Building biodiversity and solar projects with Fran Button (British Solar Renewables)

There's an argument you sometimes hear about solar projects in Great Britain. Are they helping the climate whilst hurting the countryside? It's the kind of question that sounds moral but usually collapses into anecdotes. Panels versus skylarks, pylons versus hedgerows. And if you only drive past a solar site at sixty miles an hour, it's easy to miss what's really happening on the ground because there's a shift underway. Increasingly, solar developers aren't just putting panels in the fields, they're rebuilding the fields themselves.

They're measuring what lives there before a single pile goes in, then they're redesigning the land for habitats and proving year after year that more life comes back.

It's called biodiversity net gain.

And if you develop land for energy, you have to give back more to nature than you take.

In England, the minimum is a ten percent increase. The interesting story is everything above that floor. That's where British Solar Renewables or BSR come in. Today's guest, Fran Button, is their deputy CEO. BSR develop, build, and run big solar and increasingly storage projects, and their goal is to optimize for nature whilst doing so. But what does that actually mean? Well, first, independent ecologists set the baseline.

Then sites add hedgerows, wildflower meadows, ponds, and wildlife corridors. The team continuously check whether the plan has actually worked, and BSR often target above that ten percent minimum.

Then they keep those gains on-site instead of selling them as credits. It's not about offsetting. It's more like stewardship. When the same acre of land is both a habitat and a source of power generation, that old culture war frame of countryside versus climate starts to feel dated.

Fran argues that we don't have to choose between clean power and living landscapes. We just need builders who know how to do both. But even a well built solar farm changes how a landscape feels. Biodiversity net gain sounds neat on paper, but metrics can be gained.

A meadow in a spreadsheet isn't the same as a meadow in August. So this isn't a celebration. It's a test. Can developers prove that nature can thrive on sites?

Can they keep that promise year after year? And how exactly are they doing this? Plus, is this welcomed by the stewards of that countryside today? Often, farmers fighting increasingly sharp margins and more extreme conditions from floods to droughts.

On today's episode, Fran explains how a technology once feared for harming the countryside can, in the right hands, help it grow back. Welcome back to transmission. Let's jump in.

Hello, Fran. Welcome to transmission.

Hi, Ed. Really great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

My pleasure. And as ever, let's start off by giving our listeners a bit of context. So who are you and and what's your role?

So I am Fran Button. I'm the deputy CEO at British Solar Renewables. I'm responsible for HR, health and safety, IT, and ESG within our business. And really, I'm there to make sure that the operational teams on the ground can really deliver responsibly and safely.

I'm a construction lawyer by background and then sort of was looking for a new challenge and interesting thing to do and wanted to work with great people. And I was really drawn to the renewable energy space and I've been with BSR since it was founded in twenty ten.

Okay. Great. And and today's conversation, so we we're gonna focus a little bit more on sort of the ESG and biodiversity angle on that. You mentioned British solar renewables. Let's do the quick overview of who they are. And and and the name says solar. Is it is it purely solar at BSR?

Not just purely solar, but we were, we started in solar. So we were founded in twenty ten. We were there with the aim to make renewable energy affordable and reliable.

We're these days, we're a fully integrated power producer since we were bought by ICG in twenty twenty two. And we do large scale solar. We do battery energy storage and some wind. We are involved in the whole life cycle really of the project.

So we go out and we develop sites. We design, engineer, procure and construct the sites. And then we operate and maintain and asset manage them really for the life of of of the park actually. So that's that's where we are these days.

Okay. And this is perhaps somewhat a slightly unusual episode because we usually very focused on an engineering concept or something perhaps commercial markets driven. But we are gonna spend a lot more time on biodiversity today and the biodiversity of solar projects. Because I think this is a a part of the market that often gets misrepresented or misunderstood. And I'm really keen to kind of bring a little bit of data into the conversation and actually just hear from someone who is kind of boots on the ground about what is actually happening at some of these sites. So let's just do that story for a solar site. So, like, what is that biodiversity story for a solar site going from, say, the preconstruction phase through to a sort of a live operational site?

