In Gridlock I transcribed an interview on BBC Radio 4’s flagship PM programme, with Ben Wilson, Chief Strategy Officer for the National Grid. The interviewer, Evan Davis commenced the interview thus:
Now, if you build a new wind or solar farm, helping to de-carbonise the electricity grid in Great Britain, be aware you might have to wait fifteen years for National Grid to connect your facility to the Grid. In fact, there are real worries that it is the Grid which is the constraint on building up renewable energy.
Broadly speaking the interview confirmed that there are serious issues in this regard, and discussed the steps that the National Grid might take to solve the problem of gridlock.
It seems as though the powers-that-be are listening, and possibly also acting. On 1st July, the Daily Telegraph featured an article under the heading “Pylons to be forced on public to hit net zero goal – Hundreds of miles of overhead cables needed to power electric cars and heat pumps”. The Telegraph article is behind a paywall, but Paul Homewood has the story, and the article can be read in full at his site.
The gist of it is that it is finally dawning on those who are ostensibly in charge of the UK’s energy policy and its implementation, that net zero is about to collide with reality, unless urgent (and potentially highly unpopular) measures are taken. That, of course, is already the case with regard to things like forcing people to buy expensive electric cars that don’t work for them and which they don’t want; making them pay huge amounts for driving old “polluting” cars in towns and cities; trying to force people to use expensive heat pumps, that can’t work well in many UK homes, instead of gas boilers that do work well; endeavouring to move us off cooking with gas and on to electricity instead, etc., etc.
The other part of the equation is that the electrification of our lifestyles, replacing the use of fossil fuels in the home, on the roads, and in the generation of electricity itself, means that we are going to need much more electricity. Generating that electricity by “renewable” technologies, such as onshore and offshore wind, and solar, means transferring the electricity from many more locations scattered all over the country and beyond, to the population centres where it is needed. And as the interview I mentioned at the top of the article made clear, we already have massive delays in the system when it comes to introducing new renewables to the National Grid.
The Daily Telegraph article suggests that currently the UK generates “up to” (weasel words) 14 Gw of energy from offshore wind farms, but the government’s current net zero plans involve increasing that to 50 Gw by 2030. Fossil fuel generation is to be eliminated by 2035 (by 2030 if the Labour Party wins the next general election and implements its plans). BY 2035, some estimates suggest that we will need 50% more electricity than currently, and without fossil-fuelled power stations generating any of it, the only way this can be achieved will be by the rapid erection of hundreds of miles of overhead cables and pylons. That will involve fast-tracking the planning process, even in the face of fierce local opposition.
And so the Daily Telegraph tells us that risibly titled Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is devising sweeping planning reforms. John Pettigrew, Chief Executive of the national Grid, is quoted as saying that:
it would be “incredibly challenging” to expand the existing network to meet the Government’s targets without major planning reforms.
Mr Pettigrew said: “Without planning reform, if you’re trying to get to 50GW by 2030, that’s going to be difficult … You have to see a shortening of the planning process.”
We are told that DESNZ supports the National Grid’s take on all this, and is keen to halve the time period that usually elapses before large energy projects currently receive formal planning consent.
Under the plans, ministers would issue formal guidelines – known as a National Policy Statement – later this year, effectively mandating planning inspectors to approve projects needed to help the UK to meet its targets.
This would be followed by a separate document setting out specific schemes, including electricity transmission cables, pylons and wind farms, that form part of the Government’s net zero plans – in order to put the “full weight of planning law” behind each of the specific proposals.
Ministers would also slash the seven-year planning process to build new transmission cables and pylons.
John Armitt, the chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, doesn’t accept that local concerns can be allowed to prevent the major transition that net zero involves.
“Pace” and “urgency” are the National Grid’s watchwords. It suggests that local communities should be induced (“bribed” would be the word I would use) to support new energy infrastructure by giving discounts off energy bills to those living close to such infrastructure.
Barney Wharton, director of Future Electricity Systems at Renewable UK, the renewables industry body, said that what is going on involves a fundamental change in the way we design our power system. The result is that some areas of the country, such as East Anglia, that haven’t had much electrical infrastructure before are now going to see lots of it. For instance, National Grid plans a 112 mile power line between Norwich and Tilbury to connect two wind farms off the Suffolk coast. There are also plans for 55 miles of new power lines between North Humber and High Marnham in Nottinghamshire.
That’s all problematic enough. As Paul Homewood observes:
And then of course is the cost of all this!
North of the border, the upgrade to the Beauly-Denny transmission lines was the subject of intense and bitter opposition. The damage wreaked on the countryside is well-known, but how many people realise that the cost of this was projected to be of the order of £330M? Or that it represented only a fraction of the work and costs in Scotland? Back in 2010, those costs were estimated at being £4.7Bn. That was then – now the ongoing cost is reckoned to be over £10Bn. In Scotland, National Grid’s remit does not run. Instead, electricity transmission is the responsibility of SSEN Transmission. Its website tells us that:
We are investing over £10bn to upgrade the network around key areas, connecting new onshore and offshore renewables generation in the north of Scotland so the power can be transported across the country.
How much had already been invested, and precisely how much more than £10 billion this is all costing, we aren’t told. But we are told who will pay for it:
Transmission investments are paid for by GB consumers through their electricity bills. These costs are recovered through the Transmission Network Use of System Charges (TNUoS) which are covered by electricity customers and electricity generators across both the north of Scotland and GB.
In turn, that is used an excuse to avoid the use of underground cables, with SSEN preferring unsightly overhead cables in many locations, despite local opposition to the visually damaging impact this has on the environment:
While undergrounding and subsea has less visual impact there are some considerations which need to be taken into account, such as the land required for construction, the environmental impact and the additional costs associated with undergrounding which will ultimately be passed onto the end consumer. Furthermore, the higher the voltage, the more challenging it is to underground due to the increased impact higher voltages have on underground cable corridors and associated environmental and land use impacts.
Other factors are mentioned to justify using overhead cables rather undergrounding, and there may well be some validity to them, but of course none of this would be necessary in the first place were it not for the net zero policy. That is made abundantly clear by an article on the BBC website early in April this year, under the heading “Campaigners fight ‘pylon threat’ to Highlands”:
SSEN Transmission said the project was part of a UK-wide programme of works that are required to meet 2030 renewable targets.
The “project” in question is a new powerline between Spittal in Caithness, in the far north of Scotland, to Beauly. That’s the same Beauly that has already suffered from the line south to Denny, as mentioned above. But that’s not the end of SSEN’s targeting of Beauly, which lies at something of a transmission lines crossroads. As SSEN’s own website makes clear, the plans go much further:
In order to support the continued growth in onshore and offshore renewables across the north of Scotland, supporting the country’s drive towards Net Zero, further investment in network infrastructure is needed to connect this renewable power and transport it from source to areas of demand across the country.
Following extensive system studies, Spittal to Beauly has been identified as a critical corridor in establishing this required reinforcement, connecting into new substation sites at Spittal, Loch Buidhe and Beauly along the way. Network studies have been completed demonstrating the need for a new 400kV connection between these sites, supported by the instruction to ‘Proceed’ in National Grid’s Networks Options Assessment (NOA) Report and the subsequent Holistic Network Design study.
The pylons are bad enough. There are also the substations:
Extensive studies informing the ESO’s Pathway to the 2030 Holistic Network Design confirmed the need to reinforce the onshore corridors between Spittal and Beauly, and Beauly and Peterhead, and an offshore subsea cable between Spittal and Peterhead and also offshore/onland cable between Beauly and the Western Isles.
To enable these new reinforcements, a new 400kV substation is required within a 10km radius of Beauly to connect to the following:
- New Beauly area HVDC Converter Station
- Existing Beauly/ West Balblair 400kV substation
- Existing Beauly- Denny 400kV OHL
- New Beauly- Blackhillock- Peterhead 400kV OHL
- Spittal – Loch Buidhe – Beauly 400kV overhead line
To think that Beauly is said to have derived its name from a comment by the visiting Mary Queen of Scots: “Ç’est un beau lieu”. Sadly, beautiful places count for nothing where net zero is concerned.
South of the border, in England and Wales, we must look to the National Grid. A year ago the BBC reported that its upgrade was to cost £54 billion:
A huge upgrade of the UK’s electricity network would see a host of pylons and cables transporting power from offshore wind farms around the UK.
Power lines from Anglesey to Swansea, Grimsby to Hertfordshire, and Loch Buidhe to Spittal would be built to pull electricity from the sea to the mainland then to homes and businesses.
National Grid ESO said it was the biggest network upgrade in 60 years.
It appears that most of the electricity pylons will follow traditional lattice designs, but some new ones, mostly those associated with Hinkley Point, might be less intrusive. Still, it’s somewhat ironic that a major part of their structure is made in China, using energy generated by coal-fired power plants, before being transported half-way round the globe. That’s all the more ironic given that the acting president of National Grid Electricity Transmission is quoted as claiming that their use is to deliver increasing amounts of low carbon energy and support the UK’s drive towards its net zero target.
As the BBC tells us the grid upgrades extend to Northern Ireland too. The cost of the upgrade required to “help its 910,000 customers connect to low-carbon technologies like electric cars, solar panels and heat pumps” is put by the BBC in its report at £3 billion. As usual, the cost is being incurred only because of the drive to net zero:
The Centre of Advanced Sustainable Energy (Case) said Northern Ireland’s targets for dealing with climate change were “ambitious” but could not be met without major investment in energy infrastructure.
The cost to consumers is put at £10 to £20 per annum, which is curious. The Managing Director of NIE Networks owns up to this cost, he says, because of the importance of being transparent with customers. Which is perplexing, because even at the higher end of that range, and over a period of ten years, it adds up to only £18.2 million, which is a long way short of £3 billion. Somebody else must be paying, then. Perhaps the UK taxpayer?
Adding up the costs of the grid upgrades across Scotland, England & Wales, and Northern Ireland, we arrive at a figure of more than £67 billion. That’s around £2,500 per household, and is only for the grid upgrades at this stage. It factors in none of the other subsidies and costs associated with net zero.
Is there any good news associated with all this? Perhaps – just perhaps – this is the moment when reality about the environmentally destructive nature of the net zero project dawns on people living far away from the wind farms destroying our beautiful wild places (and the bats and birds that made their homes there). So far, the bulk of the UK population hasn’t really noticed the environmentally damaging nature of “green” energy policies. Now, however, pylons are coming to a place near most people. And the public, or at least a significant proportion of it, doesn’t like it. The plans for East Anglia have met significant local opposition. As the opposition website notes, National Grid’s plans involve:
180km of 400kV overhead cables
50-metre high pylons (except in the Dedham AONB, where they will be buried
From Norwich to Tilbury, cutting through countryside, past villages and near historic buildings in Norfolk, Essex and Suffolk
New 400 kV connection substation proposed at Elmstead Market, near Colchester.
