was the most common land type for ground-mounted solar construction – home to 52% of global capacity.
This is partly because the factors that make land suitable for farming, such as being sunny and flat, also make it appealing for solar installation.
But overall, the amount of land used for solar power is relatively modest.
For example, golf courses currently take up far more space than solar power in many nations, covering four times as much land in the US, six times as much in the UK and 15 times as much in Canada, according to a recent study, illustrated in the figure below.
Area of land, km2, used for golf courses (green) and estimated area used for ground-mounted solar projects (yellow) in a selection of high-income nations, as of 2024. The area covered by solar projects is based on what the study authors describe as a “conservative” estimate of 66.67 megawatts of solar power per km2, which could be higher. Source: Weinand et al. (2025).
Even if solar power expands in line with nations’ climate goals and becomes the world’s largest source of electricity, it is unlikely that large areas of farmland would be required.
US government analysis under the Biden administration found that its highest-end land-use scenario for net-zero by 2050 would need roughly 0.5% of the contiguous US land area for ground-mounted solar. This is equivalent to about 1% of agricultural land.
Building solar in line with the UK’s net-zero plans would require a land area of at most 0.7% of the total by 2050, according to a recent study. This amounts to around 1% of farmland.
Even if all the solar projects in both nations were built solely on farms, which is highly unlikely, this would mean trading off 1% of this land so that solar – in combination with wind turbines – could supply at least 80% of both nations’ electricity in 2050.
Estimates of land area required to build solar power in line with UK and US net-zero plans by 2050, compared to current agricultural area, km2. The US solar plans are from the highest-end land-use scenario for net-zero by 2050 from the “solar futures study”, published by the Biden administration in 2021. Source: CIA, CORINE Land Cover Map, US Department of Agriculture, Blaydes et al. (2025), US Department of Energy, Carbon Brief.
A common complaint from campaigners is that “prime” or “high quality” agricultural land is being taken out of action by solar developers. This is despite governments and both solar and farming industry groups stressing that such land should be avoided.
The UK’s official planning framework states that “where possible” developers should avoid the “best and most versatile” farmland. In the US, the federal government has indicated that solar development “increasingly will be located…on marginal or previously disturbed lands”.
The most fertile land is also likely to be the most profitable for the farmers themselves. Research from the UK suggests that solar projects on high-quality farmland are less likely to have their planning applications approved.
Nevertheless, there is evidence that some solar projects in both the UK and the US are being built on high-quality land.
Experts tell Carbon Brief that it is important to understand the overall context of how much land is being allocated for solar power. Alex Delworth, a policy associate at the Center for Rural Affairs in the US, tells Carbon Brief:
“Prime farmland is being lost to solar development. However, its current impact is relatively small.”
Even if solar were only built on prime farmland under Biden-era net-zero plans, it would only have taken up 1.5-2.9% of the agricultural heartlands of the US Midwest, according to Delworth’s analysis.
(Working out the share in the UK is difficult due to the lack of up-to-date information on land quality. See: MISLEADING: Solar should be built on ‘old brownfield sites…not on green land’.)
Taking any amount of farmland out of production – even if only a small amount of less productive fields – would mean making up for the lost output somewhere else. This could involve increasing food imports – or it could mean reducing food waste or improving land-use efficiency.
One solution to this could be agrivoltaics. The concept of combining farming – including livestock grazing and shade-tolerant crops – with solar panels has been gaining momentum as a solution to land-use conflicts.
Studies focused on the UK and EU have concluded that agrivoltaics could be rolled out to hit government solar targets, with minimal land conversion. The IPCC also highlights the benefits of agrivoltaics:
“Combining solar and agriculture can also create income diversification, reduced drought stress, higher solar output due to radiative cooling, and other benefits.”
Commentators have also pointed to the large areas of land currently used in many nations to grow crops for biofuels or support livestock.
These dwarf the areas used for solar panels and are – arguably – not essential or efficient ways to ensure food security or produce energy.
As the chart below shows, a car can be driven 112-times further with the energy from one hectare of solar panels in the UK, than with biofuel from a hectare of energy crops.
Distance driven per unit of land, km per hectare, in a UK car powered by electricity from ground-mounted solar panels, ethanol fuel made from beets and ethanol fuel made from wheat. Sources: CCC, UK government, Carbon Brief analysis.
And while solar projects can cut the area of available farmland, they present a far smaller risk than the one of the key issues renewable power helps to combat – climate change.
This point is made explicitly in the UK government’s food security report from 2021. It says that under a “medium-emissions scenario”, climate change could reduce the proportion of the nation’s farmland that is classed as high-quality from 38% of the total, prior to 1990, to just 11% in 2050.
6
Energy projects will generate a ‘tsunami of solar panel waste’
Campaigners often make claims about the waste generated by solar panels, either at the end of their lifespan or if they are damaged during use.
For example, one Daily Telegraph article complains about a “tsunami of solar panel waste”.
However, a comment for Nature Physics describes solar waste as a “drop in the ocean” that is “dwarfed by the waste generated by fossil-fuel energy”. It adds that “unsubstantiated claims” around toxic materials in solar modules amount to “misinformation”.
Media articles that raise concerns over the “huge amount of waste” that ageing solar panels could create often quote a 2016 estimate from the IRENA, which suggests that, by 2050, there could be 78m tonnes (Mt) of solar panel waste globally.