So at the preconstruction stage or perhaps when we're assessing land for a solar park, we would go out and we would ask an independent ecologist to do a survey, and we would measure what was already on the site. There's a special method of calculation for biodiversity net gain and it is really a formula. So, you take habitat units and you add the hedgerow units and then you add the river units and that gives you your biodiversity net gain overall. And so, what we would do is we would look at that and we would establish a baseline and then we would design the solar park and the kind of maybe things like screening hedges to protect neighbors' views.

We might design in wildflower medals and that kind of thing. And we would look at the uplift at the end of all this design phase of implementing those measures. And that would give us our uplift biodiversity score. So really we're thinking about how we're leaving the land in a better position than it started off before we put the solar park on it.

Okay. And obviously, I'm from an engineering background, I love tracking things, I love metrics. And so like how do you track this? You mentioned biodiversity net gain in that. So so how does how does that work?

So you would take the baseline survey that you've done, which has given you your biodiversity net net gain score And then you would measure it against how it is after you have introduced the measures, perhaps your wildlife corridors, perhaps your new hedgerows, perhaps the planting. And you would look at the uplift in that and how many either new habitat units or other great measures in biodiversity that you've introduced through the process.

Okay. And and so perhaps you've all like kind of alluded to it there, you've mentioned the word uplift. I suppose when many people think about say a solar park coming along, they're saying, hey, this solar park gonna go onto a particular piece of land. Yeah. And from that point on, that land is gonna be sort of a desolate wasteland because no biodiversity will ever thrive on us on a solar park. Yeah. Obviously, you've already sort of mentioned that it's an uplift that you're traditionally tracking.

Is that is that tend to does that tend to be the outcome on most solar projects or maybe all solar projects that you work on?

Absolutely. So, the the government requires a ten percent statutory minimum in an uplift in biodiversity gain on any, kind of development, regardless of whether it's solar or an office block or housing project. And so, you have this ten percent minimum. Some local planning authorities require a bigger uplift. And we have set ourselves a sixty percent minimum. So, we're going well above and beyond the ten percent that we're required to do by statute. But the reality is, at the moment, we've probably got three or four parks that post the design phase and designing in these measures, we're coming out with two hundred percent plus biodiversity net gain.

And that's really, I think, really amazing. But you've got to kind of think about where the land has come from because you might be taking a heavily farmed agricultural field that is maybe a mono crop, and then you are effectively putting the solar plant on it, but you are planting in between. So, you are there will be mixed grassland, most likely. There'll be an array of hedges, either existing ones or kind of new ones for screening.

We might do planting for trees. If there's water on the site, we could also enhance ponds or do that kind of thing. And so you're taking what could be quite a kind of an area of monoculture and you're creating effectively a series of different habitats which nature really loves. So I think that's really positive.

Okay. And does the sort of ecologists come along and take a look at this and essentially measure it on like an annual basis? Like, how how does how does that work? How is it tracked?

Yes. That's absolutely what you can do. I mean, we we do a baseline survey as I mentioned, and then you can measure afterwards. Some of the local authorities are now actually requiring us year on year to to measure and and have a plan around that and, you know, put forward our results. So we we at British Solar Renewables really do hold ourselves to account anyway, but actually also, the local authority has the ability to do that, as well.

Okay. I think that will be a surprise to many people in terms of often when you see news around, say, solar sites, you kind of that sort of biodiversity angle is is given is given a negative association when in in fact sort of the data come coming from your side and coming from the sites that you see is is absolutely a a positive one.

I'd like to talk a bit a bit more about the biodiversity net gain, which many people kind of will abbreviate to BNG. So if you ever hear the word BNG, that's kind of where this is coming from. Yeah. And as you said, essentially, this is a measure of the the the improvement on a particular site. Now sometimes those those BNGs can be sort of explicit certificates that are that are worth money.

And so how does how does that work in terms of the value of a of a of a BNG?

