UK solar developer Green Nation has scaled back its plans for the Whitestone solar farm in South Yorkshire, Northeast England.
In an updated proposal, Green Nation has removed around one quarter of the acreage and solar panels compared with the original plan for the solar farm. This comes in response to community feedback, the company said.
The project spans three sections located between Rotherham and Doncaster – Whitestone 1 in the north near Conisbrough, Whitestone 2 in the centre to the east of Brinsworth and Whitestone 3 in the south near Harthill with Woodall.
The solar farm would be connected to the National Grid at Brinsworth substation. Green Nation said it had removed around 279 hectares (689 acres) across the entire site that would have been used for solar development.
This has been done to create buffers around homes, villages and public rights of way near the boundaries of the project, the company said in a March community update.
Not only will the areas removed from the plan no longer be used for any above-ground solar infrastructure, but some of them will now be “set aside for environmental enhancement and mitigation, and would be planted with a mix of native grasses and wildflowers to support wildlife and increase biodiversity,” Green Nation said.
It added that the area used for solar development and associated infrastructure would now only account for around half of the total updated Whitestone site area.
The company noted that the project was still in early stages of design and that there would be an opportunity to provide feedback on the updated proposals in the next consultation, scheduled for this autumn.
This upcoming consultation will also incorporate the preliminary results of environmental assessments that the company intends to begin soon.
Green Nation
This consultation will then be used to inform the final assessments that Green Nation will submit in its application for a development consent order (DCO), which is required for construction to proceed. The final decision on the DCO application will be made at the national level by the UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. However, Green Nation said local authorities and members of the community had a “significant” role to play in the development process.
According to the update, 702 people had attended the last consultation, which ran from November 18, 2024, to January 31, 2025, and 940 feedback responses had been recorded. This illustrates the amount of local interest that projects such as solar farms can attract – and the potential for local opposition to various aspects of such projects or to projects in their entirety.
Indeed, a number of solar farm planning applications are rejected by local councils each year. However, those that are large enough to require approval on the national level – including Whitestone – received a boost when the Labour government took power in July 2024.
The government has treated decarbonisation as a priority as it targets a zero-carbon grid by 2030 and wasted no time in approving several new solar farms upon taking over, with more expected to follow.
In November 2024, the UK National Energy System Operator (NESO) estimated that solar generation capacity would need to be more than tripled from 15 GW to 47 GW in order to help achieve the target of clean power by 2030.