The Nature Physics comment, from researchers at National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Colorado School of Mines highlights that, since the report was released, the expected lifetime of modules has increased from 12 years to 35 years. At the same time, estimates for the amount of solar capacity that will be installed have also increased.
Taking into account these two factors, new global estimates for cumulative solar module waste by 2050 are between 54Mt and 160Mt, before considering the potential for recycling.
This is a significant amount, but it is also roughly 50-times less than the amount of waste ash produced by coal-fired power stations, per unit of electricity generated, as shown below.
Global cumulative wastes from 2016 to 2050. Source: Heather Mirletz et. al. (2023) Unfounded concerns about photovoltaic module toxicity and waste are slowing decarbonization, Nature Physics.
(Some 130m tonnes of coal ash was generated in the US alone in 2014, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, which says that it “contains mercury, cadmium and arsenic”. China produces more than 500m tonnes of coal ash per year.)
In total, the amount of waste expected to be generated from solar panels by 2050 would be 2-5 times lower than the sludge from crude oil production and 300-800 times lower than coal ash output, if fossil-fuel systems continued to operate at current levels.
As such, the Nature Physics comment says solar panel waste would be “dwarfed” by fossil fuel-related waste products and other common sources, such as plastic or municipal waste..
Dr Heather Mirletz, a researcher in the circular economy and sustainability of solar PV at the NREL, one of the authors of the piece, tells Carbon Brief:
“In comparison to our other current energy generation and waste streams we manage on a daily basis, like municipal and e-waste, solar modules reaching end of life represent a decrease in energy-related wastes and are well within our capability to manage responsibly.
“Responsible management looks like using reliable modules, doing proactive maintenance and repairs, looking for reuse opportunities and, finally, when no longer useful, recycling to recapture the valuable materials.”
Additionally, while policy changes are likely to be needed in order to encourage the recycling and processing of solar waste, recent projections have suggested that the materials it contains could be worth $2.7bn by 2030 in the US alone.
Relatedly, some articles claim that solar panels and the waste they create can leach dangerous chemicals, posing a risk to those that live near solar farms.
For example, ABC Australia quotes one farmer from New South Wales called Lynette LaBlack, who claims that the federal government has “purposely neglected to even consider” what she says is the “obvious” risk of “heavy-metal leachate” from solar panels.
Similarly, in Texas, locals questioned what “highly toxic chemicals” could have leaked into the water table after solar panels were damaged by hail.
In particular, the presence of cadmium, a highly toxic metal, in some solar panels is often cited as a concern. However, more than 95% of solar panels do not contain cadmium. For the “thin-film” solar cells that do contain cadmium, it makes up 0.04-0.07% of the product.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Mirletz highlights that panels containing cadmium are only used at utility scale and already have a dedicated recycling stream in the US.
Beyond cadmium, the other material of concern with solar panels is the lead solder coating in crystalline silicon modules, notes Mirlez, who adds that this is “packaged…securely”:
“The amount of lead in silicon modules is comparable [to] concentrations in a modern cell phone, but packaged much more securely. The solar module is designed to withstand 30+ years of outdoor exposure, keeping out water and the elements. This also means it is keeping in all the metals, including the lead.”
Moreover, many solar manufacturers are working on lead-free solders, Mirletz’s paper notes.
While some have suggested solar panels could also produce toxins such as arsenic, gallium, germanium and hexavalent chromium, as a recent Sustainability by Numbers post highlights, most panels do not contain any of these substances.
Ultimately, health concerns focused on the impact of toxic waste or heavy metals from solar panels, either during operation or when they are disposed of at the end of their use, are “unfounded”, the Nature Physics comment says.
A report produced by the International Energy Agency in 2020 assessed the human health risk of end-of-life solar panels, finding the risk level of heavy metals leaching out of the solar panels fell below the US screening levels. Additionally, water contamination levels were within the guidelines produced by the World Health Organization.
7
Battery storage presents a ‘huge fire risk’
New solar developments are increasingly being built with battery energy-storage assets to allow them to deliver power when it is needed.
For example, the US Energy Information Administration estimated that 81% of new electricity generation capacity in the country in 2024 would come from solar with battery storage sites.
This has opened a new front for anti-solar groups, with activists speaking of the “huge fire risk” and the “dangers of fire and explosion” that they claim would come from batteries.
While fires can happen at battery storage sites – and can be difficult to extinguish once they start – such incidents are increasingly rare, relative to world’s rapidly rising capacity.
In the UK, for example, there are now 1,659 battery storage projects in operation, with just two fires having been reported for the sector in the past five years.
Nevertheless, the risk of battery fires is real – and minimising it is a major focus of effort both for battery manufacturers and storage developers.
The vast majority of battery energy-storage systems (BESS) around the world use lithium-ion cells, which contain flammable electrolytes. These can create “unique hazards when the battery cell becomes compromised and enters thermal runaway”, according to a recent paper.
A US database maintained by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) found that, between 2011 and May 2024, there had been at least 81 BESS “failure events” globally.
In some cases, such failures have resulted in fires at BESS sites. For example, Tesla’s Victorian Big Battery in Australia reported a fire in 2022, after a liquid coolant leak caused thermal runaway in battery cells.
Elsewhere, an incident at a BESS in Liverpool, UK, in 2020 resulted in an explosion and release of toxic gases.
However, a factsheet by the American Clean Power Association (ACP) states that “utility-scale battery energy storage is safe and highly regulated, growing safer as technology advances and as regulations adopt the most up-to-date safety standards”.