I can't give you exact values of BNGs because it's sort of there is a kind of an index and it kind of depends on the type of unit it is as I understand it. So for example, a grassland unit might have a different value to say an orchard unit or a kind of woodland unit. But the way that the trading of these units works is that if there is additionality above this ten percent and that additionality is not required for that project, as in if we had to put in some screening and that took us over the ten percent, then that wouldn't be a credit that could be traded. However, if we voluntarily put some woodland or something in and that wasn't really part of the original planning commission, then that could lead to a situation where there was additionality and those additional credits potentially could be traded.

The law around this is a little bit complex on solar parks, in that it slightly depends on what was within the planning permission and what wasn't. But theoretically, you could trade these additional biodiversity net gain credits for cash. So, if there was, for example, let's just take a housing developer, they might be struggling to get their ten percent statutory required biodiversity net gain on their project. They're required by law to do it.

And so, a potential is to go out and actually buy some some credits from elsewhere. And that's what you could do if you had additional credits to sell.

So starting to value people who are putting sort of biodiversity first on these sites, and then starting to get additional value from being able to do that. It seems to me like a very positive message. Perhaps then let's let's finish with the end of the solar site. So what happens when your projects you mentioned BSR has been running since twenty ten Yes. I think. As those projects start to get to the end of their life, how what what do the plans look like for those for those sites? What's the what's the plan of action?

That's a difficult one because actually, although we've been going in in fifteen years, solar parks really have a life of about forty years. That tends to be how long the planning permissions are for. It also tends to be how long the leases are for. And so at the moment, we're not really reaching the end of life of these solar projects, but we do have a plan.

So the plan really, under the planning permission, we effectively have to put the land back in the same position as it was before we built the solar park. And so that would mean taking cables out of the ground, removing the arrays and the frame around that and the solar panels. All of the components could be recycled. We think about ninety five percent is recyclable.

And then we would have to restore the land to the state it was in. I think that's where it's quite interesting because with all this biodiversity net gain and these amazing habitats we've created, returning the land to how it was before we put a solar park on it could be quite interesting. But I think, you know, forty years is quite a long time. And I think probably by then, technology may have changed or we may have moved on in our thinking or we may be there may be a change in the situation, which means that we are repowering these parks.

Maybe they're needed on a smaller scale. Maybe we're returning some land to agriculture. Yeah. It's a bit of an unknown at the moment, but I think the main thing is we must have a plan to recycle responsibly and things like the the WE regulations and those kind of things mean that all the way through the life cycle of a project, we have to recycle to things like solar panels really responsibly.

But I think more even at the end of life, that's gonna be a really, really important factor.

Okay. I I like I have visions of the sort of worst case outcome of this, which is, as you say, the pond is on-site, there is an orchard on-site. To return to previous conditions, you have to fill in the pond and flatten the orchard and it just kinda feels like, well, hold on. I think that's probably not what the the planning inspectorate were hoping for when they originally put those plans in place.

Yeah. I think it feels that does feel like that would be not common sense really, doesn't it?

Yeah. Which we're we're always in favor of. And then let's talk a little bit more about planning. So obviously, when you go for planning on these sites, you, BSR and yourself, obviously talk to the public quite a lot about solar parks going into into particular locations. What is the sort of general opinion of solar parks going into new sites?

It's hugely mixed as you can you can imagine. So there are some people who really strongly believe in renewable energy. They think solar parks are great and they might think that, you know, it's really protecting future generations from sort of coal fired power and things like that. And so you do actually go to some public consultations where people have brought their children along and they're they are really they're really, really pro solar.

Sadly, that's not really the case for everybody. There are lots of misconceptions about solar and what it means living next to a solar farm. There is a lot of opposition to solar sometimes. Some communities that we go into really welcome us with open arms, and and others are very much less less keen on the whole Okay.

Concept, if I could put it that way.

That's a fair way of describing it. Well, maybe we should do that. Maybe we should then have a look at some of those sort of common myths that you've come across in those. I've obviously I read the news, so I've got a few a few myths I can also throw into the throw into the mix. May maybe maybe you can go first and and tell me something you've kind of come across in these these planning sessions.

