Within the UK, energy underpins all aspects of life, with most people reliant on access to abundant and uninterrupted energy for the provision of basic needs (e.g. heating and cooking), and to enable work (e.g. reliance on information technology) and leisure (e.g. through transport and social media). The production and consumption of energy is currently responsible for ~75% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and thus contributes significantly to climate change. Supplying sufficient energy to meet rising demands whilst also transitioning to low carbon sources to avoid dangerous climate change is a global grand challenge. Within the UK we are reaching a critical juncture in energy supply, with the closure of our coal-fired power plants in 2025 and the planned decommissioning of the majority of our nuclear fleet by 2030. This will leave an energy gap of approximately 50% and insufficient new energy plants are planned. The capacity of solar photovoltaics (PV) in the UK exponentially increased in response to the Feed-in-Tariff. The majority (58%) of PV systems are ground-mounted as solar parks, with the remainder being building- or water-mounted. Although the Feed-in-Tariff has been cut, solar park installations have continued through other policy measures (e.g. the renewables obligation) and the installation for direct use (i.e. not grid connected) by large energy users (e.g. water companies). Further, industry predicts that the solar park market will accelerate in response to: the cost of large scale solar undercutting nuclear, coal and gas; the UK Government's Industrial Strategy focus on energy cost; the advancement in battery storage (both technological and financial); and the lower public opposition for solar compared to other renewables and hydraulic fracturing, despite the relatively large land take. One implication of the relatively large land take for solar parks is the impact on the hosting environment. Given that the majority of solar parks are converted from intensively-managed low grade agricultural land to grasslands, this offers an opportunity to deliver co-benefits beyond low carbon energy. Enhanced management of solar parks for would contribute to statutory nature conservation requirements (e.g. conservation of protected species and national biodiversity targets under the Convention on Biological Diversity), help redress the continuing declines in biodiversity that now threaten the UK's ability to meet the Aichi 2020 targets and our commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and enhance the provision of ecosystem services that provide wider societal benefits worth billions per year to the UK economy. This IFP brings together an interdisciplinary and multi-sector team spanning ecosystem services, renewable energy, land management, planning and policy. Our aim is to embed a decision support tool relating to solar park design and management into policy and practice. The work plan, to be carried out by a partnership of academic researchers and end users, includes: (i) an evaluation of alternative adoption pathways and supporting business models, (ii) workflow testing with end user organisations; (iii) development of a web-enabled version of the tool to enhance functionality; (iv) piloting of the tool in real-world settings; and (v) further engagement with the broader stakeholder community within the UK and overseas.

Ensuring there is sufficient energy is a global challenge, caused by increasing demand and the need to move to low carbon energy to avoid dangerous climate change. Photovoltaics, including those mounted on buildings and the ground, are predicted to provide a key component of energy in the future, with the recent US Clean Power Plan and policies in China and Japan placing particular emphasis on solar power. Further, solar energy is increasingly cost competitive, with large scale solar park costs now similar to that of conventional energy sources. Within the UK, 47 % of solar photovoltaics are ground-mounted as solar parks. There has been a shift towards ground-mounted solar parks in countries within 35 degrees of the equator and a shift toward large-scale ground-mounted systems in Europe is anticipated. Solar parks take up a relatively large area of land for the energy they produce compared with conventional sources of energy. Yet, despite the expanding land area occupied by solar parks little is known of the impacts of their construction, physical presence and management on the landscape, or how we can use the opportunities provided by this land use transition to bring additional benefits, such as enhanced green infrastructure and ecological connectivity. Alongside switching to low carbon energy sources, in the light of growing populations and heightened pressures on resources, it is becoming increasingly recognised that we need to protect our environment, since it provides many goods (e.g. crops) and services (e.g. carbon storage) that contribute to the wellbeing and economic prosperity of society. The increasing land cover of solar parks presents an excellent opportunity to maximise the provisioning of such goods and services, with management options relatively low cost compared with those related to solar park construction. Therefore, this project will develop a decision-support tool to assess the impacts of solar parks, including their construction, physical presence and management, on the goods and services the landscape provides. There are five key components: 1. Synthesis of existing solar park guidelines; 2. Production of a compendium of the beneficial