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Daniel Leal-Olivas\/PA Wire<\/p>\nDaniel Leal-Olivas\/PA Wire<\/p>\n
The development will operate as a solar farm for 30 years<\/p>\n
A Cornwall farmer claims the county is being “sold off” in a bid to hit net zero energy targets after plans for a 125,000-panel solar farm were approved. <\/p>\n
The scheme, near the A30 at Carland Cross, was turned down last year by Cornwall Council, but has since been approved by national inspectors after an appeal by the developers.<\/p>\n
Campaigner Marie Wills said she tried for years to overturn the solar application, and said she felt “the government are trying to sell Cornwall off just to hit net-zero”.<\/p>\n
Downing Renewable Developments (DRD) said the the site would include sheep grazing and biodiversity improvements, as well as free solar panels for roofs of neighbouring people.<\/p>\n
![\"Marie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/bbfb5860-addb-11f0-9c53-d1367f9334cb.jpg.webp.webp\")
<\/p>\n
Marie Wills said she tried for three years to overturn the application<\/p>\n
Rosalyn Kirby heard arguments for and against the solar farm on 80 hectares (200 acres) of agricultural land between Mitchell, Trispen, St Erme and Carland Cross.<\/p>\n
Ms Kirby concluded harm to the character and appearance of the area, and conflict with the development plan, was “outweighed by the benefits of the proposal”.<\/p>\n
Ms Wills, who has a family-farm adjacent to the site, is part of the Carland Action group.<\/p>\n
She said: “I call this the Mother of All Solar Farms because of all the policies it had against it.<\/p>\n
“I think the floodgates will open and more and more land will be put into solar.”<\/p>\n
Ms Wills said it was becoming “impossible” for farming families to purchase land “because of the price of land increasing due to these solar farms”.<\/p>\n
She added: “The amount that the developers are paying, I cannot see how they will decrease the cost of electricity.”<\/p>\n
Owner DRD said the Fair Park development would operate as a solar farm for 30 years, delivering up to 49.9MW of solar energy.<\/p>\n
It said its plans would include new hedgerows, wildflower meadows, and habitat improvements which would go beyond statutory planning requirements.<\/p>\n
Tony Gannon, of DRD, said the project would make a “valuable contribution to helping meet both national and Cornwall net-zero targets”.<\/p>\n
“It also delivers a significant community benefit programme which provides those closest to the development with lower cost energy through our free domestic solar rooftop initiative,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniel Leal-Olivas\/PA Wire The development will operate as a solar farm for 30 years A Cornwall farmer claims…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-243591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}