ACP further notes that past fires have demonstrated that air quality in neighbouring areas remains at a safe level, with only trace amounts of chemicals found in the air, similar to levels found during plastic fires. To date, no one has been killed by a battery fire or explosion in the US, according to ACP.
The EPRI “failure incident” database states that, while the installed capacity of utility-scale BESS has “dramatically increased” over the past five years and failure incidents continue to occur, the overall rate per unit of storage has “sharply decreased”, as shown in the chart below.
Specifically, even as global BESS capacity has risen from 11 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2018 to 303GWh in 2024, the total number of “failures” has remained steady – and halved in 2024. This means that the failure rate per GWh of global capacity has dropped from around 1.5 incidents per GWh per year in 2018 to less than 0.03 in 2024, a 56-fold reduction.
Blue: Cumulative battery energy-storage system deployment (GWh). Yellow: Rate of failures per unit of installed capacity. Source: EPRI Failure Rate Analysis, using data from the EPRI Failure Event Database and Wood Mackenzie’s Global Storage Outlook.
The database states that lessons from early incidents have been incorporated into the latest designs and best practices, reducing the rate of BESS failure and improving overall safety.
A joint study produced by the EPRI, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and data analytics provider TWAICE in May 2024 supports the suggestion that the rate of failure in the BESS sector is falling.
It found that the incident rate dropped 97% between 2018 and 2023, although it did highlight that more transparency is needed around these incidents to enable further improvements.
8
Heatwaves make solar panels ‘significantly less efficient’
One false narrative that has emerged in recent media articles is that solar panels become “significantly less efficient” at higher temperatures, with some even claiming they “have…to be taken offline” during heatwaves.
This is not true. While the efficiency of solar panels reduces very slightly at higher temperatures, they are widely – and successfully – used in desert environments.
Last year was the hottest on record globally and the first year where global average temperatures nudged 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
As such, solar installations will increasingly have to work at higher temperatures as the impact of climate change is felt more acutely around the world.
With heatwaves becoming more common, there has been an increased focus on the impact of high temperatures on solar generation, along with other technologies.
In 2023, for example, climate-sceptic Democratic Unionist Party MP Sammy Wilson tweeted: “The UK has had to start coal-fired generators during this heatwave because the sun is too strong and solar panels have had to be taken offline.”
Others made similar claims, such as the climate-sceptic broadcaster and Daily Mail commentator Andrew Neil.
Source: x.com
More recently, an article from the net-zero sceptic Daily Telegraph ran under the fabricated headline: “Heatwaves ‘will trigger net-zero meltdown’.”
The article claimed, falsely, that “scientists say” solar panels “become significantly less efficient on days where the sun is at its most powerful”.
Heat does have an impact on the efficiency of solar panels. However, this is minimal and generally more than offset by the extra hours of sunlight during periods of high temperatures.
As the the technical expert Alastair Buckley, professor of organic electronics at the University of Sheffield, put it in a statement:
“It’s not actually a big deal. High temperatures only marginally affect the overall output of solar power – it’s a secondary effect. If it’s sunny and hot, you are going to get good power output. It doesn’t fall off a cliff.”
Trade association Solar Energy UK says that solar panels are generally expected to function from -40C to +85C. According to an evidence review for the UK government, the performance of solar panels falls by 0.2-0.5% for every degree of heat above 25C.
(The review notes that thermal power plants, including gas and nuclear, are also vulnerable to the impact of extreme heat, as this reduces the efficiency of cooling systems.)
Additionally, periods of high heat tend to coincide with summer months when there are more hours of sunlight and clearer skies. These conditions more than offset the impact of heat on solar panel efficiency, meaning countries such as Germany and the UK have set solar generation records during heatwaves.
Chris Hewett, Solar Energy UK’s chief executive, said in a statement in 2023:
“Cooler weather is marginally better for efficiency, but, ultimately, more light means more power. Solar power works perfectly well in the Saudi Arabian desert – and the same panels are being installed there as on rooftops in Birmingham or a field in Oxfordshire.”
Indeed, with solar one of the fastest-ever-growing sources of electricity in the world, installations are being completed in areas where temperatures hit much higher levels than in the UK and Europe.
Solar photovoltaic projects are already covering swathes of deserts in California, for example, where temperatures can reach nearly 50C (120F).
9
Solar farms ‘will be designated brownfield sites and eventually disappear under housing forever’
A concern frequently voiced by UK anti-solar campaigners is that, once land has been used for solar power, it will be open for other developers to build on.
This is not true. In the UK, solar farms are typically only granted temporary planning permission for around 30 years, with site restoration being a legal condition of this.
Still, these claims align with the broader trend of “nimbyism” in the UK, which often sees rural communities opposing new housing and other developments, as well as solar farms.
Writing in the Daily Mail, net-zero-sceptic farmer and former politician Jamie Blackett reflected on a solar farm that had been proposed in the English county of Wiltshire:
“Few doubt that, within the 40-year projected lifespan of Lime Down [solar farm], the area under panels will be designated a brownfield site and eventually disappear under housing forever, making a vast super-city linking Swindon to Bath and Bristol.”
(In the UK “brownfield” land is officially defined as that which “is, or was previously, occupied by a permanent structure”. In common parlance, it usually refers to previously developed land, including former industrial sites that may be contaminated. Such sites are often seen as preferable for house building, as they may involve fewer trade-offs compared with other types of land, such as the “green belt”.)
Likewise, campaigners fighting against the construction of the Botley West solar site in Oxfordshire write on their website:
“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’.”