And such things aren’t popular. Let’s hope that net zero is about to meet its nemesis.
Climate Scepticism 
Mark,
It’s not cost, it’s investment. Remember what you said about words not meaning the same any more.
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Someone needs to say “Whoa, let’s pause and do a sanity check in all this Net Zero stuff” because it is going seriously wrong.
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Given that Scotland already produces three times more energy than it uses, one has to ask exactly WHO will be benefiting from all this and why it’s needed here. The current plans for 60 offshore turbines, each the size of the Shard, 3 miles from the beautiful coastline of the Isle of Lewis is certainly not going to benefit the people who live there and will be detrimental to tourism, which I brings money into the island (the Western Isles lost their European funding which was replaced with nada by the Tories). Of course the answer is the corporates and their shareholders, many of them with ties to the Westminster Government. at the expense of the environment. Britain is rotten to the core.
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Sam Smart,
I largely agree with your analysis. However, while I am no defender of the Tories (far from it), why limit your analysis to them and to Westminster? The SNP and Holyrood have caused far more harm north of the border.
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Another excellent post Mark. Thank you.
Why are our politicians proving to be such stupid people? They must know that the country’s debt is approaching £3 trillion, that the NHS is an unholy mess, that education is in ruins, that the police service has little interest in protecting the public… etc. Sorting out all this is the obvious priority, yet they persist with the absurd, unbelievably expensive, disastrous and pointless net zero policy. And do so despite wind power and the essential redesign of power distribution turning out to be hopelessly expensive. And despite the fact that we don’t have nearly enough skilled people to all the required tasks. And despite the emerging reality that few people want EVs and heat pumps. And so on. It’s all quite mad.
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‘Collisions with overhead power lines kill far more birds than wind turbines’.
Oops, there goes another ‘clean energy’ argument.
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Robin,
“It’s all quite mad”.
It is, literally, stark raving bonkers:
We’ve got to have electric cars, heat pumps, wind turbines, solar panels, smart meters and hundreds of miles of electric lines supported by mega pylons across pristine countryside, at unimaginable cost, because . . . . . we don’t want any more warm, sunny June months like the one we just ‘endured’ or any more record breaking one day heatwaves at the nation’s airports.
Put these people in an asylum and the long term inmates would demand they be let out, claiming they’re being driven nuts by the new intake!
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I know this post is about bad energy policy in UK, but the title suggests “Piling on the Agony”. So people here must have some thoughts about the UK Covid policy review coming out.. I read this today from Brownstone by way of zerohedge.
“Over the weekend, former UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who advocated and led the use of terror messaging to drive support for and compliance with lockdown measures throughout 2020, choked back tears as he told the Government’s official COVID Inquiry that he is ‘profoundly sorry’ for each and every COVID death and hopes lockdowns will be ‘much earlier’ and ‘more stringent’ during the next pandemic.
One need not have a background in law enforcement to recognize that these are the words of an entirely unrepentant sociopath. Hancock’s testimony seemed to confirm sceptics’ worst fears that the COVID Inquiry is being used as a pretext to institutionalise lockdowns, and it marked an astonishing new low for the COVID Inquiry, which so far has revealed little of value and assiduously avoided asking officials why they found the horrific decision to copy China’s lockdown policy remotely appropriate—though the officials have openly admitted lockdown wasn’t part of any Western country’s pandemic plan and have pondered whether any country would have done it had it not been for China.
Worst of all may be the fact that 17 members of the pro-lockdown pressure group ‘Independent SAGE’ have been asked to give evidence at the COVID Inquiry. For those who’ve been paying attention, this is a far cry from how optimists hoped the aftermath of the COVID response would eventually play out.
‘Independent SAGE’ is not a legitimate political body. ‘Independent SAGE’ is nothing but a questionably-funded group of extremists with no relevant credentials proselytizing the dubious goal of ‘Zero Covid,’ while hijacking the name of an official Government body to fool the public into believing they have some legitimacy.
In short, ‘Independent SAGE’ is nothing but a disinformation organisation that caused unfathomable harm by convincing citizens and officials to pursue an illusory goal using illiberal methods with very real and catastrophic costs. To have Independent SAGE give evidence at the COVID Inquiry means the potential criminals have, quite literally, been given a role in prosecuting the case. The members of Independent SAGE are the ones who should be facing an inquiry; given the scale of the harm, the UK could do worse than to have them all banged up in the Tower of London—at least until we know more.
For the UK Government to stack the official COVID Inquiry with the members of an obvious disinformation group is deeply insulting to the public’s intelligence, and an unsettling glimpse into the lengths the Government has gone to manipulate the perception of public opinion since the response to COVID began. The public did not ask them to put all these members of ‘Independent SAGE’ on the Inquiry, nor can this decision be written off as a mistake.
Rather, it reveals that many Members of Parliament are deliberately working to manipulate public perceptions to prevent the question of whether the UK should have imposed a lockdown from ever being asked—and it begs the troubling question of just how many of these MPs are not mere incompetents, but rather knowing accomplices to the crime. To be frank, it evidences just how vast the communist conspiracy which may have given birth to Western lockdowns may in fact be.”
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Ron,
And to go even more off topic, it is ironic that your rant about the harm that Independent Sage caused will no doubt be disallowed under the forthcoming Online Safety Bill designed to remove harmful online content.
And getting back on topic, why are we complaining about the additional cost of underground cabling? Surely that is an opportunity for even higher levels of ‘investment’. 😉
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The full article by Michael Senger is here:
https://brownstone.org/articles/uk-covid-inquiry-reveals-vast-international-communist-conspiracy/
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The cost of transmission to consumers is minimal so all the new transmission assets could be put subsea (where the power will come from) or underground, without a huge increase in cost. Distribution needs upgrading but that doesn’t need huge pylons
The key to the problem is HM Treasury Green Book … follow that correctly and there would be no overhead transmission. The problem is, although the Green Book is MANDATORY, National Grid, Ofgem, BEIS etc etc ignore it
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And Pyling it on Even Further … you will have all seen todays splendid piece on the Renewable UK Press Release site, demanding loud and clear huge increases in the funding for the so-called industry, as quite clearly they’ve all got their backsides in the glue pot, and cant make enough money to justify proceeding with schemes. Both GWPF and Paul Homewood write it up. GWPF, and especially Gordon Hughes, have written extensively about the inevitability of this happening. The sums are truly enormous.
Actually maybe that will help some in Government to finally concede Net Zero ain’t going to work, as it simply cant be afforded…
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Another excellent article by Kathryn Porter which lays bare the muddle and lack of realistic forethought at the heart of government policy with Ofgem trying to get its sticky fingers into issues beyond its remit:
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Mikehig, thanks – well worth a read. This was particularly jaw-dropping:
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Mark and Mikehig:
That’s hugely significant: the prospects for an all-electric Grid by 2035 (2030 for Labour) look far out of reach. Apart from anything else, we simply don’t have the skilled people to get this done.
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“Pylon row is spik o’ the Mearns”
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https://www.pressreader.com/uk/scottish-daily-mail/20230722/281732683971580
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“The looming battle over pylons for green energy”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-66336599
An excellent report by the ever-reliable Douglas Fraser:
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Well spotted Mark. I mentioned it to Paul Homewood. (I loved Lyndsey Ward’s comment.)
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Robin,
Lyndsey Ward deserves a lot of praise. She is a tireless campaigner for the protection of the countryside against the encroaches of “green” energy. She has managed to get some excellent letters in the press too. However, engaging a BBC Scotland reporter of the quality of Douglas Fraser on this issue is quite a coup. Well done, Lyndsey.
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“Ministers to speed up delivery of new power lines for clean energy”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66384672
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Bribery is needed, apparently:
“Give cash to households in path of new pylons, government urged”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66397256
For some people, it seems that everything comes down to money – no recognition of the fact that people are opposed to the pylons (and, for that matter, to wind farms and to solar farms) because of the damage they cause to the environment, and no amount of money can compensate for that.
In any event, the money is apparently to come from the operators. Where will they get it from? From us, the end user.
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“From Ulez to pylons, ‘consultations’ are being used to quash opposition
Leaders claim they are listening to the public, but never seem to hear even the most vocal dissent”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/22/consultations-are-being-used-to-quash-opposition/
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“Scottish Renewables calls for grid upgrade
More pylons, powers lines and substations are needed in Scotland argues new report”
https://renews.biz/87653/scottish-renewables-calls-for-grid-upgrade/
The network would be fit for purpose were it not for net zero….An awful lot of cost, blight and anxiety could so easily be avoided.
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“The next UK net zero battleground is electricity pylons”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2023/sep/26/the-next-uk-net-zero-battleground-is-electricity-pylons
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“East Anglia campaigners gather to protest against pylon plans”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-66970851
From a post on The Knowledge about the recent IEA report:
” A $600bn-a-year nightmare for Net Zero
In the rush to embrace green tech like solar panels and wind turbines, the world appears to be forgetting something rather crucial, says Brad Plumer in The New York Times: the infrastructure needed to support it all. In an extensive new report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warns that around 50 million miles of power lines around the world need to be built or upgraded by 2040 – equivalent to nearly doubling the planet’s existing electric grids. To keep pace with renewable energy commitments, the world will need to spend a whopping $600bn a year by 2030. Yet with the “notable exception of China”, investment in grids is declining in many countries. As IEA director Fatih Birol says: “It’s like being focused on building the fastest, most beautiful car you possibly can, but then you forget to build the roads for it.” ”
“The problems are already stacking up. Around the world, at least 3,000 gigawatts of renewable energy are “waiting for permission to connect to power lines” – equivalent to five times the total solar and wind installed last year. In the US, it can take more than five years to hook a new power plant up to the grid. One factor is residents refusing to allow new lines to be built in their neighbourhoods. Another is that utility companies are having to upgrade infrastructure in cities to handle the “influx of power demand” from electric vehicles. In the Netherlands, demand is so high that 3,000 neighbourhoods will have to wait until 2025 before they can install any more charging stations. If governments want to meet their ambitious renewable energy targets, they need to get on with clearing this “logjam”.”
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Sorry Mike,
Just found this languishing in spam, and set it free.
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Thanks Mark. Any idea what I can do to avoid this?
Reminded me of an awful joke….
This morning I received an email about learning to read maps backwards…..turns out it was spam!
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Mike, I wish I knew. Sorry.