Well, I think one of the things is that people believe it's that solar parks are really detrimental to nature. So, I mean, we've obviously talked quite a bit about biodiversity in nature today.

I would say, whilst these are power plants and you can't just kind of wander on onto them because they're dangerous, I would, I would throw open an invitation that people should go and really see it for themselves because when I wander around a solar park, what I'm seeing is quite often quite nice meadow grass and wildflowers. I'm seeing bees flying around, I'm seeing sort of butterflies. Quite a few of our parks have sort of brown hairs on them, really great birds of prey and all of that kind of thing. And so, I think until people have really been on-site and kind of experienced they may very well think, oh, it's a kind of a barren wasteland. And there's quite a big misconception about the fact that we use I think people assume that we kind of either tarmac or concrete over the field in order to put the arrays in. We don't. We we pile with kind of quite slim piles.

It's like a it's like a steel support.

Absolutely. Yeah. To to hold the frames and build the frames up on. So we're actually not impacting the permeability of the ground.

And that means we can grow grass and wildflowers and that kind of thing effectively under the arrays, under the solar panels.

And also for things like flooding as well, then as you say, a permeability perspective, like, compare that to a car park. Yes. That is obviously gonna be able to take a lot of runoff.

And and one of the things that I'm very excited about today and as ever we would welcome people bringing props on, you've also because you've been on many of these sites and you're a keen photographer, you've also kind of taken some some photos of of sites. Is there anything you're particularly proud of in terms of animals that you've seen and and sort of captured on on on solar projects?

Can I share some photographs with you?

Yeah. You definitely can. You definitely can. For for anyone listening on audio, I will do my best to describe this.

Describe what I'm showing you. Okay. So I mentioned, I didn't actually take some of these amazing wildlife photographs, I kinda wished I had. So I mentioned particularly birds of prey.

So I'm gonna show you now an amazing picture of a buzzard that's perching on the back side of one of our solar panels.

Taking a rest on a solar panel. Absolutely. To see that. And we will definitely get these photos.

We'll put them in the links so that people can take a look through them and and just get a feeling for and that, I mean This this is my personal favorite.

This is your personal favorite. This is obviously an owl, what what kind of owl is it?

That's a barn owl, and it's using the rafters, so the sort of structural supports underneath the solar panels to perch on, which is great to see. But what's probably happening is that where the grass has been allowed to grow up and maybe form some tussocks on the solar park, because it's not cut in the way that a farmer would cut a meadow for Hay all the time, There might be small mammals, little shrews, voles, that kind of thing in there. And so probably, he's or she has sat on that rafter ready to hunt for his lunch.

Okay. So Very nice. Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna borrow this. I I think we might get some glare issues almost certainly, but here we go. This is a this is I nearly knocked the mic over as well. This is a barn owl looking for some lunch.

There we go. Hopefully, can just about see that. Very exciting. I I I have to say, I love people bringing props on and we will make sure that we'll get some of these photos onto the link so people can can see it.

And as you say, like, without people actually getting onto the sites themselves, it's incredibly tough for people to have that experience. And so I think it's really good that you're starting to you you yourself, but also the wider businesses are taking photos and showing people what it looks like. Yeah. I'm gonna ask one of my really silly questions because I often see people debating whether sheep can go on solar sites.

You said that they're kind of they are power plants, so there are some sort of there are cables on there. And so in theory, you know, it can be dangerous to be on those sites. Yeah. But also, I often see pictures of sheep being underneath solar panels.

Is that dangerous? Should sheep be on solar sites?

I think they absolutely should be on solar on solar sites because I think this is where the whole thing between having biodiversity, between having agriculture and producing power all in one piece of land really comes into play. And actually, grazing sheep, mean sheep's obviously a kind of a crop, and so actually, I think it's a really great thing to do, but it also has massive benefits for the solar farm because it means that you can actually manage the grassland in a really, really good way. But my caveat to that is you have to design the solar park to allow that, so you need about an eighty centimetre front edge of your solar panel so that the sheep don't become sort of stuck or start to sort of damage the solar panels themselves.