Developers and industry voices are adamant that this will not be the case, arguing that the installation of solar panels is “temporary and fully reversible”.
Companies – including those behind the Lime Down and Botley West projects – often stress that returning land to its original use is a legal condition for their project.
Large-solar farms are relatively new to the UK and most have expected lifespans of 30-40 years. This means neither campaigners nor developers can point to real-world examples that show former solar sites being turned into housing estates – or not.
Nevertheless, Dr Rebecca Windemer, planning lead at the thinktank Regen, tells Carbon Brief that the claims made by anti-solar groups amount to an “inaccurate myth”.
In a report prepared with the All-Party Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group of UK MPs in 2024, Windemer wrote:
“Solar does not turn the land into brownfield land and does not make the land more suitable for other uses such as housing. In the UK, most solar farms have temporary planning permission, typically for 30 years, with legal conditions ensuring that the developer returns the land to its original use (e.g. farmland) afterwards.”
Campaigners often describe solar farms turning the countryside into an “industrial landscape” and say it is “highly unlikely that the land could return to agriculture”.
Yet, the installation of solar panels on farmland tends to involve simply driving brackets into the ground, or even using ballasts to avoid penetrating the soil.
While the compaction of soil may impact future agricultural use, there is also evidence that turning land over to solar for a period provides an opportunity for land restoration.
Finally, Windermer says she is exploring what has happened to decommissioned onshore wind sites in the UK, in the absence of any decommissioned solar.
“From what we’ve seen, any decommissioned wind projects have gone back to their original use – open farm land,” she says.
10
‘Solar panels should be on roofs’ not in fields
A common claim seen in articles discussing new solar farms is that people are not against the technology itself, but think it should be sited on rooftops instead of in fields.
Typically, these arguments fail to mention the far lower cost of ground-mounted solar projects or the limited availability of suitable roof space.
In the UK, for example, a comment piece in the Daily Telegraph by climate-sceptic commentator Matt Ridley quotes actress Tracy Ward:
“Solar panels should be on roofs, along motorways or industrial sites. Be careful what the climate change fearmongering will lull us into accepting.”
Ridley goes on to say that, “while solar panels on roofs can (almost) make sense, huge solar farms are an environmental as well as economic mistake”.
He does not mention the higher cost of rooftop solar or its limited potential.
Still, he is not alone in his view that solar should be sited on rooftops as opposed to ground-mount sites, with similar statements cited in articles in BBC News, the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Times and more.
Source: x.com
Rooftop solar often offers additional benefits to the owners. For example, a house that has its own solar panels has some protection from energy-price volatility due to its reduced reliance on grid electricity.
In the UK, rooftop solar is expected to play a key role in the expansion of renewable energy as part of efforts to decarbonise the energy system.
However, even the countryside charity CPRE – which is strongly opposed to large-scale solar farms and advocates for “rooftop first” – has published a study finding that solar panels on rooftops and car parks in England could only meet around “half” of the UK’s solar targets by 2035.
This work illustrates the false dichotomy of choosing between ground-mounted or rooftop solar power. Even in the unlikely scenario where solar panels were installed on every house, some ground-mounted solar would still be required in order to meet climate targets.
Elsewhere, a study published in Nature found that rooftop solar could theoretically meet 65% of current global electricity consumption, when paired with load shifting and storage.
Prof Felix Creutzig, a specialist in innovation and policy acceleration for the climate at the University of Sussex and co-author of the above paper, tells Carbon Brief:
“The downside of rooftop solar versus industrial scale solar is that the per-unit cost is much higher, primarily because of installation or mounting costs. Economically, it is preferable to use solar PV on open land.
“Even though the costs of rooftop solar are higher than industrial-scale PV, there are other benefits, such as some degree of energy independence for households, preventing harmful impact of future electricity price increases, and increase in property value.”
In the US, the NREL estimates that installing rooftop solar can cost nearly three times as much per watt as a utility-scale project.
The availability of rooftops for solar installations is also not consistent globally and, while the costs of solar have fallen exponentially, it is not an economic choice in all locations.
For many countries, relying solely on rooftop solar could also put their net-zero targets in jeopardy, adding to bottlenecks that would slow the rollout of the technology.
A final point is that electricity demand is increasing around the world as emerging economies develop and as transport, heating and industry are electrified. The IEA estimates that global electricity consumption will grow 4% annually out to 2027.
Rooftop capacity is not currently a limiting factor. However, in the next 10 years, lack of available rooftop space will become more of an issue, Creutzig tells Carbon Brief. As such, the claim that solar could be limited to rooftops will become even more tenuous over time.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Mark Z Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director at the atmosphere/energy program at Stanford University, says:
“Rooftop PV should be installed as much as possible worldwide. It not only helps to eliminate pollution emissions from current electricity generation, but it also reduces the need for land and for transmission and distribution lines, thereby reducing the cost associated with both, plus wildfire risk.
“Due to the scale of the renewable energy transition needed worldwide, both rooftop and utility PV will be needed in large quantities. As such, policies should encourage both and hinder neither.”
11
Solar should be built on ‘old brownfield sites…not on green land’
Akin to the argument that solar should be built on rooftops is the claim that it should be built on “low-grade” land, such as former industrial sites. This call has been particularly prevalent in the UK in recent years, stoked by comments from some politicians.