The joke wasn’t so bad, though. 🙂
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“Ofgem approves SSEN Transmission strategy
Move necessary to connect several onshore wind farms in Scotland operator says”
https://renews.biz/88993/ofgem-approves-ssen-transmission-strategy/
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“Crickheath villagers on windfarm pylon route ‘don’t have voice'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-shropshire-67263301
This is a story that we can expect to be repeated in communities up and down our benighted land. Welcome to the world of net zero, where landscapes are ruined by industrialisation and the views of locals are pushed to one side “for the greater good”.
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“Bute Energy offers £6m annual pot to Powys communities”
https://www.countytimes.co.uk/news/23892591.bute-energy-offers-6m-annual-pot-powys-communities/
Translation: “We know our pylons are an abomination, and we know people don’t like them, so we’ll bribe them to look the other way. It doesn’t bother us. We’re still making money.”
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Y Bryn has been offered £8k/MW with no need for any new pylons
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“National Grid to spend up to £19bn to ‘rewire’ Britain for net zero
Networks of new cables needed to power shift to heat pumps and electric cars”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/11/09/national-grid-spend-up-19bn-rewire-britain-net-zero-era/
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If this is true, then we seem to have reached peak everything: peak stupidity; peak establishment arrogance; peak contempt for democracy.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67465841
“Households living close to new pylons and electricity substations could receive up to £1,000 a year off energy bills for a decade under new plans.
It is hoped the plan would convince people to support upgrades in their area, which are needed in part for new electric vehicle charging points.”
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Ah! So that’s how NZ is going to drive down the cost of energy bills for consumers – the government is going to bribe the victims of the necessary industrialisation of the British countryside with taxpayer funded handouts. Of course, bills will increase in real terms to pay for the massive expansion of unreliable and inefficient ‘renewable’ energy, but it won’t be as much of an increase as it would have been for those ‘lucky’ people living next to new pylons and substations. Whoopee.
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Hopefully folk living close to any proposed new bits of infrastructure will realise that these handouts are trivial compared to the loss of value of their properties.
While a substation may not be intrusive, a line of pylons certainly would be. I don’t know what proximity will qualify but my guess is that a line of pylons within 200m would easily knock 10% off a property’s value.
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The other problem is it’s touted as “up to” (weasel words) £1,000 p a. off bills, but for how long? Get the pylons and substations built (by defusing local opposition with bribes), then once in situ my money is on a “financial crisis” leading to the withdrawal of the bribes, which will become unaffordable.
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“Transmission Acceleration Action Plan
Government response to the Electricity Networks Commissioner’s report on accelerating electricity transmission network build”
Click to access transmission-acceleration-action-plan.pdf
The document runs to 87 pages. No need to read it all – the introduction by Claire Coutinho makes for sufficiently depressing reading. If anyone thought her appointment represented a change of direction towards common sense, then think again.
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“UK faces ‘difficult’ conversations with voters about green transition, energy chief Claire Coutinho says
The government faces tricky conversations with the public about hosting new substations, pylons and cables, Claire Coutinho said.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/difficult-conversations-grid-electricity-uk-energy-secretary-claire-coutinho/
She’s not stupid, so why does she (apparently) believe that these three mutually inconsistent objectives can be met? And why does she think it’s appropriate to make that statement, then follow it with this?
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“Labour vows to ‘rewire Britain’ as pylon plans spark row in Tory party
Opposition vows to tackle rural connection delays to the grid while Conservatives call for offshore network to preserve landscapes”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/30/labour-vows-to-rewire-britain-as-pylon-plans-spark-row-in-tory-party
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“Net Zero Requires New High-Voltage Power Lines to be Wrapped Around the Earth 2,000 Times Within 17 Years”
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/12/09/net-zero-requires-new-high-voltage-power-lines-to-be-wrapped-around-the-earth-2000-times-within-17-years/
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“UK minister for building pylons loses role after campaigning against them
Andrew Bowie wrote last year that concerns among his constituents about new pylons were ‘a priority’”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/07/uk-minister-for-building-pylons-loses-role-after-campaigning-against-them
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“The UK minister responsible for the building of new pylons has been quietly reshuffled after it emerged he had campaigned against the structures in his own constituency.”
A prime candidate for NIMBY of the Year!
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“quietly reshuffled” – wonder who the next Joker in the pack will put spades in the ground for this madness to continue?
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“Beauly pylons ‘will be a scar on Highlands'”
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/24108625.beauly-pylons-will-scar-highlands/
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Very misleading article, Beauly Denny was never predicted to cost £330m, that was the cost of construction of the 200km SSE section (20km of the 220km route was in Scottish Powers territory) of overhead line only. That was the initial estimate before the parliamentary planning review, after changes to the route, design and environmental factors etc as a result of the planning review it was nearer £420million
It did not include any of SSE’s costs, costs of any environmental mitigations (the project won several environmental awards), or any of the substation work, connections or dismantling of the 132kv routes etc
£330m was always only the contractors initial estimate for construction of the line, a fraction of the overall project cost, the billions figure quoted includes not only all of Beauly Denny but several other connecting projects that tie in to Beauly substation
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Beaulyestimator,
Thank you for your comment. I am always happy to be corrected if I have got something wrong, so I would welcome an expansion of your point, and clarification of your figures. Having looked at your profile, if I have identified you correctly, then I have good reason to believe that you know what you are talking about, as well as being an enthusiast for “the project.”
I confess I found the numbers hard to pin down when I carried out my research for the article. However, notwithstanding your suggested clarification of the precise costs of the works (ie which parts cost what), it nevertheless feels as though you are making my point for me – this stuff is not environmentally friendly (I would be interested in details of the “several environmental awards”), it is wrecking people’s lives, and it is costing billions (across the UK, tens of billions) to deliver unreliable, expensive and unpredictable energy.
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“Lincolnshire village consulted over pylon plan”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crg585l522xo
However, my money is on this being a box-ticking exercise, with the outcome being pre-determined, given what we are told in the next paragraph:
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“Revised substation plans spark scale concerns”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5131mzk87yo
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https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/24153383.rachel-reeves-backs-controversial-south-norfolk-pylons/
quoth Reeves:
A few paragraphs later:
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I despair. Goodness knows, I despise the Tories, but I dread the prospect of Labour being in charge. It will be like having the country run by earnest, but not very bright, lower sixth formers.
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Mark, isn’t it worse than that? You wrote that they (Labour) are not very bright school children. However, to me they seem more like arrogant and wilfully ignorant vandals given that they have only to peek briefly outside their bubble of destruction and they would find that the world is full (and has been for years!) of warnings about Net Zero/going green/pylon on the agony etc.
Equally bizarrely, Labour seem to care not one jot that their green dreams are going to hurt most the very people that Labour was set up in the 19th century to defend.
Once upon a time – not many decades ago – Labour was about “protect and defend” ordinary people; today it is, in my view, closer to “seek and destroy”. I suppose this is what happens when a political party of the Left is taken over by the graduate class (with their elite Luxury Beliefs) as has been well described by Matthew Goodwin in his recent book “Values, Voice and Virtue”.
Regards, John.
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John C,
I cannot disagree with a word of this:
My great disillusionment with Labour – a party I supported vigorously when I was younger – is with regard to its abandonment of its founding principles and of the people it was formed to serve. Unless and until it remembers what it exists to do, and who it exists to serve, I will never vote for the Labour Party again (goodness knows who I will vote for instead).
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GOODNESS KNOWS WHO I WILL VOTE FOR INSTEAD
Mark, you wrote the words quoted above in your last posting. This is surely one of the most difficult questions to answer for so many people both here in the UK and, indeed, throughout much of the Western world given that the elites have a predeliction for policies based on Luxury Beliefs, beliefs which align more closely with the policies of international organisations than with the wishes of their various domestic electorates …
Robin G picked up on this huge gap between establishment party policies and the electorate’s hopes/needs/fears in an adjacent thread (https://cliscep.com/2023/10/29/the-uks-net-zero-policy-an-update/#comment-150110) when he observed of George Galloway’s policies, “good traditional values: the main parties could – but probably won’t – learn a lot from him.”
I think the coupling of Robin’s comment with yours (aluded to above) neatly summarises the political quandary that so many Westerners find themselves in i.e. Hobson’s choice – an old saying for a very contemporary problem.
Regards, John.
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“Cottingham: Huge electricity substation planned to link wind farm”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-68476796
“An electricity substation the size of four football pitches is planned for East Yorkshire.
It would link part of the world’s largest offshore wind farm, which is being built more than 70 miles off the Yorkshire Coast, to the national grid.
The 400kV site would be on just over three hectares (7.4 acres) of land at Birkhill Wood north of Cottingham.
Due for completion in 2026, the Dogger Bank wind farm is expected to provide enough power for six million homes.”
The bit the article doesn’t mention is that six million homes won’t be able to rely on Dogger Bank wind farm for their energy, because if they do they regularly and unpredictably won’t have any.
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“LionLink: Proposed windfarm cabling sites in Suffolk are revealed”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-68485462
“National Grid has revealed where it wants to build energy infrastructure for cabling between the UK and the Netherlands.
The power line, called LionLink, would connect offshore wind farms in the North Sea.
The energy company wants the cables to reach land at either Walberswick or Southwold, both in Suffolk.
A converter station would be built on the outskirts of nearby Saxmundham and could cover a six-hectare area.
That would then connect to a substation being built at the village of Friston, also in Suffolk, as part of the offshore wind plans.
Suffolk County Council has called the plans “unacceptable and unfair”.
The council’s Conservative deputy leader Richard Rout, who is also the cabinet member for finance and environment, said: “The high handed and process driven approach by National Grid Ventures is totally unacceptable. They are showing a complete lack of respect to Suffolk and its coastal communities.”
Fiona Gilmore from campaign group Suffolk Energy Action Solutions said: “We know there are better solutions which minimise socio- economic impacts.
“Britain must use brownfield sites closer to London for LionLink, Nautilus, SeaLink and other projects not coastal tourism destinations which depend on their 60 million visitor days each year.”
National Grid said LionLink could power 2.5 million homes a year and would help “meet the government’s net-zero targets, and save consumers money”….”
I’d like to see the evidence for that last claim.
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“How new energy infrastructure could affect East of England”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-68545516
“New offshore wind, nuclear and solar power projects are all planned for the East of England, but how will that energy be transported elsewhere?
A network of pylons and underground and undersea cables have been proposed…
…The BBC looks at how these projects could affect the region.
Norwich to Tilbury pylons
National Grid wants to build a 112 mile-long (180km) power line from Norwich to Tilbury in Essex.
The plan has attracted opposition from campaigners, county and district councils and many of the region’s MPs.…
…LionLink…
…National Grid wants cables to reach land at either Walberswick or Southwold.
A converter station would be built on the outskirts of Saxmundham and could cover a six-hectare area.
That would then connect to a substation being built at the village of Friston.
Suffolk County Council has called the plans “unacceptable and unfair”.