And you also need to obviously have things like water and that kind of thing on the site. One of the things that we're really experimenting at the moment with is rotational grazing because we think it's not a good thing to use things like herbicides and stuff like that. So, would much rather use a much more natural method of managing grassland and sort of plants, wildflowers, that kind of thing. So, what we've been doing in one of our sites in Somerset is working with a local landowner with these beautiful grey faced Dartmoor sheep.

So they're a rare heritage breed sheep.

And I can tell you that is a serious haircut on these It is a serious haircut.

On these sheep. Yeah.

Yeah.

And what we do is we have planted some big areas of wildflowers on the site for pollinators and we've done some fencing across the site. So what we can do is we can do this rotational grazing. So at certain times of the year, the sheep come on and they graze the solar park, but they don't graze the wildflowers that are in flower, so that the pollinators can use the pollen and really have the maximum benefit of that. And then when the wildflowers have effectively died back, the sheep will go into that sort of part of the solar park, and then they will graze that part of the solar park as well. So, it's kind of sort of conservation grazing, if you like. It's using the tools that we've got in the sheep, but it's also allowing nature to work with it compatibly.

The thing about this is you can't intensively graze. I don't know if I'm allowed to say poop on this Okay. Are, yeah, that's loud. Because sheep poop is obviously very, it's a strong fertiliser and so actually, that would probably cause a lot of the grass to really, really grow. Wildflowers, on the other hand like quite poor nutrient soil and so sheep poop is not great for that.

And so what we need to do is actually keep the number of sheep down to a kind of a conservation grazing level rather than intensively farmed level.

Okay. It's fascinating because on one hand, it's kind of high-tech solar panels, cabling, connections to the grid Yeah. But also very low tech traditional grazing that this country has done for centuries Yeah. All in one piece together.

And I think maybe that message for some people isn't isn't there. So I think that's a it's a really fascinating thing to to hear about. You mentioned very briefly things like bumblebees. I know that BSR work with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.

I think that's Yeah. Potentially correct. Is that something that is is measured, or is that just a a general sort of commitment to wildflowers on on these sites?

We've actually started measuring. So we've worked a lot with the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. We think they're an amazing organization, and they are, you know, absolute experts in bumblebees and obviously other pollinators as well. So what we've been doing actually is getting them to go onto our solar parks at a preconstruction phase, and this is a kind of a voluntary thing we've just started doing, and getting them to do a survey.

So, they do a kind of a bee walk, where they look at what bees might be on the site already pre construction. They will look at what wildflowers are on there or could be on there, because if it's obviously been quite intensively farmed, there may not be very many wildflowers. They will recommend based on soil type and perhaps where we are in the country, what kind of wildflowers to plant on the site or what kind of grass might go well on the site for specifically tailored to pollinators. And so, we've been doing a lot of work with them, and then they will come back in future years.

One of our sites in, again, site in Somerset, they've come back to see how the wildflowers have come through in the areas that we've planted, make some suggestions about how we could tweak or change it, and also just start to do surveys around the bumblebees and and what we're starting to sort of really see there.

And and I know that some people will sort of think that like a bee walk sounds like unscientific, but really like that is bees generally don't do what you ask them to do, and so you need to get professionals on-site and walking around and and looking to see what they can find is is generally quite a traditional way of actually doing a count of of how many bees are on-site.

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Enjoy the conversation.

So moving on from bees, I think perhaps to the most important part of this conversation, which is for the people who own the land, the farmers, the landowners, do they welcome the development of solar on their land?

That's a really interesting question. And we would obviously be talking to ones who did like the idea of having, solar on their land. So they would probably be more receptive to it than most people. Farming is tough. There is no getting away from it. Changes in climate, weather, disease, all of these things really impact farmers.

There is sometimes a situation where it's more difficult to hand farms over to future generations and farmers may actually want to be retiring or perhaps sort of subsidise their farming in some way with a kind of an income stream that isn't impacted by weather. And I think this is where a number of farmers have sort of said to us, look, this has really allowed me to carry on farming because I've got this steady income stream from the rent of the land for the solar farm, and that's allowed me to effectively diversify my farm in a kind of a way and really continue with the farming. So, I think that farming and solar, I think they're compatible, but also they can kind of support each other.