Critics argue that they are “not against” solar as a technology, just that it should be “correctly sited” to avoid high-grade agricultural and “greenbelt” land. (See: FALSE: Solar power is ‘a serious threat to agriculture and food security’.)
As with the argument that solar should be built on rooftops, the idea that it should be confined to the lowest-quality or previously developed land is intuitively appealing.
However, it ignores the reasons why this does not always happen, namely the limited availability and suitability of such land, the cost of developing it for solar power and the fact that this may be in competition with other uses, such as new housing.
For example, an article in the Daily Mail about the proposed Charnwood Forest solar farm in the English county of Leicestershire quotes a local resident who said:
“There are loads of old brownfield sites around where it could be built, not on green land.”
Similarly, as part of the “No to Longfield Solar Farm” campaign, gardener and broadcaster Alan Titchmarsh is quoted as saying:
“There is an abundance of alternative brownfield sites and plenty of potential for solar in industrial areas as opposed to the delicately balanced ecosystems and high-grade farmland that we are seeing proposed instead.”
In the UK, solar developers are meant to avoid land that is categorised as “best and most versatile” (BMV). This is land that is considered to be “excellent” to “good” quality, graded 1, 2 and 3a under the agricultural land classification system, shown below.
Instead, solar power is supposed to be preferentially built on land that is grade 3b and below. This would include “moderate quality” agricultural land that supports yields of a narrow range of crops, principally cereals and grass or worse quality land.
Land-use classification across England, Wales and Scotland, showing grades of land with key. Credit: White paper by NextEnergy.
A presumption against the development of solar on 3a or above land is included within the government’s National Planning Policy Framework.
In recent years there has been increased debate about land categorisation and how it applies to solar development. This was stoked by successive ministers within previous UK governments who criticised the current land-use guidelines and announced a review.
Revised planning guidelines brought in by the Conservative government on 17 January 2024 state that a developer must identify why they are using BMV land, as well as whether it is possible or feasible to locate the scheme on lower-grade agricultural land.
Additionally, if the scheme includes 20 hectares (ha) or more of BMV, government advisor Natural England must be consulted.
Currently, there are no complete figures for the land grades on which solar power has already been built in England.
This inability to concretely state the percentage of high-quality land used for solar is part of the reason why the criticism repeatedly raises its head.
The land classification system was originally created in the 1960s and subsequently revised in 1988 to subdivide category 3. The post-1988 dataset covers only 8% of rural England.
It has been repeatedly criticised for being outdated, hampering the development of technologies such as solar.
Source: x.com
Due in part to its age, the current dataset for the land-classification system in England does not show the subdivision between 3a or 3b, making it impossible to independently quantify how much solar is being built on the highest-quality “BMV” land.
Further complicating matters, there are differences between the land-classification systems used in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
These challenges around the categorisation of land makes it difficult to come up with a complete picture of how many solar farms are built on BMV land in the UK as a whole.
However, according to trade association Solar Energy UK, the majority of solar farms are developed on land that is designated as 3b rather than high-quality agricultural land.
Whilst there is broad agreement that solar should be developed on brownfield sites and rooftops when possible, there are additional challenges to such developments.
For example, available brownfield sites often require environmental remediation processes before they can be built on. This adds costs and time to the process, which can make it less competitive.
Brownfield sites can come with additional considerations that require special design features. For example, the American Clean Power Association (ACP) notes that solar developers using brownfield land may be required to use a fixed tilt, ballasted system to avoid penetrating a landfill cap or disturbing the soil.
A ballasted system requires additional steel, concrete and labour, adding cost to the project. And, once operational, the fixed tilt nature of the installation can result in about 15% less electricity generation than an array capable of tracking the sun, the ACP states.
These additional design features will differ across brownfield sites, adding a level of complexity and often cost to the development.
12
‘Bird and bat deaths are common’ on solar farms
UK anti-solar campaigners have claimed that “bird and bat deaths are common [on solar farms] as they mistake the glass for water” – suggesting that animals collide with the panels.
This is an argument repeated by politicians, in newspapers and even on television dramas. It has contributed to a false belief that solar farms “wipe out wildlife”.
Such claims play into a long-standing trope about tensions between renewables and wildlife, often advanced by climate sceptics.
There is some evidence that birds – and other animals – occasionally collide with solar panels. As with virtually any manmade infrastructure, a solar farm has the potential to harm wildlife when compared to land left in its natural state. (See: MISLEADING: Solar farms are ‘destroying habitats on an industrial scale’).
However, these collisions do not appear to be “common”, especially when compared to other sources of animal mortality.
One widely referenced study, conducted in 2016 by scientists at the US government-backed Argonne National Laboratory, analysed how bird-death rates at solar farms compared to rates elsewhere.
The study provided a “preliminary” estimate of bird deaths in the US linked to utility-scale solar farms. It used data from three facilities in southern California to extrapolate up to 59,400 bird deaths per year in the region and 138,600 across the whole US.
(Two of the projects assessed were “concentrated solar” plants, which use mirrors to direct the sun at a focal point. These facilities may result in higher fatality rates, but very few of them have been built beyond a handful in the US, China and Spain. )
A 2020 update to this analysis by another team estimated 14,940 annual bird fatalities in southern California. The study, published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, received support from the solar industry, but also covered more case studies and only focused on solar PV projects, not concentrated solar.
Based on the southern Californian death rate calculated in the newer study and 2024 data on nationwide solar capacity, Carbon Brief estimates that 301,290 birds are killed annually by solar panels in the US.