Sea Link
Suffolk and Kent would be connected by Sea Link if the 90-mile (145km) electricity infrastructure project is given the go ahead.
National Grid says the project is needed to create “a more secure and resilient energy system”.
It would also include some onshore stations and connect to the Friston substation and Saxmundham converter station.
Some residents are worried about about the potential impact that could have.
Tarchon Energy interconnector
This would create an energy connection between Essex and Germany.
Tarchon Energy says it would allow surplus renewable energy to be exported in both directions.
A planning application is unlikely to be submitted until 2026.
Nautilus Interconnector
A similar idea, this time between Suffolk and Belgium.
It would feature an offshore converter station, along with infrastructure at either end.
National Grid says this project could be moved to Kent.
In March 2024, The Electricity System Operator (ESO) published a report into how best to upgrade the energy grid in East Anglia.
It warned that “critical trade-offs will need to be made” and no single option would provide value for money, be easy to deliver – or minimise the impact on communities.”
While the article is unusual inasmuch as it represents the BBC acknowledging that renewable energy developments have an adverse impact on countryside and communities, and is therefore welcome, the absence of any mention of cost is significant. It must be immense.
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“Walk out protest as SSEN and community at odds over size of planned substation
SSEN says the larger site – the size of more than 430 football pitches – will only be used during construction and the permanent substation is much smaller.”
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/highlands-islands/6401141/communities-walked-out-of-meeting-in-row-with-ssen/
“Community council members walked out of a meeting with power giants SSEN in a row over the size of a planned new electricity substation.
The representatives from Kilmorack, Strathglass, Kirkhill and Bunchrew, Kiltarlity and Beauly accused the company of breaking trust and undermining a consultation.
The meeting of the Beauly Community Liaison Group (CLG) was discussing a proposed 400kV overhead line between Spittal in Caithness and Beauly.
As part of the plans a new substation would be built at Fanellan to supplement the existing one at Balblair near Beauly.
WHY IS THE SSEN SUBSTATION AN ISSUE?
SSEN announced in October the Fanellan substation would cover an area of 55 acres.
But local campaigners say this was extended last month to 868 acres – a near 16-fold increase – without prior notice to community councils or the CLG.
This would be the equivalent of more than 430 football pitches.
Community representatives have now threatened to withdraw from the group altogether.
A CLG spokesman said: “By choosing to announce a major project change without using the recognised consultation framework, SSEN has compromised the trust that should exist between local communities and national infrastructure providers.
“Moreover, by acting as it has, SSEN has brought the integrity of its consultation process into question.
“Given the sensitivities involved, (it) is a matter of significant concern for the affected communities.”
The groups says the Fanellan announcement is “yet another of many instances of lack of transparency on SSEN’s part”.
“It follows protracted attempts by CLG attendees to elicit meaningful engagement with SSEN on this national infrastructure project, on its impact on the communities surrounding Beauly, on areas of outstanding beauty, and ultimately on the wider Highland region.
“Unless and until SSEN is prepared to offer – and can guarantee – such meaningful engagement, community attendees see little point in continuing to be party to the current CLG process.”
COMMUNITIES PRAISED FOR ‘BRAVE STAND’
The group says community councils will continue to represent local views during the consultation process, and urge those affected to make their views known.
Campaigner Lyndsey Ward, who set up the group Communities B4 Power Companies, said: “The five community councils are to be commended for making such a brave stand against SSEN….”…”
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The BBC this morning:
UK energy grid needs £60bn upgrade to hit green target, plan says
** The National Grid’s Electricity Systems Operator
Hmm … knowing how good we are at major infrastructure projects that all sounds simple enough.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68601354
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It’s described as an “investment”, of course, not as a cost.
My maths might be wrong, but I make that a cost of over £4,000 per household over ten years. I would love an explanation as to how that will add just £20 to £30 a year to household bills, as per the BBC article.
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And in any case Mark, it’s certain to cost far more than that estimate. And it won’t be completed until well after 2035 – itself 5 years later than Labour’s plan.
Like anything associated with Net Zero, it’s quite mad.
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Paul Homewood has a useful comment on the above story: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2024/03/19/60-billion-more-for-grid-upgrades/#more-72410
He makes the same points as Mark and myself and adds some useful additional observations. Two examples:
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“Electricity pylon network risks harming rural Kent”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c164k8lpkdko
“A new line of towering electricity pylons cutting through rural Kent has been outlined by National Grid.
But campaigners have warned the series of pylons to connect Kent to offshore wind farms would “trash” an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The pylons, which would be at least 36m (118 ft) tall, would be erected between Richborough and Sellindge.
The Campaign to Protect Rural England said the proposals are “unacceptable” and would harm the Kent Downs National Landscape.
National Grid’s Electricity System operator (ESO) has published a report called “Beyond 2030”, which proposes a £58 billion investment in the electricity grid to meet the growing and decarbonising demand for electricity in Great Britain by 2035.
The report recommends new offshore infrastructure to link Kent to offshore wind farms in Scotland and Suffolk.
ESO said pylon towers are “cheaper, more flexible and vital” to transport power from where it is generated.
Development consent is required for most overhead lines in England and planning authorities have the right to object to an application.
The CRPE said it understands “the importance of decarbonising our energy supply”, but there “has to be limits”…”
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If only all these people and groups opposing one facet of Net Zero would unite and oppose the whole, this thing would be “over by Christmas.”
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Jit, I’m sure you’re absolutely correct. I would say that net zero’s day will be over when organisations like the CPRE openly oppose net zero, rather than still genuflecting thus: “The CRPE said it understands “the importance of decarbonising our energy supply, but….”. When the “but” becomes the need, and ceases to be a mere qualification to the need for, or importance of, net zero/decarbonisation, then we will be winning.
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“More large cables planned – National Grid”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9ez1dgkr01o
“Plans have been announced for more large electricity cables to be installed across Lincolnshire.
National Grid has unveiled a proposal for two cables to travel 400 miles on the floor of the North Sea from Scotland to England, coming ashore on the Lincolnshire coast.…
...The project forms part of what National Grid calls The Great Grid Upgrade.
The company said the cables were needed because the existing system did not have the capacity to transport the amount of electricity being produced by windfarms in Scotland...
…The proposal is in addition to, but separate from, a plan to send power, via pylons, across the Lincolnshire Wolds – a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty – which Lincolnshire County Council has already strongly objected to.…”
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“Electricity stations plan ‘too big for the area'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c14k8rjzkkzo
Three large new electricity substations could be built on over 30 acres of farmland in west Wales.
National Grid Electricity Transmission have drawn up initial plans for a 400kV station and two 132kV stations for National Grid customers at the same site, occupying 12 fields.
But one local councillor has claimed that the development near the village of Llandyfaelog in Carmarthenshire is “too big for the area”.
National Grid said its new substation is needed to “strengthen the network and connect clean energy in the area”.
And:
“More electricity cables proposed for Lincolnshire”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjjep1ggx4lo
Proposals have been unveiled for another set of electricity cables to come ashore on the Lincolnshire coast.
The project would bring power 400km (250 miles) from a Scottish windfarm along a cable laid on the sea bed which would then be routed underground when it reached land.
The cable would terminate at two grid connection points in central and southern Lincolnshire.The BBC has approached the developers, Ossian Array, for a comment.
The cable would be laid from the proposed Ossian Array floating windfarm, which is 84km (52 miles) off the east coast of Scotland.
The BBC understands the latest cable plans will be discussed at Lincolnshire County Council’s (LCC) executive committee meeting on Wednesday.
Prior to this latest proposal, National Grid announced plans for three electricity cable schemes as part of what it calls The Great Grid Upgrade.
They include an overland pylon route from Grimsby to Walpole, two underground cable routes running 100km (62 miles) across Lincolnshire and five large electricity substations.
LCC has made a formal objection to the pylon scheme.
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“Pylons plan has ‘stolen my happiness'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0jkjnv8k90o
Plans to build a row of pylons near a woman’s home have “stolen” her happiness, she said.
National Grid wants to put up a 114 mile-long (184km) power line from Tilbury in Essex to Norwich, to carry electricity from offshore wind farms.
Gillian Palmer, who said the pylons would be built 200m (656ft) from her house near Bunwell, south Norfolk, said the proposal had already affected her daily life....
...The Norwich to Tilbury project, external would run between the existing substations at Norwich, Bramford in Suffolk and Tilbury, as well as connecting to new offshore wind farms.
The pylons would be 50m-high (164ft).
Mrs Palmer said: “I think this development, even the prospect of it, has stolen a lot of my happiness.
“I think of it every day. It’s impossible for me to exist in the countryside I love without imagining these horrible, huge pylons dominating everything and spoiling what we hold dear.”…
…Duncan Forrest also lives in Low Common and said the proposed pylon route would cut across a field at the back of his garden.
“It’s devastating,” he said. “This is affecting people’s mental health.
“Our property price will be devalued enormously, perhaps 30% or 50% or even be unsaleable.
“It’s going to change everything irrevocably for generations.”…
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Pylons of course, plus other industrial development of the beautiful British countryside, has been blighting lives and wrecking natural landscapes for many decades. The difference is, such development was in the past largely necessary in the name of ‘progress’ and a growing population requiring access to electricity and other services. No doubt there are many instances where cost cutting resulted in avoidable greater harm to the environment and the lives of residents. What we have now though is a wholesale destructive policy of huge infrastructure build which is blatantly unnecessary, anti-progress, anti-human, anti-environment and quite frankly insanely ideological, which is also being driven by vast (taxpayer subsidised) profits on offer to ‘Green’ companies vested in the ideological quest to ‘save the planet’. What we have now is a crime against humanity and the environment being perpetuated in plain sight, which is largely unchallengeable because the ‘necessity’ argument is couched in terms of the unavoidable need to prevent ‘climate breakdown’ which is deemed to be a certainty because The Science and ‘simple physics’. I really feel for each and every person whose lives and health are being blighted by this madness.
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“Public get say on wind farm beach cable plans”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4nn50p4g3yo
The public may get their say, but will anybody listen?
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An excellent piece by one of the few Guardian journalists who still have my respect (Simon Jenkins):
“Come 5 July, an almighty fight looms. Keir Starmer, take on the countryside at your peril”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/20/countryside-protection-keir-starmer-britain
…An almighty clash is looming between the lucrative renewables industry and defenders of the rural landscape. Labour and the Tories are both eager to weaken local planning. Keir Starmer wants to curb the rights of citizens to object to new development in the countryside. The Tories recently announced a return to onshore wind, hence the proposal for a turbine cluster on the Yorkshire Moors above Charlotte Brontë’s Calderdale. Sixty-five turbines funded by the Saudis are to rise a staggering 200m each, higher than Blackpool Tower. It is hard to believe such an outrage is to be allowed for so trivial a contribution to the climate.
