Former Essex dump becomes top European solar farm

A former rubbish dump in Essex has become the largest European solar farm built on a landfill site to generate renewable electricity.

Owned by the waste management company Veolia (LON:0NY8), the Ockendon solar farm is now the third-largest solar facility in the UK, featuring over 100,000 solar modules spread across 70 hectares of land.

Veolia expects this solar array to produce sufficient clean energy to power approximately 15,000 homes.

Frank Gordon, the director of policy at the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology, said: “We urgently need more solar in the UK to help meet our legally binding net zero goals, and this summer’s extraordinary global weather has further underlined the need for climate action.”

One of the primary objectives of this initiative is to breathe new life into the former landfill, which had limited options for redevelopment, and following the commencement of production, Veolia’s aims are focused on minimizing ground-level impact to allow wildlife that has re-established itself in the reclaimed land to coexist with the solar technology.

This project also underscores the potential for solar installations on closed landfill sites across the UK, estimated to encompass hundreds of hectares.

Additionally, thousands of hectares of active landfill sites may be repurposed for solar arrays in the future, helping the UK work toward its goal of increasing solar power capacity from 14 gigawatts (GW) to 70 GW by 2035.

Challenges with the UK’s grid connection due to high demand have resulted in a backlog of applications and lengthy wait times for renewable energy developers over the past few years, however, the Ockendon solar farm avoided such delays and will share portions of the grid infrastructure with another nearby large-scale solar facility.