While these numbers are significant, they are roughly 50 times lower than the number of birds killed by fossil fuels in the US each year. This includes deaths due to collisions with fossil-fuel infrastructure, electrocutions and pollution, as well as linked to climate change.
Moreover, they are miniscule when compared to the birds killed by collisions with cars and buildings, or hunted by domestic cats, as shown in the animation below.
Birds killed by solar panels in the US are a ‘drop in the bucket’ compared to other causes of death
Estimated bird mortality in the US
Estimates of annual bird mortality in the US, resulting from collisions with different buildings and objects, as well as those killed by cats. Sources: Walston et al. (2016), Loss et al. (2013), Kosciuch et al (2020), EIA.
Leeroy Walston, a landscape ecologist at Argonne National Laboratory, who led the original 2016 study, tells Carbon Brief:
“Not to diminish the impact of solar, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to other forms of mortality that birds might experience.”
Over the years, assessments by researchers from South Africa to Canada have highlighted the lack of evidence for birds being especially vulnerable to solar panels. There is even less evidence for other animals, such as bats, colliding with panels.
A review of the impact of solar farms on wildlife, conducted by UK government advisors at Natural England in 2017, concluded that “bird collision risk from solar panels is very low”. More recently, a 2023 report prepared by scientists at Mount Royal University concluded:
“Birds are frequently killed or injured by impacts with built infrastructure; however, there is little available peer-reviewed data that shows solar energy development has a greater effect on birds than other types of infrastructure.”
Major bird conservation groups, including the RSPB in the UK and Audubon in the US, are broadly in favour of solar power. They reason that it is a vital technology for tackling climate change – itself a threat to birds and nature, in general.
As for why birds or bats might collide with solar panels, the most prevalent hypothesis is that the reflective properties of solar panels confuse animals, particularly migratory waterfowl, into thinking solar farms are water bodies. This idea, dubbed the “lake effect”, derives from a 2009 study that identified “polarised light pollution” as a potential threat to wildlife.
While the lake effect is widely referenced, it remains unproven. A 2024 literature review concluded that “there is little evidence proving this causal factor”. (Another proposed threat involves insects being attracted to the polarised light reflecting from the panels and this, in turn, attracting birds. This, too, has little supporting evidence.)
The same literature review notes that most data on wildlife collisions with solar panels “comes from unpublished reports that employ non-standardised methodologies”. It adds that studies skew towards deserts in the US and may not be applicable elsewhere.
Researchers have acknowledged these data gaps and say that, as solar infrastructure expands, it is important to gain a better understanding of how wildlife interacts with it.
Prof Alona Armstrong, an energy and environment researcher at Lancaster University, stresses the complexity of these interactions, but tells Carbon Brief that concerns about solar power should be seen in the wider context of manmade threats to wildlife:
“Renewable energy can be a threat and there are reports of bird deaths, but it’s not the only threat to birds. Ideally, we should look across all the threats and make changes that would have the most beneficial outcomes in each place.”
13
Solar farms are ‘destroying habitats on an industrial scale’
Critics argue that building solar farms conflicts with the preservation of nature and biodiversity, as well as the countryside more generally. “Destruction of habitat on an industrial scale is not green,” US anti-solar group Citizens for Responsible Solar states.
Many opponents of solar projects in the UK cite the impact on wildlife and “unspoilt countryside” as their primary concerns.
Similar complaints can be found in the manifestos of far-right political parties in the Netherlands, statements by French protesters opposing “greedy industrialists” and the pages of right-leaning Australian newspapers.
Despite these narratives, solar farms are not automatically harmful to nature, particularly if they are built on land that has already been developed or has minimal conservation value.
Installing panels can even bring ecological benefits to areas otherwise dominated by farmland. “It depends on where you locate them – and how,” Prof Alona Armstrong, an energy and environment researcher at Lancaster University, tells Carbon Brief
Ground-mounted solar projects require more land than many other energy sources, per kilowatt-hour generated. As a result, such projects can cause damage if they are built in areas that are highly biodiverse or home to vulnerable species.
This is supported by the most recent IPCC report, which notes that large solar installations can “adversely impact biodiversity”. It points to the clearing of vegetation and landscape fragmentation that “creates barriers to the movement of species”.
Desert tortoises and cacti in the Mojave desert, black-bellied sandgrouse in southern Spain and great Indian bustards in Rajasthan are among the documented examples of species losing habitat to solar development.
Scientists have sounded the alarm about such cases, cautioning against siting solar projects in areas of high ecological value, such as fragile desert ecosystems.
However, as the chart below shows, the most common land type used for solar construction – hosting 52% of the total capacity in 2018 – is cropland, according to a global inventory of utility-scale solar power projects, published in 2021.
(A lot more solar power has been built since then, but the analysis shows the ratio of land-use types remaining fairly stable over time.)
Location of global solar power capacity by previous land use, gigawatts. Source: Kruitwagen et al. (2021).
In European countries, most solar power is installed in agricultural areas. For example, around 95% of the land used for solar projects in the UK is either arable land or land used for grazing livestock.
(Indeed, this is another criticism frequently levelled at solar projects. See: FALSE: Solar power is ‘a serious threat to agriculture and food security’.)
Farming is, of course, vital for food production, but practices such as monocropping and heavy pesticide use mean it is frequently detrimental for biodiversity.
Therefore, using farmland for solar rather than agriculture could actually improve biodiversity. If land is left relatively unmanaged, wildlife can flourish between the panels.
