Farmers could earn more than £50,000 a year renting out their land as sites for large-scale solar-power farms.
A London-based firm has been “scoping” potential sites for the developments – including coastal areas in the north and north-east.
Lightsource Renewable Energy is on the hunt for 700 acres of ground – the equivalent of about 400 football pitches – for 100 megawatts of solar farms in Scotland.
The plans were welcomed yesterday by farming industry body NFU Scotland, which said the rents on offer were significantly higher than those that could be achieved by leasing the land for agriculture.
President Nigel Miller said the extra income would underpin many farming businesses and offer financial stability.
But anti-turbine group Scotland Against Spin dismissed solar power last night as a “worse bet than wind”.
A shortage of connections to the national power grid has resulted in Lightsource moving out of its heartland in England’s south-west and drawing up plans to build more than eight large-scale solar farms north of the border by March 2015.
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It claims the schemes will produce enough electricity to power more than 33,000 homes – without any noise, emissions or pollution.
The company, which is funded by UK-based Octopus Investments, already operates more than 300MW of large-scale solar projects across nearly 80 sites in the UK and has invested more than £600million in the past two years.
It says it wants to double the land it now has, more than 2,200 acres.
Potential sites are being investigated in coastal areas, including some in the north and north-east, and the company said every Scottish solar farm was likely to have a capacity of 12MW, spread across an 80-acre site.
Each would take about three months to build using a workforce of up to 60 people that Lightsource claimed would be recruited locally. Each site would create one full-time job.
The company would own and operate the solar panels, leasing land on 25-year contracts with rents of up to £700 an acre.
This means a farmer could make up to £56,000 a year for leasing an 80-acre site or £1.4million over the lifetime of the project.
Liza Gray, from Lightsource, said the company was planning to hold roadshows across Scotland early next year to create a “white list” of local expertise and suppliers required for the projects.
They would include landscapers, planning consultants, fencing companies, labourers, ground workers, machine operators, livestock consultants and wildlife trusts.
“We have quite a lot of interest and we are still looking at sites,” she said.
“We always carry out a thorough community-engagement process if we identify a suitable site for which we would like to apply for planning permission.”
Communities that agree to host solar farms would be given £3,000 per megawatt of in-stalled power to fund a roof-mounted solar installation on a local municipal building, she added.
This means each potential new solar farm could contribute £36,000 to the local community.
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