John Gibbons: Saying nuclear power is better for the environment than solar is ludicrous 

The idea that intensive dairy farming is some kind of pastoral idyll with no impact on the environment has been allowed to take hold to the point that serious people are now suggesting nuclear reactors instead of solar

The State ambition on solar energy envisages solar farms generating at peak 8GW of energy by 2030.

For as long as I or anyone else can remember, Irish agriculture seems to have been in crisis.

Today, despite soaring food prices for Irish consumers, many farmers are unable to make a living from agriculture, the majority depending on off-farm income and generous taxpayer subsidies simply to stay afloat.

The numbers don’t lie.

Income for the average Irish beef farmer in 2024 came in at €9,500 — less than half the minimum wage.

Sheep farmers fared only slightly better, though both have improved this year as food prices rose sharply.

Tillage farming continues to struggle in Ireland, with farmers complaining they can no longer compete for leasing or buying land due to spiralling land prices.

Dairying, on the other hand, is booming — with average income of over €108,000 last year.

Teagasc predicts average incomes to hit a whopping €140,000 in 2025. For those riding the dairy boom, Ireland is truly a land of milk and money.

The catch? Intensive dairying is only wildly profitable as long as the sector is allowed a free ride to produce massive pollution impacts, both in terms of spiralling methane emissions that fuel global warming and their devastating local impacts on water quality and biodiversity.

Ireland faces huge EU fines for non-compliance with our legal obligations on emissions reduction; some estimates put these fines as high as €26bn.

If the dairy sector were required to pay its full and fair share of this bill, as well as helping to fund the huge cost of remediation work on our heavily polluted waterways, it’s likely the true picture would be radically different and this sector would also be financially under water.

Imagine for a moment that a form of farming had recently been introduced that was suitable for most types of land and locations, produced zero water pollution, allowed the land to be rested, and so was a boon to biodiversity, yet also offered farmers an excellent and secure income.

Imagine further that this new type of farming created a product locally and cleanly that Ireland currently spends billions having to import a dirty and dangerous version of.

There would naturally be a stampede to adopt this near-miraculous product, with politicians lining up to throw their weight behind it.

Well, not exactly. The miracle product does indeed exist: Solar farming. However, rather than hailing it as a clean, green way forward, Irish politicians have instead been queuing up to denounce it.

Anne Rabbitte recently told the Seanad that 'we need a grown-up conversation' about energy solutions. Picture: Moya Nolan

In a recent debate, Fianna Fáil senator Anne Rabbitte expressed alarm at a farm of up to 1,000 acres choosing to, as she put it, “go rogue”, by converting to solar farming.

Her solution? Rather than desecrating rural Ireland with solar, why not build nuclear reactors instead. Yes, nuclear.

“We need a grown-up conversation about what the solution might be”, Rabbitte added, “as opposed to killing our countryside” with solar farms.

For a politician to publicly claim they would sooner see a nuclear power station in their constituency than a solar farm gives some indication of just how far from reality the debate on renewable energy in Ireland has drifted.

Back in the real world, the State ambition on solar energy envisages solar farms generating at peak 8GW of energy by 2030. This is a huge amount of electricity, yet it requires a miniscule land area — only around 0.25% of farmland — to achieve it.

Put another way, 99.75% of land that is today covered primarily in grass will still be used for traditional agriculture into the next decade

Residents in East Cork rallied to oppose a proposed solar farm at Greenhills earlier this year, which is currently a large dairy farm.

The solar operation would produce enough clean electricity to power over 50,000 homes. What’s more, solar arrays offset more carbon emissions every year than even the equivalent land area planted with trees.

By moving away from dairying, the farm would no longer be producing thousands of tonnes of slurry, plus dangerous methane and nitrous oxide emissions, while providing a secure income for the farming family whose land is leased.

Some of the local opposition to solar farms comes from predicable sources.

Fianna Fáil TD James O’Connor, who comes from a farming background, warned in the Dáil last year they would have “seriously devastating consequences for the dairy industry”.

In last week’s Seanad debate, politicians from all parties expressed varying degrees of concern at the alleged impacts of solar farms.

Fianna Fáil’s Pádraig O’Sullivan expressed concern that “some communities are being swamped” by solar farms.

Tellingly, he added that “these farms are transforming the landscape from largely agricultural to what we would argue is a commercial enterprise”.

By moving away from dairying, the farm would no longer be producing thousands of tonnes of slurry, plus dangerous methane and nitrous oxide emissions, while providing a secure income for the farming family whose land is leased.

It beggars belief that lucrative large dairy operations involving heavy machinery and the extensive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, with their entire output hauled by truck to a factory while contributing almost nothing to local or even national food security, are not also treated by our politicians as “commercial enterprises”.

The Seanad debate demanded that the Government brings forward planning guidelines specifically for solar farms.

How many of the same politicians clamouring for strong regulation for solar power would also support eliminating the bizarre planning loophole that allows giant beef and dairy operations to operate without any EPA pollution licence?

Larger pig and poultry farms are rightly required to have such pollution licences, but continuous political lobbying by farm groups has seen the beef and dairy sector dodge its responsibility to be properly regulated.

Farming of whatever kind is primarily about extracting energy from the land. Some forms of farming, notably horticulture and tillage, do this quite efficiently.

Livestock farming of any kind is intrinsically energy-inefficient, even before its pollution impacts are considered.

Solar farming, on the other hand, is astonishingly efficient. Consider that one shipload of solar panels will, over their lifetime, generate more than 100 times the energy produced by a shipload of coal.

In the teeth of a climate emergency, our politicians need to show some backbone and champion — rather than hinder — the charge towards a clean, electrified future for Ireland.

• John Gibbons is a journalist and author of The Lie of the Land, which is shortlisted for the 2025 non-fiction Book of the Year.