In a set of guidelines for renewable energy developers, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lays out the risks associated with solar farms, but notes that they “have been shown to create positive biodiversity impacts when compared to other types of intensive land use”.
There is plenty of evidence of this in the UK, with studies suggesting solar farms provide valuable habitats for many species of birds, bees and other pollinators.
One UK study by researchers from the RSPB and the University of Cambridge concludes that “solar farms can benefit biodiversity in arable-dominated landscapes”.
In the US, too, there is evidence of solar projects boosting biodiversity, with one study in Minnesota recording insect abundance tripling at two solar sites. However, as a recent New York Times feature observed, the “pollinator friendliness” of projects can depend on efforts made by solar developers to open their sites up to nature.
Finally, the IUCN notes in its renewable developer guidelines that, overall, “deriving energy from solar…is far less environmentally damaging overall than using fossil fuels”.
14
Solar farms have a ‘devastating impact on house prices in the area’
Concern about renewable energy projects having a negative impact on property prices in the surrounding area is a common source of opposition.
The fear is that local homeowners could see the value of their properties “plummet”, even as the companies or landowners developing solar projects reap the financial benefits.
Such arguments can be seen in media reporting from Ashford, Kent, through to Detroit, Michigan. Local people are frequently quoted speculating about the impact that proposed solar projects might have on property prices in the area.
One member of the Stop Botley West campaign, which is trying to block a solar farm in the English county of Oxfordshire, told the Daily Mail:
“The effect on house prices will be quite serious. I know at least three people who can’t sell because of the solar panels.”
The supposed impacts cited are often substantial. A Times article about the “devastating impact [a proposed solar farm] would have on house prices in the area” quotes an estate agent who predicts prices will fall by “30 to 40%”.
Such dramatic speculation is not supported by the evidence. Indeed, while academic research shows that solar farms can affect local property prices, the effects are very small.
“The claims that solar farms can cut local property prices by so much is not really an academic finding – most [research] papers find less,” Dr Martijn Dröes, an associate professor of real-estate finance at the University of Amsterdam, tells Carbon Brief.
Examples from the literature include a study that concluded the prices of houses built near solar farms are reduced by 1.7% in the US states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Another – co-authored by Dröes – finds a 2.6% reduction in the Netherlands.
One widely reported paper analysed 1.8m house sales near solar farms across six US states. It concluded that homes within half a mile of a large solar project saw their prices cut by 1.5%, on average, compared to homes that were two to four miles away and that “most impacts fade at distances greater than one mile”.
Dröes stresses the importance of accounting for local property trends when calculating the impact of solar farms, noting that someone may find “way higher effects” if they ignore the fact that house prices may be declining for other reasons.
The researchers behind these studies generally conclude that their findings should inform developers and officials when making decisions about solar project siting. Some also suggest that the relatively small financial impact could be offset with compensation initiatives.
Such compensation programmes are an example of community-benefit schemes. These are sometimes offered voluntarily by developers and have been shown to increase local acceptance of solar-power projects.
Finally, one study of 70 solar farms in the US Midwest identified a small increase in house values. This chimes with previous research that concludes economic development brought by renewable-energy projects can make neighbouring properties more valuable.
15
Solar farms ‘just can’t withstand the harsh elements of nature’
Climate change is making extreme weather events more common and more devastating. This can have significant impacts on infrastructure of all kinds, including solar farms.
There have been numerous articles about weather events, such as hailstorms, damaging solar farms over the past few years, which some outlets have been quick to use as examples of the “vulnerability” of the technology.
For example, after a hailstorm hit the 350MW Fighting Jays solar project in southeast Texas in March 2023 – destroying a significant portion of the site and leading to images of the smashed panels circulating on social media – numerous articles appeared arguing that solar was too vulnerable to be relied on.
Fox News claimed that the damage to the Fighting Jays project highlighted the “perils of trading traditional power sources for vulnerable ‘green’ alternatives”, while climate-sceptic blog NoTricksZone later said solar “just can’t withstand the harsh elements of nature”.
Similarly in the UK, Storm Darragh damaged EDF’s 49.99MW Porth Wen solar farm on Anglesey, Wales in 2024. While the French energy giant stated that it was assessing the scale of the damage and expected repairs to be complete in 2025, the Daily Mail coverage claimed “hundreds of solar panels were blown off their mounts and damaged beyond repair” by the storm.
While there have been high-profile examples of extreme weather damaging individual solar farms, however, statistics from the NREL show that the overall impact is minimal.
A study from the federal government-run laboratory that looked at solar-farm data from 2008–2022 found that the median outage length after an extreme weather event was two to four days. These outages resulted in a 1% median loss in annual performance.
Of the 6,400 solar projects studied, just 12 – less than 0.2% – experienced an outage of two weeks or more caused by extreme weather, NREL adds.
The study did show that, once extreme weather passed specific thresholds, there were greater annual performance losses from solar power systems. These include hail greater than 25mm in diameter, winds in excess of 90km per hour or snow depths greater than 1m.
However, this does not mean that solar is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather, as Dirk Jordan, a researcher at NREL and author on the PV Fleet publications, stated in a release:
“We don’t feel any of this analysis suggests that PV systems are unreliable or especially vulnerable to extreme weather.
“PV has demonstrated that it can provide backup power and save lives when surrounding infrastructure is damaged by extreme weather events. Yet, there are further measures we can take to improve the quality of equipment and especially installation best practices to increase resilience to these weather events.”