This is nothing on the National Grid’s extraordinary plan for a massive, £31bn expansion of Britain’s onshore pylon network. This will include a chain of structures 50m high, three to every kilometre, running north to south across the Lincolnshire Wolds into East Anglia and on to Tilbury in Essex. It will urbanise some of the most beautiful landscape in eastern England and will have a fight every inch of the way. Another branch of the network will run down Wales from Bangor in the north to Swansea in the south, intruding on the great landscapes of Snowdonia and the Cambrian mountains. It will be like a noose round Wales’s neck.…
…The grid project is being carried out by a private company that will reward itself with bonuses and dividends. As with Britain’s water companies, it is a private monopoly whose chief concern – we might say its capitalist duty – lies in maximising profit, not in advancing the public interest. That interest should be decided by the government, not fought out between a bunch of feuding lobbyists.
The various costs of lowering carbon emissions are high and some are hard to assess, in particular those that will be hard to reverse in the future. One such cost would be a countryside wrecked by fields of solar panels, wind turbines, electricity pylons and substations. This would be tragic if some day we find methods of taming and storing carbon that contrive eventually to control the climate. As long as no such sacrifices are required of China, India or the US, these decisions by Britain are mere virtue gestures.…
…Why should that profit be left to run riot over the rural landscape? Outside the national parks building pressure has brought near anarchy. Residents fight builders over every inch of soil. Case after case ends up in some court or other. This will worsen if Starmer means what he said at his party conference, that he would “fight the blockers” and overrule “nimbys”.
The time has come to treat the countryside as we do towns. It should be valued for what it is: a much-loved resource of nature, beauty and peace. That resource is finite, with more disappearing every year, and is the more precious because of it. At present its sole defenders are local people who are snubbed as nimbys and told – often by stern defenders of urban neighbourhoods – that they have no right to a say over another turbine cluster or executive estate.…
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“Take an area of outstanding beauty in Britain, cover it in concrete and steel: how can we allow that?
National Grid’s plan for the Suffolk coast is mirrored across the UK. We need an energy policy that protects our heritage”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/23/outstanding-beauty-concrete-national-grid-suffolk-britain-energy-policy
Energy, and its future costs and security, is one of the main issues facing this country, yet it has drawn little attention or interrogation in the general election debate
Our local community faces devastation on a criminal scale, and that is sadly representative of similar cases across the UK. National Grid wishes to build across a vast area of peaceful countryside less than three miles from coastal Aldeburgh and Thorpeness, a thriving tourism destination for ramblers, ornithologists and nature lovers – and to make this a “concrete coast”.…
…”We believe all parties should halt the current ill-conceived proposals until there is a neutral advisory team established to carry out these comparative evaluation studies. We say that National Grid’s East Anglia study underpinning its proposal is flawed from the outset, with too many subjective conclusions that do not stand up to proper scrutiny. The same will be true across the country, where large tracts of land are destined for cables, pylons and blight.”…
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Mark, last week I was planning to visit one of National Grid’s public information events in regard to their proposed Chesterfield to Willington up-grade. However, when I arrived at the publicised community centre, I found it closed. I subsequently ‘phoned up NG to complain. The chap at the other end was very apologetic and said that all such meetings had been cancelled due to the imminent General Election. No further explanation was forthcoming. Regards, John C.
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Mark thanks for that article from (of all papers!) the Guardian.
To repeat its opening paragraph:
Extraordinary but true. And probably too late now. Farage may have tried to raise it in his manifesto, but that was dismissed for example by the Independent as ‘as fantastical as it is poisonous‘. Two examples being a proposed public inquiry into “vaccine harms” (‘an idea that panders to conspiracy theorists‘) and a plan ‘to halt action to combat climate change‘.
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John C, interesting , but it sounds like a pretty lame excuse, IMO.
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Robin,
It does seem extraordinary that the Guardian/Observer allowed those opinions to be expressed. No doubt they were permitted only by virtue of the person expressing those opinions also carrying out the obligatory genuflection:
…We don’t disagree with the overall goals for renewable energy…
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“Pylon campaigners issue plea to the next government”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cekkkpmmzvko
Campaigners trying to stop a proposed electricity pylon network in Lincolnshire are asking the next government to put the project on hold.
No Pylons Lincolnshire has been set up to oppose an 87-mile electricity cable that is planned for the county. The route from Grimsby to Walpole, just over the border in Norfolk, will require 50m-high pylons every 300m.
National Grid says the facility is essential for bringing more electricity on shore from wind turbines out at sea.
But concerns are being raised about the visual impact of the scheme on a landscape of farms and tourism businesses….
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I know that entire route so well. Spent many years wandering the countryside round there. In particular, there is already a high density of pylons around the Lincolnshire Wash area. More will just further industrialise the landscape and for what? So Labour politicians can virtue signal that they are ‘saving the planet’ from an imaginary ‘climate crisis’. Thousands of homes and lives will be blighted and glorious coastal landscapes will be too.
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“Green MP Opposes 100-Mile Corridor of Wind Farm Pylons in His Suffolk Constituency”
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/07/07/green-mp-opposes-100-mile-corridor-of-wind-farm-pylons-in-his-suffolk-constituency/
If you can access the Telegraph, the full story is here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/06/net-zero-green-mp-adrian-ramsay-opposing-government-plans/
You can see enough at the Daily Sceptic to be amused by it, however:
…Adrian Ramsay, one of the party’s four newly elected MPs, has said that he will seek a pause to the plans to build a 100-mile corridor of pylons stretching through his constituency of Waveney Valley…
…Speaking after his win in Waveney Valley, Mr. Ramsay said he would “stand up for the issues that really matter to people here”.
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“Labour energy plan needs pylons – but is public ready to get on board?”
https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/24441477.labour-energy-plan-needs-pylons—public-ready-get-board/
…Many questions come attached to Labour’s green energy plan – but a key one is grid. Will the connection be there if and when this government’s planned quadrupling of offshore wind by 2030 is ready to hook up? And is the public on board for that transition? Will there, by then, have been an embracing of the pylon?…
…Pylons, of course, are a hot net zero backlash topic, like low traffic neighbourhoods and heat pumps. It can be tempting to caricature these tensions as culture war, or echoes of past conflicts over the development of the super grid in the 1950s, but clearly there are reasons why people get upset when a big piece of electricity infrastructure pitches up in what they otherwise regarded as an unspoiled landscape – and these should not be dismissed.
There was no doubting the depth of feeling that was present when, in May, campaigners descended on Holyrood to make their views known over plans to run new powerlines from Angus to Spittal in Caithness. It is there in Beauly, where locals are fighting plans for a giant new electricity substation.
What’s clear is that people are asking to be listened to. It’s their landscape that is being altered in order to deliver energy south. But also listening is not enough – they also want to see changes in plans.
Some want to be part of a net zero dialogue, at the table with stakeholders. Others would just like to see the whole net zero project dropped. And this is part of the problem – there are so many issues entangled in the anti-powerline movement, from outright denial of human climate impact to concern over biodiversity impacts of new powerlines or loss of tourism and jobs, and anger over who owns the power infrastructure.
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It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious – yet more net zero supporters saying yes, but not her:
“Overhead pylons plan shocks city council”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0vepdyg5y0o
There was not enough evidence to suggest power lines proposed near a city that would carry energy from offshore wind farms would be required by 2030, a council said.
Chelmsford City Council raised concerns over National Grid’s plan to build a 114-mile long (184km) power line from Tilbury in Essex, through Suffolk and on to Norwich. The previous government set a target of doing this by 2030.
Liberal Democrat councillor Rose Moore said the Lib-Dem controlled council understood the need for clean energy, but thought plans could impact the landscape.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero previously said: “Securing Britain’s clean energy future requires improving outdated infrastructure.”…
…Ms Moore, cabinet member for Greener and Safer Chelmsford, said: “Please be assured that while the need for this clean energy transition is fully understood, it’s proposed that the city council maintain our objection in principle to the use of onshore pylons and power lines….”
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The Speccie has an item today confirming (as Mark has already indicated) that the Green leader opposes green pylon plan:
His co-leader Carla Denya says:
What fun.
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“The great pylon pile-on: can councils’ opposition scupper Labour’s ‘clean power’ revolution?”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/20/pylon-english-councils-fight-ed-miliband-clean-power-revolution-rural-areas
The energy secretary’s plans to install thousands of pylons in unspoiled rural areas is facing a huge backlash
The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, has been warned he faces battlegrounds across the country over plans to install thousands of pylons in unspoilt rural areas to deliver a “clean power” revolution.
Council leaders and communities oppose proposals for a vast new network of pylons across large parts of several counties, including Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
There are calls for community compensation of “hundreds of millions of pounds” if the schemes are pushed through.
The proposals are part of a £30bn National Grid overhaul – including the “great grid upgrade” plan announced last year – with connections to proposed vast new solar farms, battery storage facilities and offshore windfarms. A new generation of gas power stations may also be built and plugged into the upgraded grid to back up renewable energy and prevent the risk of blackouts.
“These pylons will desecrate the landscape, blot the views and wreck tourism,” said Colin Davie, executive councillor for economy and place at Lincolnshire county council.
These are horrible monoliths that belong to a past industrial age. We are not going to accept this. There will be a fight over it, without any a doubt.”...
…Jenny Pennington and husband, Ian, who own a 57-hectare (140-acre) farm near Spalding, are in the “swathe” where the pylons may be built, with the exact route still to be determined. Two new substations are proposed near their farm – one for the pylon scheme and another to connect an offshore wind project. Jenny Pennington said: “We can already see 25 pylons out of our bedroom window. Everything is now hitting us at once. The government has got to listen to our comments. We’ve the right to a say.”
Ian Pennington said the construction work and installation of a new network of pylons and substations, along with new solar energy farms, would cause huge disruption to farms and the loss of agricultural land. “Our family has been farming this land for generations,” he said. “Once it goes out of production, it will be gone.”…
...Barry Lewis, leader of Derbyshire county council, said the pylon scheme in his county was proposed to run through Amber Valley, which he considered should be designated an area of outstanding natural beauty. He said: “This would have a huge visual impact on our local landscape, much of which is rural in nature, and the reason why millions of tourists flock to Derbyshire every year.”
Lincolnshire councillor Davie said his county would expect compensation of several hundreds of millions of pounds if the scheme is pushed through.
Norfolk county council is opposing the proposals for pylons in the region but is also calling for funds and “deliverable benefits” if the project is approved….
Unless it rapidly mends its ways, I think the new Labour government, within two or three years, will be at least as unpopular as the Tory government it has just replaced.