And I think it it it gives a bit more certainty for farmers around a kind of a a known income stream for a a really long period of time. So forty years, as I was saying earlier.

Yeah. So it's locked in revenue stream, but also diversifying the revenue so that they're not so impacted by say, drought or disease of a particular crop, whether it's a crop or on an animal. Yes. I think also it's quite interesting around the fields that's selected.

So obviously, a farmer has a big range of fields they could put it on. From the from the BSR side, you're looking for the ability to be able connect to the grid. Obviously, that's very important. But from a farmer's perspective, they don't want to put solar panels on their best field.

Right? That's not going on their the field that has produced the best crop for for decades. They're looking to find a field that is the sort of the ugly duckling as it were to put those solar panels on?

Yes. So you wouldn't use the best and most versatile land for solar. We are supposed to and we target, as you say, land near grid connection. That's the most important thing in in finding a site.

We want flat land. That's another really important thing. But yes, you're right. What we would be looking at is grade three and sort of below, so not the best agricultural land.

This goes grade one is the best?

Grade one is the best. Okay. And then I think we we we tend to target sort of three or three or below.

Okay. Very interesting. Okay. And I think that's that gives a really nice wrap up of what's happening on solar parks in GB. I'd like to move us on to our two final questions. Okay. So the first question would be, is there anything you'd like to plug?

I would love to plug our nature protection pledge. So you may have seen it on our website and in our kind of PR type stuff. But we have created a nature protection pledge, and essentially, it's a series of promises to the communities that we go into around what we would do on a solar park in terms of biodiversity and nature protection. And it's things like, you know, enhancing waterways on the site, it's things like wildflower meadows, it's things like planting trees, but really trying not to import plants from abroad to do that, and really managing the land in a really responsible and sustainable way, because we think that's really great for nature and it's really great for a really great solar story as well.

And it's really our kind of challenge to the industry that actually, as developers, we really need to behave in this really responsible way, and I think it's a real kind of throwing down the gauntlet to the rest of the industry to say, look, let's try and do this and let's try and do it really, really well for nature.

Yeah. Okay. And then final question, is there a contrarian view that you hold?

I suppose we were talking a bit earlier about selling additional biodiversity credits. I have a bit of an issue with monetizing nature, really, in the sense of, I believe, and at British Solar Renewables, we're going for the maximum biodiversity net gain that we can for the benefit of nature without looking to monetize the uplift. So we're aiming at above the statutory minimum, so the statutory minimum ten percent, we're aiming at least sixty, but we're not looking to monetize the additional additionality that we we're gaining on some of these sites.

As you say, kind of if if you sort of gain in one place but lose in another, then if that sort of net the the overall net gain is kind of is is relatively flat. But as you say, if you kind of hold on to those Yeah. Net gains yourself, then actually the overall biodiversity of the UK starts to recover.

I think so. And I think I think we all have a part to play in that, which is really nice and and I think solar parts are a big part of that. There was this recent RSPB survey that I mentioned earlier on, which looked at arable farmland in East Anglia and it looked at a solar park, some solar parks in East Anglia, and it looked at the amount of bird life between the two. And it found that on well managed solar parks, the number of birds was three times larger than on the arable land.

And when I say well well managed, it's ones with multiple habitats, so not a monoculture, not just grassland, but it's got hedges, maybe it's got water, it's maybe got wildflowers and all of those kind of things. And I think that's really astonishing. And it and it was research done by Cambridge Cambridge University and the RSPB. So, you know, they should know.

Pretty yeah. Pretty pretty pretty solid backing for that. Okay. Fran, well, thank you very much for coming on transmission. I think this has given people a really good insight into biodiversity on solar sites. I hope people have listened to this and are thinking about those projects in their local area or potentially might be in their local area in the future. And that's a wrap.

Thank you.