National Solar Mission envisages establishing India as a global leader in solar energy.The Mission has set the ambitious target of deploying 100GW of grid connected solar power by 2022. (40 GW Rooftop and 60 GW through Large and Medium Scale Grid Connected Solar Power Projects). The country’s solar installed capacity reached 25.21 GW as of 31 December 2018.

The availability of land is a big impediment for this sector. In India generally land is segmented and records might not be available. This has led to irregularities in land acquisition for Solar farms. There is a need for tighter land regulations in order to further upscale solar energy in India.

• Solar developers still face hurdles in converting agricultural land to industrial land. It has become problematic even in the fringes of the Thar Desert.
• Solar farms are usually developed on lands that are barren and uncultivable terrain.
• But in practice, the land acquired by developers isn’t always “barren”. With no clear penalties and regulations that draw the line on land quality, fertile cultivable land is often procured to build solar power plants.
• While ideally there is the desire to use barren land, factors such as availability, distance from the substation and other acquisition challenges come into play.
• Developers pay extra money for the lands if the location factors are feasible for the project. This can lead to real-estate bubble and can affect food security.
• The lack of proper regulations on land leasing leaves farmers with uncertainty regarding the future of their land, even as the lease expires.
• Land-grabbers and real- estate mafia is on the rise to grab arable lands from farmer, leave it fallow and then sell it to solar projects.

Way Forward:

• The government should impose penalties or other enforcement regulations to limit solar panels to the truly barren, uncultivable terrain.
• Strengthen the land-records by digitizing and constant updation.
• Solar projects should identify lands that are low-yielding and lease it from the farmers on 25-to 28-year-agreements, a win-win situation for everyone involved as the farmer has a steady flow of income. Example: Karnataka’s Pavagada solar plant – Shakti Sthala.
• There is a need to develop decentralised and rooftop solar and more solar pump capacity rather than just large-scale solar farms.
• A much more concerted, deep, invasive policy effort is needed to provide the right information to the consumers and enable the right kind of business model.
• Tighter land regulations would also enable faster dispute resolutions in case of any disputes.
• Alternative spaces like floating solar plants (example: Kerala’s Banasura Sagar Dam), solar roads (France and China), solar trees (developed by CSIR-CMERI), coverings on canals should be looked into.
• Increasing the height of solar panels so that cultivation could be done in tandem as done in Wind Farms.

Conclusion:

The need of the hour is to make use of the renewable solar energy to satiate the power hunger and developmental needs of India. But the process of solar farm set up should take into consideration the other impacts like food-security, bio-diversity damage, farmers’ livelihoods before acquisition or leasing of lands.