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“‘Pylons plan a disaster for the countryside'”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyx024ggqpxo
A controversial pylons project will unleash “unnecessary destruction” across East Anglia, according to residents, as the consultation period into the plans comes to a close.
National Grid wants to install 114 miles (180km) of pylons between Norwich and TIlbury, Essex, which will carry electricity produced by offshore windfarms....
…Residents have raised concerns about the impact of the line of pylons ahead of the closure of the public consultation on Friday.
Bill Doran, 72, purchased his home between Roxwell and Writtle 27 years ago after falling for its “beautiful and totally unspoilt” views of the Essex countryside.
But he says the landscape behind his garden could soon be blighted by a 55m-high pylon just 100m away, which could see his property’s value drop by £230,000.
“Why should we be blighted?” he said.
“It is grossly, grossly, unfair but National Grid appears to be a bulldozer which is just ploughing this through.
“Pylons are ugly and this is an absolute disaster for the British countryside. They’re playing Russian roulette with our lives and destroying our homes.
“The people of this country are being thrown under the bus. It’s a total nonsense.”...
The idea that renewable energy and net zero are popular is a myth that has long been pushed by those who want to believe it. The reality is that while Scotland has been under the cosh of this environmental onslaught for far too long and the north of England has suffered it too (albeit to a lesser extent), the reality is now coming home to the south of England at last, where much of the UK’s population lives. Miliband et al may be about to face reality, and there may well be a massive backlash. Here’s hoping.
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“Ed Miliband: people must be persuaded of need for pylons near homes”
Communities affected by construction of renewable energy infrastructure ‘have the right to see the benefits’”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/26/ed-miliband-people-persuaded-new-pylons-homes
Labour will seek to persuade people living near proposed pylon routes and other renewable energy infrastructure that the developments are critical to bring down bills and tackle carbon emissions, the energy secretary said.
Ed Miliband promised to consider new benefits for communities affected by the construction of renewable energy infrastructure, and community ownership of the assets, which could include onshore windfarms and solar farms....
…“I’m in the persuasion business, not the telling business,” he told a conference on Friday morning of the Labour Climate and Environment Forum, a group for Labour MPs with green leanings that intends to push the government towards more environmental policies. “Persuasion is very important.”…
Unfortunately it doesn’t sound as though he means that – failure to persuade isn’t likely to stop him:
…But he was uncompromising on the need for such new development. “If we do not have this infrastructure, we will have to carry on with fossil fuels, which is bad for nature and the climate crisis,” he said. “That is fundamentally the choice.”
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So much for persuasaion:
“Starmer to take on Labour councils that block pylons delivering clean energy
At formal launch of state-run GB Energy, PM sets out plan to build enough offshore wind facilities to power 20m homes”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/25/starmer-will-take-on-labour-councils-that-block-pylons-delivering-clean-electricity
Keir Starmer has pledged to take on Labour MPs and councils that try to block pylon networks delivering a planned new generation of clean electricity, as he promised the government’s plans would lower people’s bills in this parliament.
Formally launching GB Energy, the state-run green energy generation company, one of his flagship policies, the prime minister said there was a need to move rapidly on new onshore and offshore wind because of what he called the last government’s inaction and short-termism.
Speaking at a wind turbine factory on the edge of Widnes, Cheshire, Starmer set out the plan to build enough offshore wind turbines over the next five years to power 20m homes, part of a tie-up with the crown estate.
Answering media questions after his speech, watched by Juergen Maier, the former Siemens UK boss who has been announced as the chair of GB Energy, Starmer was asked if he could guarantee ministers would push for power to be distributed using overground lines, rather than underground or undersea cables, which are much more expensive and take considerably longer to build.
There are already planning battles against overground lines in places including East Anglia and Lincolnshire, with some Labour candidates at the general election saying they opposed pylon schemes.
“We will take the tough decisions to make this work,” Starmer replied. “Because it’s the failure to take the tough decisions, the running away from tough decisions, that has caused over a decade of lost opportunity.
“That will include decisions on planning, where we intend to make the necessary changes. And that will apply everywhere, whatever the rosette on the constituency, because we have to move this forward.”
Without radical action, Starmer said, planning delays for both wind farms and electricity networks would mean it “takes 30 years before we get the power”. He added: “We’re not going to go on like that.”…
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“‘There’ll be no countryside left’: Opposition to pylons puts UK carbon targets at risk
Infrastructure essential to decarbonise electricity generation by 2030 met with resistance by those affected”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/03/therell-be-no-countryside-left-opposition-to-pylons-puts-uk-carbon-targets-at-risk
I would put the headline the other way around – UK carbon targets put the UK countryside at risk.
Tucked away beyond the industrial landscapes of north-east Derbyshire and the M1 corridor, the Amber Valley is an oasis of greenery: ancient trees, listed buildings and public footpaths that are increasingly popular with tourists.
But Katie Hirst, a local resident, fears that appreciative visitors will vanish along with the unspoilt landscape if a route of 50-metre-high pylons is brought down the valley as National Grid intends.
“People come here for wonderful walks and the unspoilt landscape, and that would be gone, and the economy would really suffer,” said Hirst, a co-founder of Save Amber Valley Environment (Save), one of a growing number of grassroots groups opposed to pylon schemes across the country.
According to Hirst, farmers in the Amber Valley have diversified into tourism and visitors to these Peak District fringes increasingly support local jobs for young people.
“It’s terrifying, to be honest,” she said. “It feels like the government has got this 2030 deadline and that’s all that matters.
“Covid taught everybody how much these open green spaces are needed. If this carries on, there’ll be no countryside left. Where will people come and allow their mental health to recover?”
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This is a test after Woodpress ate my comment on the Amber Valley article. John C.
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I’ll try again:-
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Thanks John C – and apologies for the vagaries of WordPress.
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The sheer scale and cost of the works necessary to “decarbonise” the grid is breathtaking and also unnecessary, given that we already had a very efficient system in place before the net zero zealots took over the asylum. Bear in mind that this article is talking about just northern Scotland, not the UK as a whole:
“Early contractor involvement benefits SSEN Transmission’s overhaul of north Scotland energy infrastructure”
[“Benefits” rather then “challenges”, of course]
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/in-depth/early-contractor-involvement-benefits-ssen-transmissions-overhaul-of-north-scotland-energy-infrastructure-30-07-2024/
North Scotland’s energy network was not designed to meet 21st century generation requirements. But it is now down to SSEN Transmission and its contractors to upgrade it by the end of 2030.
Like the rest of the UK and many other countries, Scotland is racing to upgrade its electricity transmission network so that it can meet targets for decarbonisation.
It has an ambition to connect 11GW of offshore wind power capacity by 2030. This requires significant investment and workforce expansion, as well as collaboration and planning.
While National Grid is delivering its Great Grid Upgrade and Scottish Power is working on its Action 2030 plan, SSEN Transmission has responsibility for upgrading the network in northern Scotland.
It is doing this under its Pathway to 2030 programme. This features four subsea high voltage direct current links, 550km of new 400kV overhead line, hundreds of kilometres more of refurbished overhead line, eight new substations and four new converter stations.
“The network in the north of Scotland was never designed for this level of generation,” says SSEN Transmission lead engineering manager Scott Gardiner.
“It was always to export electricity to rural communities, but now we want to take huge capacity from the rural communities and bring it back to the network, which is why, especially in the north of Scotland, we’re seeing such a massive reinforcement in the network needed.”…
...SSEN has said that the total cost of its projects for Pathway to 2030 will be £20bn, which is a figure that Stewart believes is robust thanks to input from contractors across the projects, who have been involved from an early stage.
However, there are always possible changes in the market that could affect the procurement or construction cost.
“It’s pretty competitive out there, so any major changes in the next six months could have an impact on us,” says Stewart....
…With around 1,500 steel towers to build, 9,000km of conductor to be installed and 12 major new substations and converter stations bigger than any SSEN has built before, it has had to establish its supply chain early....
...Central to the upgrade of the network for Pathway to 2030 are stronger towers. Its current strongest overhead infrastructure on the network is the Beauly-Denny overhead line.
“That carries two conductors, but to get maximum capacity out of the new overhead lines that will now be three conductors,” says Gardiner. “So the load from the conductors alone has increased by 50%.”
Climate and location also require stronger towers. “In the north of Scotland, the wind and ice loading is higher, the altitude we’re putting them is higher than we have at the Beauly-Denny line,” says Gardiner.
Balfour Beatty has designed the new towers, which will become standardised for the whole project. They are taller than existing 49m tall lattice towers, standing at an average of 57m, but height is dependent on topography.
They also feature bigger steel sections and larger bracings compared to traditional lattice steel towers so they can achieve the required strength. The contractor is now manufacturing test towers….
…“They’re great if it’s on long flat ground and you can drive up to it to get access, but the majority of our network is going to be in the Highlands of Scotland, which is not easy to get to,” he adds. “Plus the capacity we need is higher than the T-Pylons can get.”...
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John C: re your post above, I’ve been looking for an authoritative link re renewables’ need for space for my ‘The Case against Net Zero‘ essay. Do you recommend Andrews & Jelley, “Energy Science”? And is the 3rd edition the latest?
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Robin, I lack access to an academic library and so every year or two my wife and I do a raid on Blackwell’s in Oxford where I spend all day in the Norrington room, coming up for air only for lunch and coffee(s). Hence my knowledge is not necessarily as up-to-date as you might hope i.e. my 3rd edition of Andrews & Jelley has a purchase date of January 2018, whereas their website today shows that a 4th edition is available: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Energy-Science-by-John-Andrews-N-A-Jelley/9780198854401
My plus point for Andrews & Jelley is that it was clearly the best book I could find on the day back in 2018 – which is why I bought it. My criticism of it is that, on the economics, the 3rd edition dealt with only levelized cost rather than the many large exogenous costs that renewables supporters tend to ignore and which make current renewables such a bad buy/investment.
However, your interest is in “energy density per unit land or sea area”. The data in the 3rd edition (page 16) covers coal, gas (CCGT), nuclear, solar PV, and onshore wind for which the figures given in megawatts of electrical power per square kilometre (MWe/km^2) are about 1000 for coal and gas and nuclear, 5 to 10 for solar PV, and just 2 for on-shore wind. Hence on-shore wind is about 500 times worse than nuclear.
On page 264 there is a worked example on ‘Estimate the area of land required by wind farms to provide 30% of the UK’s electricity demand’ – answer = about 2.4% of UK land area.
On page 276 of 3rd edition there is some data on four off-shore wind farms; Horns 1 is the one with the highest “power per unit area” having 3.2 MW/km^2.