and detrimental effects of solar parks on goods and services supplied by the landscape; 3. Quantification of the change in goods and services over the operational life-time of solar parks; 4. Development of a decision-support tool that promotes the optimal deployment and management of solar parks; 5. Dissemination of the outcomes of the project to the broader solar development community. There are 11 project partners, covering all solar park stakeholders: Christine Coonick, National Solar Centre; Ed Jessamine, Novus Solar; Nick White, Natural England; Jonathan Scurlock, National Farmers Union; Jon Abbatt, ADAS; Richard Winspear, RSPB; Melanie Dodd, Wiltshire Council; Adam Twine, Colleymore Farm; James Ryle, Good Energy; and Phillip Duncan, Corylus. The key output from the project is the SPIES (Solar Park Impacts on Ecosystem Services) decision-support tool, which will provide a standardised means of identifying the best way to install and manage solar parks. Thus the tool will be useful for developers, consultees and regulatory agencies and may reduce prolonged and expensive planning applications, which will be beneficial to all parties. The National Solar Centre will help us drive the tool into policy which would lead to a noteworthy sustained contribution to sustainable energy generation and the supply of goods and services from the landscape. Further, given the global proliferation of solar parks and the growing global awareness of the importance of our natural environment, the proposed tool could help to stimulate innovation in business and investment opportunities, and build the UK's reputation as a global leader in solar park deployment. Keywords: solar parks, low carbon energy, ecosystem services, green infrastructure

Energy is a key driver of economic and sustainable social welfare. It is an essential prerequisite for modern industry and commerce. The need to decarbonise the energy supply is generally accepted and solar photovoltaics (PV) will play a large role in this in both the UK and India. The two countries have seen very rapid installation since both countries introduced their respective market stimulation programmes in 2010, cumulative installations have risen to 5GW (India) and 8.5 GW (UK) by December 2015. This has had a very significant impact on the power system and may endanger quality of supply or grid reliability. JUICE will focus on tools to understand and quantify the associated issues, find the most economical way to ameliorate or control the issues generated. PV can often be located near to load centres but its temporal alignment with conventional demand profiles is far from perfect. Electricity at the wrong time or in the wrong place has very little value and there are already numerous examples of PV (and other sources) having to be curtailed when local demand or capability to transport it are insufficient. As the penetration of installed PV increases, so too does the need for its effective integration into power systems at all levels and including both national and localised networks. Energy storage and demand-side response will play a big role in this as well as managing grid capacity. JUICE would be investigating the amount of generation of PV, the stress this is putting on the network, the cost and benefits of mitigation technology options (storage and demand shift). The inclusion of storage and PV places relatively large power electronic converters into the system, which may also allow further services to stabilise the network to be viable technically as well as economically. It is key to address these challenges across the different research communities, as changes in one technology may change the boundary conditions for others and e.g. economics may change drastically. JUICE will, as an example, look at the viability of storage technologies in dependence of quantity of installed PV, local demand and transfer capacity. JUICE will bring together internationally leading experts in PV technology, applied PV systems, power electronics, electricity networks, energy storage and demand-side response; and through their combined efforts, will develop integrated solutions to ensure that the value of PV generation is optimised in both India and the UK. The techniques and solutions developed will also be readily transferable to many other countries that face similar challenges and contribute to increase economic and environmental welfare in developing and developed countries. The breadth of experience and skills brought by the collective UK and India teams is appropriate to the scale of the problem and will encourage development of novel concepts and solutions to these global challenges. In the UK, the team has been drawn from the national flagship SuperGen projects: SuperSolar, HubNet and SuperStore, which specialise in PV, networks and energy storage respectively. In India, world-leading universities and researchers will be led by IIT-KGP and IIT-B. JUICE will focus on a value optimisation for the end user, i.e. meeting demand at the lowest economic and environmental cost. Specific topics to be addressed include: PV yield optimisation and localisation, transmission and distribution network stability and utilisation, microgrids, the control and lifetime of storage and its role alongside demand response. The overarching integrative management of the centre will ensure that the specific technical developments undertaken by the partners are coordinated and effective in contributing to the overall aims of providing improved energy services, lowering environmental impacts and minimising costs.