No Benefit to the Local Community


Quintas Cleantech, financial investors and the landowners will be the winners; it won’t be local residents, wider communities, visitors to the area, wildlife, or tourism/local businesses.  The proposed development is an industrial scale power plant and will make QC, financial investors and landowners millions over the 40-year lease.  The power generated by the solar panels will go straight to the national grid – it is not expected that this will be a cheap source of electricity for people living in the vicinity of the Solar Farm (Power Station).

The Letheringham and Easton proposed 49.9 MW Solar Farm will be capable of supplying electricity for approximately 15,000 homes.   Despite claims that the Solar Farm (Power Station) would revert to agriculture in 40 years, there are no assurances that either the companies will be around, or such a reversion can be enforced.

By contrast, just one wind turbine in the North Sea has the capacity to power around 16,000 homes [https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1072] and has one quarter of the carbon footprint of the proposed Solar Farm.  287acres of well farmed farm land should produce approximately 1,044 tons of wheat per year - enough to make 1.7 million loaves of bread and to absorb 880 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year.


The current installed (and planned) wind turbine capacity off of the Suffolk coast is 3,000MW.  This begs the question: do we really need to launch such a brutal assault on our countryside, when one additional north sea wind turbine would generate more electrical capacity than the planned Solar Farm (Power Station) in Letheringham and Easton? 


There is a view that lack of community benefit should also be considered well into the future.  The parliamentary debate [https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/debate/2025-05-15/commons/commons-chamber/solar-farms, 15/05/25], raised the fact that new technologies are already emerging in relation to Solar – how quickly would any deployed infrastructure become obsolete?

Another concern is the revelation from The Daily Mail: “China has secretly instilled Kill Switches in solar panels sold to the West – which could see Beijing plunge its enemies into darkness in the event of WW3” [16/05/25].  There are fears that supplies could be manipulated or grids across US, UK and Europe “physically” destroyed.  The article goes onto state Inverters could be switched off, which could destabilise power grids, damage enemy infrastructure and trigger widespread blackouts.

It is noted that monetary funds are offered to villages as part of Community Energy Projects (e.g. Solar Farms/Power Stations), by way of reward/mitigation.  It is also noted that gestures such as sheep grazing, bee keeping wildflower planting, hedgerows etc. are offered in an attempt to offset impacts.  There is a view, however, that such strategies cannot compensate for the arbitrary destruction of our distinctive Deben Valley countryside, a countryside that should be protected for our wildlife and future generations.