In order to check the data in Andrews & Jelley I made comparisons with the late prof. David JC MacKay’s wonderful book, “Sustainable Energy – without the hot air” which is available in hardcopy or for free download from the following site: https://www.withouthotair.com/
MacKay deals with land use area when he discusses (pages 166-167 of hard copy) nuclear power. MacKay writes, “Wind farms delivering the same average power would require 500 times as much [on-shore] land …” Hence MacKay’s figure agrees with that from Andrews & Jelley; on-shore wind is 500 times more voracious of land area.
Based on Andrews & Jelley’s data, off-shore wind is only some 300 times more voracious of surface area than coal, gas, and nuclear.
Hope this helps somewhat. Regards, John C.
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John C: thanks I’ve used it (3rd edition) as a reference. I downloaded MacKay’s – as you say wonderful – book some years ago and had forgotten I’d got it. Thanks again – R
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John, is the data on power there nominal or de-rated to the expected output?
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Hello Jit (although Robin too will be interested), I am preparing a relatively detailed reply and hope to post within the next 24hrs. However, the short answer is that the power density [MWe/km^2] data in Andrews & Jelley (page 16, 3rd ed.) is already de-rated to the expected output of the wind farm. Regards, John C.
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Wind Farm Power Density [MWe/km^2] in Andrews & Jelley (3rd ed.)
Regarding the wind farm power density [MWe/km^2] data in Andrews & Jelley, “Energy Science” (Oxford, 3rd ed., 2017), hereafter denoted AJ3, it is not stated at page 16 what assumptions have been made in producing the figures on that page (which have been sourced from OpenEI, Lazard). However, it is clear from other sections of AJ3 (discussed below) that the figures on page 16 are consistent with long-term average figures for the wind farm (i.e. they are not ‘peak’ nor ‘rated’ nor ‘nameplate’ figures). The averages therefore reflect the varied power coefficient of the turbines achieved over a full range of wind conditions. In the averages, allowance has also been made for the reduction in power due to the turbines being collected into an array or farm (i.e. the wake of one wind turbine reduces the output of the next turbine downwind). It is further assumed that all the land or sea area within the wind farm boundary cannot be used for any other purpose than wind farming and thus that whole enclosed area is used to evaluate the power density – see below for further comments.
Chapter 7 (which covers pages 237 to 278) of AJ3 is entitled ‘Wind power’, while the sections most relevant to the current discussion are section 7.11 ‘Power output of a wind turbine’ and section 7.12 ‘Wind farms’.
At page 259 we read, “… so the power density, which is the average output power per unit land or sea area Parea of a wind farm, is Parea ≈ 3.75 x 10-3<u>3 MW km-2 ” where <u> is the mean wind speed in m/s at the height of the turbine hub. The text continues, “Typical power densities are ̴ 2 MW km-2 for wind farms on land and are ̴ 3 MW km-2 for farms offshore. The installed capacity (or rated power) is about 8 MW km-2 onshore or offshore.”
These power density figures are backed up with empirical data from the Horns Rev 2 offshore wind farm. At page 262 we are told that in 2010 the farm achieved 2.96 MW km-2 and at page 263 two mathematical models of the farm gave figures straddling this empirical value, namely 2.93 MW km-2 and (from the Parea formula above) 3.42 MW km-2.
In section 7.13 ‘Environmental impact and public acceptance’ of AJ3 we read at page 264, “The space that wind farms occupy has also been raised as an issue, but it should be noted that the land between turbines can be used for grazing or for growing crops. If we take the area occupied by a turbine, or impacted area, as only D2, where D is the rotor diameter, then the power density of a wind farm increases from ̴ 2.5 MW km-2 to ̴ 100 MW km-2.”
My personal comment is that the visual and acoustic intrusion of wind turbines often makes them very unwelcome neighbours near human habitation. This is an issue taken up by prof. David MacKay in his book, referenced in an earlier comment, “Sustainable energy – without the hot air”. At page 110 of the hard copy edition MacKay includes a map in black of the UK; MacKay comments, “Where the wild things are. One of the grounds for objecting to wind farms is the noise they produce. I’ve chopped out of this map of the British mainland a 2-km-radius exclusion zone surrounding every hamlet, village, and town. These white areas would presumably be excluded from wind farm development. The remaining black areas would perhaps also be largely excluded because of the need to protect tranquil places from industrialisation.” In short, on-shore wind farm development is (or should) be difficult in a densely populated country such as exists in much of the UK.
It is also pertinent to deplore the depredation that wind turbines inflict on flying creatures such as insects, bats and birds. This has been very well expressed by Cliscep blogger Jit from whose essay (on the RSPB’s betrayal of its members) I quote (not for the first time):-
“It’s very simple for the RSPB, or it should be. If the question is “Wind farm?” the answer is “No. Nowhere, never, not while we still draw breath, not while we live to prevent harm to the beautiful and amazing feathered animals we share this planet with.” The RSPB should hate wind farms like Ahab hated the white whale. They should fight them on sea and land, everywhere. There are no excuses, no exceptions and no grey areas. There are no right places to site wind farms. The wrong place is the sky. No amount of carbon dioxide “savings” from wind power can outweigh the direct losses from the birds it kills.” https://cliscep.com/2023/02/18/the-rspb-is-betraying-its-members/
I conclude that wind farms, as currently designed, are totally unsuitable for land and sea deployment irrespective of any doubtful “green” or economic benefits that may be claimed for them by their apologists. Their low power densities just add to their unsuitability. Regards, John C.
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Thank you for this John. A bit technical for a mere lawyer but you (and Jit) make your points well. The whole thing is horribly depressing.
PS: how might wind ‘farms’ (in my view a hopelessly inappropriate term) be designed to avoid all these problems?
R
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Wow! Robin, you ask how ALL these problems can be avoided. A good question but, I suspect, very difficult to answer completely. I will deal with just some of issues that I as an electrical engineer can understand:-
The difficulty of 1b above is that the generated voltage falls (and thus the power falls too) in direct proportion to the rotational speed of the generator rotor e.g. halve the speed and thereby halve the voltage and halve the power (assuming output current is unchanged). This voltage reduction can be compensated for by either (a) placing a speed step-up gearbox between the turbine and the generator’s rotor so that the unchanged generator sees the same speed as previously, or (b) by building a larger generator (since generator power scales as its rotor’s speed and as the square of its rotor’s diameter). Clearly both (a) and (b) have consequences for increased overall system weight and cost, not to mention consequences for turbine blade design at lower rotational speed.
However, we should remember that EROEI arguments show that current wind turbine designs should not be built for base load generation in electricity grids – ‘black start’ and isolated loads are different matters. And it is not clear to me that the remedies I have suggested above will change the situation for the better in EROEI terms.
Regards, John C.
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Hmm … it seems to me John that you’re saying that there’s really no way to redesign wind turbines so as to overcome more than a few – if any – of their dangers and disadvantages.
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Yes, Robin, I am really sceptical about the engineering and economic prospects of wind turbines, which is why I am very annoyed that they have been allowed to proliferate like weeds all round the Western world. There were better and cheaper ways to establish their degree of non-viability … but that would have required listening to technical experts rather than on-message policy wonks pretending to be experts. Regards, John C..
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But, Robin, perhaps I am being too negative since for some people (often termed rent-seekers or crony capitalists) wind turbines are the modern and successful answer in the search for the Philosopher’s Stone; they can turn base metals (or, at least, rare earth metals) into gold, bankable gold. What’s not to like? Regards, John C.
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Thanks for that comprehensive explanation John. One thing that could be considered under the heading of “Remedies” is using turbines with a vertical axis. This would present a larger visual cue for an approaching bird. (And presumably bat.) Efficiency levels would be lower and such turbines do not self-start apparently.
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Mark – thanks for your link above to Civil Engineers web article.
As usual I’ll give partial quotes –
“With around 1,500 steel towers to build, 9,000km of conductor to be installed and 12 major new substations and converter stations bigger than any SSEN has built before, it has had to establish its supply chain early.”
Wonder where the steel for “1,500 steel towers” will come from?
“Balfour Beatty has designed the new towers, which will become standardised for the whole project. They are taller than existing 49m tall lattice towers, standing at an average of 57m, but height is dependent on topography.
They also feature bigger steel sections and larger bracings compared to traditional lattice steel towers so they can achieve the required strength. The contractor is now manufacturing test towers.
“We are booking a test site where we’ll assemble the tower and try to pull it over,” Dinning explains. “That’s going to happen in Europe because there is not a test site in the UK suitable for the size of towers.””
Well that makes sense, to somebody I suppose, but not to me. They are spending £xxbn on this & can’t set up a test site in the north of Scotland !!!
But ends on a positive for jobs –
“However, Stewart sees the skills and workforce expansion as the main legacy of Pathway to 2030.
“There is a whole load of schemes coming on the back of what we’re doing, so there’s an opportunity continuing into the 2030s for that workforce to keep on operating and building transmission infrastructure, because 11GW doesn’t solve the problem, there’s still more to come,” he says.
“So we’re setting ourselves up for a prosperous 2030s, potentially 2040s as well. There’s solid engineering-based jobs that will rumble on for a couple of decades and could make the best parts of people’s careers. That’s a huge part for us to play.”
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JIT in the 1980s an experimental vertical wind turbine was erected just south of Regina (Saskatchewan) on the Trans-Canada Highway. It was always turning, in poor wind conditions and well into the Winter (which is extreme). Located distant from any habitation, I cannot believe that turbine would have been started every morning. So I am very suspicious that modern vertical axis turbines are not self starting.
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“Labour go-ahead for march of the pylons promises to spark conflict”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/aug/11/labour-go-ahead-for-march-of-the-pylons-promises-to-spark-conflict
…”The scale of these projects is absolutely massive,” said one industry source.The size of EGL matches the scale of the challenge ahead in creating an electricity system fit for a net-zero future. It is one of 26 critical energy infrastructure schemes, worth an estimated £20bn, being fast-tracked by the regulator to meet Britain’s ambitious green energy targets.
Under the new Labour government these targets are even more pressing: to create a net-zero electricity system by 2030, ministers plan to double the UK’s onshore wind, triple its solar power and quadruple its offshore wind capacity. This clean energy boom will require a big change in the UK’s approach to energy infrastructure, both in the speed and scale of the work and how it affects local communities.
National Grid estimates that the UK will need to build five times more electricity infrastructure by 2030 than it has in the past three decades. But not everyone welcomes the change.…
You can say that again.
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I expect those organising and attending protests against pylons, battery installations and massive solar farms and those sharing information online will be arrested on suspicion of terrorism for endangering critically important national infrastructure projects. I’m not being cynical for a change.
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Jaime, the thought had occurred to me too. I fear it may only be a matter of time.
