This year’s Solar & Storage Live event in London had an unmistakable energy – change was in the air. From conversations around the new Infrastructure and Planning Bill, to Grid Reform and the 2030 Clean Power targets, it was clear that 2025 is set to be a big year for renewables.
Matt Vickers, Director of Connections Reform at NESO underlined a sobering statistic about the UK’s clean energy infrastructure, noting that; “We need to triple our solar output and quadruple our energy storage capacity in order to meet the governments targets”. But likewise, we have “800GW of energy waiting in the connection queue,” which is double what the country would need to meet our 2050 net zero goals.
This introduces a very real tension for developers, regulators, and public authorities. How do we ensure that we are getting renewables projects over the line, connected to the grid, without overwhelming the public? In our work, we absolutely see this friction play out in real time in consultations – particularly in areas particularly affected by cumulative energy projects, so it was interesting to see it acknowledged across all levels.
Breaking barriers in project planning
We were pleased to join client British Solar Renewables (BSR) at a fantastic panel, featuring insights from Laura Fogarty, Planning Manager. Chaired by Gareth Philips of Pinsent Masons, Laura was joined by a great mix of experts including Rob Sutton (Cotswold Archaeology), Musa Choudhary (EDF Energy) and Allesandra De Zottis (Sonnedix). The lively discussions addressed challenges from the systemic, to the sentimental.
From our perspective, there were some interesting takeaways for communicators around the framing and phasing of impacts and benefits. “If we can do ecological enhancement in the application, why can’t we do socio-economic enhancement reporting?”, Rob challenged – a great point as the room was in agreement on the significance and value of a strong community benefit provision. Overall, though, it was energising to see that ultimately, the panel concluded that “the planning reforms proposed under the Planning and Infrastructure Bill will likely assist in accelerating planning decision making”.
Uniquely British challenges
While Allesandra of Sonnedix discussed the similarities in planning issues internationally during the panel with BSR, the Solar & Storage Live event also highlighted some of the challenges and considerations the UK faces that affect our practices when compared with other international efforts. Neil Titley, AECOM’s Solar & BESS Lead presented a fascinating talk on agri-solar projects. While very popular in Southern European installations, there needs to be more research efforts on this for the UK. And our weather – though lovely for the event – is largely to blame. Agri-solar has great benefits for increasing shade, and water retention, but with our famous rain, these ‘benefits’ could be risks in terms of crop yield and the return on investment for farmers. Additionally, they tend to require more height of installation, and our visual heritage and culture of minimising views cannot be understated.
In a later talk, Adrian Fox, representing the Church of England and Ian Morrison from Historic England explained, “heritage is one of the UK’s most important exports, our ‘soft power’”. There is a great opportunity in stakeholder engagement to proactively work with and support these organisations in developing standards and best practice that allow them to preserve this history and heritage in a way that keeps our buildings and assets in use for longer with renewable infrastructure. Some fascinating case studies were shared, including the striking Athelhampton House in Dorset. Struggling with over £100K in energy running costs, Historic England and solar developers worked together to plan a large solar infrastructure, hidden within the property, which allowed the building to reduce its running costs to nothing, saving it for future generations. “We want to say yes,” to projects, explained Ian Morrison. Testament to the power of communications and engagement!
The Pier team also attended a number of fantastic talks from our industry peers and collaborators, on landowner-developer relations, navigating legal challenges, learnings from international energy projects and more. As always, it was a great day of insights, energy and connections. See you at the next event?
Molly Fry, Account Director
What were Molly and Lois’s favourite parts of Solar & Storage Live 2025?
Lois: “Laura’s insights on the ‘Breaking planning barriers’ panel were my ultimate highlight. The conversation was funny, snappy, and relevant, and a great format that I felt like I had never experienced before. A close runner up was the talk on ‘Managing the DCO and consenting processes’ talk by Alex Minhinick of Burges Salmon as it was very relatable and the key points delivered were so important to bear in mind when we work on our DCO renewables projects.”
Molly: “It’s really great to see the data visualisation tools that are available for utility-scale solar projects in the UK. Seeing the Solar Energy UK ‘SolarPulse’ tool and reading the socio-economic impact reports, covering installations from grid to residential levels gave great context to the market overall, which will be incredibly useful for projects in development or in the early stages of stakeholder engagement.”
Find out more about Pier’s expertise in renewables here.
