Climate change has become a major international issue and the British Government is committed to meeting ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions within the present decade and beyond. Much of this will rely on an increasing use of renewable energy. Within current technology this will depend almost exclusively upon the use of rural land, whether for wind turbines, for growing biomass and biofuels or for the production of biogas. Renewable energy is therefore of immediate interest to farmers and landowners and to their advisers, such as surveyors, lawyers, accountants and bankers, as well as to planners and conservationists. This is one of very few books which addresses the issue of renewable energy from the point of view of landowners, farmers and rural land managers – those people who must make important decisions about how, where and when to install renewable energy sources on their land and the business implications of the decisions they make.

The third edition of Renewable Energy in the Countryside contains a new chapter on biogas, up-to-date discussions on the implications of the Renewable Heat Initiative and new opportunities for solar energy and ground source heat in the context of farms and country houses as well as the implications of changes in UK planning policies.