Additionally, companies are increasingly moving to weather-proof their solar systems. They are making use of technologies, for example, that combine software and hardware elements to protect solar farms from hail by “stowing” the panels at an appropriate angle.
A case study covered by Climate Home News showed that two sites in Texas were able to significantly reduce damage resulting from a large hailstorm.
A further study by engineering firm VDE Americas found that, had the panels been stowed at 75 degrees rather than 60 degrees, the damage could have been reduced to virtually zero.
This is an example of the defences against hail – which accounts for 1.4% of solar insurance claims but 54% of total incurred costs – specifically, but similar technologies are being employed to protect solar sites from other forms of extreme weather.
Stowing systems, for example, can be used to minimise the damage from hurricanes, high winds, floods, snow, extreme temperatures, or a combination of the above.
As such, while it is true that extreme weather can impact solar systems, the current effects are minimal and can, to a large extent, be managed by technological solutions.
16
‘The rush for solar panels is leaving us at the mercy of China’
China dominates the global solar supply chain, controlling more than 80% of every manufacturing stage in the production of solar panels, according to the IEA.
This has been highlighted by many anti-solar figures who argue that building solar farms leaves European and North American countries “hopelessly hooked” on Chinese supplies.
The climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph columnist Matthew Lynn captured this sentiment with an article headlined: “The rush for solar panels is leaving us at the mercy of China.”
Contrary to this framing, however, buying a solar panel from China is a one-off transaction. Once the solar equipment has been installed, it will – unlike imported fossil fuels – continue to generate electricity until the end of its life, without ongoing ties to China.
Seaver Wang, co-director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute and author of reports on Chinese solar supply chains, tells Carbon Brief:
“This is fundamentally different from international trade in pipeline gas or electricity via wires that could be turned off with the flick of a switch.”
The solar panels delivered by a single container ship will generate as much power over their lifetimes as more than 50 ships carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) or 100 carrying coal, according to recent IEA analysis.
Container ships of LNG (light blue) and coal (dark blue) required to provide the means to produce as much electricity as a single container ship of solar modules (yellow). Source: IEA.
Fears over solar supply-chain dominance are made in the context of security concerns around China and increasingly fraught international relations with the rising superpower.
These concerns have been voiced by figures at the top of politics, with US president Donald Trump telling Fox News:
“You know where the panels come from, 100% of the panels? They’re made in China.”
Contrary to Trump’s claim, his predecessor Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) policies were credited with massively scaling up domestic solar production in the US and helping to end US “reliance” on “foreign adversaries”.
The Trump administration has since dismantled most of these policies.
Meanwhile, governments in India and the EU have also been supporting domestic manufacturing. Nevertheless, China’s solar dominance is expected to continue for the foreseeable future.
The UK has almost no domestic solar manufacturing capacity, limited to a small amount of module production. It sources around 45% of its modules from China and the remainder largely come from countries that rely on parts from China.
This reliance has prompted concerns about security, with former head of MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove telling Times Radio that the UK should consider nuclear power or gas instead.
Dan Marks, a research fellow in energy security at the Royal United Services Institute, a security thinktank, tells Carbon Brief that the high costs of gas and nuclear power make them unlikely replacements for solar – and ones that are not without risks of their own.
China and Russia dominate the global nuclear supply chain and the surge in gas prices in recent years was predominantly driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Marks says:
“The question we all have to point out is: what is the alternative?…Would a more gas-based system be more secure when gas prices are the reason that our electricity prices are so high?”
A related critique is that the manufacture of many solar panels or their components in China results in what the Breakthrough Institute describes as “dependence” on “unethical production” in the province of Xinjiang.
In 2022, the UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery stated in a report that it was “reasonable to conclude that forced labour among Uyghur, Kazakh and other ethnic minorities in sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing has been occurring” in Xinjiang.
Chinese officials have repeatedly and strongly denied the existence of “forced labour” in Xinjiang, including when asked about its use in the manufacture of solar technology.
Moreover, while most solar panels are made using polysilicon – and Xinjiang-based manufacturers accounted for 40% of global solar-grade polysilicon supply in 2022, according to the IEA – the province’s dominance of such output is waning.
According to energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, Xinjiang accounted for some 27% of Chinese polysilicon in 2023 – roughly 23% of global supplies. Furthermore, 11 of 12 new Chinese solar manufacturing projects announced in the first quarter of 2023 were not based in Xinjiang, according to the IEA.
In the UK, China-hawkish Conservative politicians have used the perceived risk of solar products from Xinjiang entering the country to argue against solar in their constituencies and the UK more broadly.
This came to a head in early 2025 with a dispute over whether or how to address the risk of “forced labour” in solar supply chains, as part of the legislation creating the state-owned Great British Energy, which is rolling out solar panels on public buildings.
Conservative politicians, right-leaning newspapers and climate-sceptic commentators accused Labour of being “morally bankrupt” and putting “net-zero ideology” above human rights.
In April 2025, the government announced that it would add legislatory provisions so that the Great British Energy bill would “lead the field in ethical supply chains”.
Media reports suggested this would make it hard to build solar power. However, industry body Solar Energy UK said it was “confident there will be no slowdown in solar deployment”.
More broadly, reflecting on these issues, Wang tells Carbon Brief:
“Ultimately, over the long term, I think we can continue to achieve even further improvements in the cost of solar equipment while pivoting away from manufacturers with problematic links…But this will require an attitude shift from industry, investors and policymakers.”