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Jaime, I could say it is already happening! In 2010 I was part of a local group fighting a planning application for a sub-station in Breckland to connect the Dudgeon offshore wind farm to the 400kV grid. As part of our research, I and a colleague went to look at one of the substations in Kent that was part of the interconnector network. Our aim was to get an understanding of the scale of these infrastructure projects. On returning home to Norfolk I was contacted by the anti-terrorist police who demanded a detailed explanation of what we were up to.
I’m pleased to say, that after two public enquiries we won and avoided the despoiling of many hectares of countryside and farmland next to the village. Even the applicants environmental consultant admitted they were going to change the character of the countryside with the immortal words…..’Of course the character will change we’re going to pour ten hectares of concrete’.
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Paul – further to comment above “I and a colleague went to look at one of the substations in Kent that was part of the interconnector network”. Were you approached at the time by the police asking why you were there?
Although this seems OTT by anti-terrorist police, I can see the need for police or army to protect these against terrorists.
Makes you wonder when 10/50/100? new substations are planned across the UK.
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“How Labour’s Energy Blitz Could Knock £63,000 off Your Home”
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/08/22/how-labours-energy-blitz-could-knock-63000-off-your-home/
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“Electricity substation can double in size”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c935jnzw7vpo
Energy bosses have been given permission for an electricity station to double in size to allow offshore electricity to be stored onshore.
South Norfolk Council has approved plans for a major expansion of the Norwich main substation, external, near Dunston, close to the A47 and A140.
The 12-acre (five-hectare) extension, external would roughly double the size of the infrastructure on the site, in a bid to increase its capacity to take in power produced by new wind farms off the Norfolk coast.
The proposals form part of National Grid’s plans to improve energy infrastructure across the region, along with the controversial Norwich to Tilbury pylon scheme.
Adrian Chanter, a spokesperson for the company, said: “The way we generate electricity in the UK is changing rapidly and so must the network of pylons, cables and substations that transport it around the country.
“This is fundamental to supporting the growth of residential and commercial developments and ensuring that everyone has access to clean electricity from these new renewable sources.”…
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“Campaigners urge rethink on substation plan”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqlvyd6l44wo
A campaign group opposed to the building of electricity substations in Suffolk is calling on the government to pause the scheme and rethink the strategy.
In a document launched at the Labour Party conference, Offshore4sure argued a pause of a few months would lead to more appropriate sites being chosen and greater use of offshore cabling.
National Grid said by delaying the projects, greener energy and greater energy security would also be delayed.…
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Surely even the Guardian understands that a study commissioned by the people who want a certain result will achieve the result they want?
“Pylons v property: power line in Scotland caused divisions but did house price fears materialise?
Beauly-Denny overhead project may serve as preview to Britain’s energy network plans”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/sep/23/pylons-v-property-power-line-in-scotland-caused-divisions-but-did-house-price-fears-materialise
Communities B4 Power Companies provide a potted history of Biggar Economics:
Biggar Economics was founded by Graeme Blackett, who formerly worked for Alex Salmond and was also involved in a pro independence group.
He later joined Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘team’ of advisors endorsing the Scottish government’s renewable energy drive and was accused of having a conflict of interest.
In 2011, speaking as a trustee of think tank Reform Scotland, he said the Scottish government’s policy had been “successful” and that “it is now the time to go even further”.
2012 produced a report for Renewables UK regarding the ‘favourable economic outcomes of wind development’.
In 2016 it produced a report on wind turbines not affecting tourism in rural Scotland.
It was heavily criticised and through which a coach and horses was driven by campaigners.
He later joined Nicola Sturgeon’s ‘team’ of advisors endorsing the Scottish government’s renewable energy drive.
John Muir Trust’s head of policy, once said of Biggar: “If a professional witness has developed their expertise through an ongoing financial relationship with one side of a debate, in this case wind developers, it may be seen as misleading if their evidence is branded ‘independent’. If you want a windy job done get Biggar.
In 2020 I was quoted in the press as saying: ”There is nothing new in Biggar Economics backing the wind industry and they appear to be the ‘go to’ firm if you want a favourable report.
Their founder Graeme Blackett has appeared for SSE at public inquiries to help get controversial wind farms approved – including Stronelairg in the Monadhliaths and Dornell on Glenfiddich Estate.
Blackett’s reports, submitted as independent evidence, often highlight the economic boost that wind farms can generate and, in some cases, have challenged claims that planting giant turbines in some of the country’s most scenic areas can harm local tourism
23.8.24 Report regarding Highland Council’s Social Values Charter for Renewables saying it would affect investment because the industry would have to give too much of its profits away to the communities they impact.
4.9.24 Attended onshore wind conference.
22.9.24 New report saying house values not reduced where Beauly Denny is.
Here we have another thinly disguised pro wind industry report from Biggar.
The crucial thing is: No one has ever gone to an estate agent and asked for a rural property near a pylon, substation, turbine or battery storage. A reduction in potential purchasers will, quite simply, mean a reduction in value.
This has been brought out to try and smooth the way for the unnecessary and horrific pylons lines proposed by SSEN and Scottish Power and it won’t wash. It is a PR exercise because the backlash against SSEN etc is so huge.
Communities B4 Power Companies has gone from zero in 2023 to over 3600 members today.
It is an outrageous selective report by Biggar and a slap in the face to the multiple communities across the Highlands reeling under the weight of Big Energy planning applications directly linked to the new lines.
We are used to to Biggar backing the wind industry against campaigners and this is not different. Their Founder Graeme Blackett has spoken for wind developers at public inquiries for controversial wind farms – two of which were the massive and devastating Stronelairg in the Monadhliath Mountains and Dornell on Glenfiddich Estate.
The new transmission proposed by SSEN is to encourage more onshore wind turbines. This has been confirmed to us by SSEN themselves and Ofgem. It is to satisfy the Scottish government’s onshore wind policy.
SSE, SSEN’s parent company, use Biggar all the time to try and make themselves more acceptable and fail miserably.
We already have over 8 times the amount of wind power constructed or in the system that Ofgem estimates Scotland will need in peak winter in 2042 and that is without considering any other generation. New lines are not necessary. That has always been CB4PC’s position.
The Beauly Denny is horrific. The Balblair substation had a noise abatement notice on it for years. What is being proposed now is multiple times worse and will affect thousands in communities across rural Scotland. It will encourage a plethora of wind turbines to hook into it and there are substation sites of 6 – 800 acres being proposed slap bang in communities with some residents having to leave their homes. That doesn’t sound like no impact on property values if you have to get out. Their properties will have no value as homes.
We are also seeing hundreds of terrifying battery storage systems being proposed near homes too. Many connecting into these new lines.
We didn’t face anything like that with the Beauly Denny so to not consider what the new lines are encouraging is misleading in the extreme.
Has Biggar considered properties in areas where the Beauly Denny does not impact? I suspect not – just like they didn’t look at tourism in areas where there were not wind farms for their other surveys.
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“Campaigners condemn PM’s defence of pylons plan”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgeyn3we444o
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“Beauly to Denny power line now fully energised
The £820 million power line upgrade, which was originally estimated would cost £330 million, will serve as the the main artery for the transmission of renewable energy generated in the north of Scotland to the rest of the country”
https://www.insider.co.uk/news/beauly-denny-power-line-now-9868913
Scottish Hydro Electric (SHE) Networks have now completely “energised” the 137 mile Beauly to Denny overhead power line project.
The £820 million upgraded Beauly to Denny power line, which was originally estimated would cost £330 million [my emphasis], will serve as the the main artery for the transmission of renewable energy generated in the north of Scotland to the rest of the country.
The controversial 600 pylon, 400,000 volt line runs through some of Scotland’s most scenic areas, with some of the pylons standing more than 200 foot tall.….
...The project costs have been met by electricity consumers across Scotland, England and Wales....
A pretty stark warning for the whole Net Zero project.
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“Ed Miliband faces growing legal threat over pylons roll-out
Council leaders warn energy infrastructure will ‘wreck’ countryside”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/09/30/ed-miliband-faces-growing-legal-threat-over-pylons-roll-out/
Ed Miliband is facing a growing legal threat from a string of councils over his decision to unleash a wave of electricity pylons across Britain.
Local leaders in Essex, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk have said the Energy Secretary will “wreck” their landscapes by rolling out vast swathes of green energy infrastructure.
They claim that their countryside will be disproportionately affected by the rollout, which they say will scare off tourists and ruin farmland.
As a result, all four have warned that they will launch a High Court challenge to block Mr Miliband’s plans.
It comes after the Energy Secretary recently vowed to “take on the blockers” who oppose the Government’s clean energy proposals, claiming that defeating Nimbys on net zero was a matter of “national security”.
Behind a paywall, unfortunately.
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There is a real generational struggle brewing. The comments are peppered with references to Stalin, Marxism, commies and the Soviet Union. People are VERY angry. The Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk Fens are one of the most sparsely populated and rural areas of the country but the people who live there are (rightfully) fiercely protective of their beautiful and productive countryside. I count myself among them, though I no longer live there in person. I am sure that many visitors also are willing to stand up and be counted.
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“‘Pylons are only the beginning’ warn protesters”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1wnxezzzqqo
A new line of pylons through Lincolnshire will also mean more solar and wind farms and “the entire industrialisation” of coastal communities, claim campaigners.
National Grid wants to build a corridor of pylons between Grimsby to Walpole, over the border in Norfolk.
Protest group No Pylons Lincolnshire said residents were not being told of an “almost constant barrage” of green projects that will also be built along the route.
National Grid said it was obliged to provide a connection for projects that apply to plug into the transmission network.
The pylons would take green energy generated in Scotland and transport it to the south-east of the country.
There will also be four new substations to process the power, which will also provide plug-in facilities for new electricity-generating projects nearby, according to National Grid proposals, external.
The plans include 14 possible solar or wind farms along the route. Some are already in the early stages of the planning process.
No Pylons Lincolnshire has written to Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband, saying there has been “an almost constant barrage of additional proposals for onshore facilities” since the pylons project was announced.
It is asking for them all to be considered together, rather than separately.
“For most people these projects are passing under the radar, as residents are not getting any information,” said spokesman Peter Phillips.…
The BBC is not unbiased and objective. It regularly describes renewable energy as green and/or clean, when it is neither.
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From the Telegraph this afternoon:
1,000km of pylons needed to hit net zero targets
Grid needs £40 billion of investment per year to hit emissions target, says report commissioned by Ed Miliband
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/03/1000-km-pylons-net-zero-targets-ed-miliband/
The only thing we can be sure about is that £40 billion won’t be nearly enough.
An extract:
How’s it expected to do that! – ?
More:
He’s as mad as Ed.
More:
In other words it’s impossible.
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£40 billion per annum is around £1,500 per household per annum. Enough said. How’s that going to reduce household energy prices by £300 per annum, whether in the short or the long term?
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It looks like I’m going to have to return to the fondly remembered gentle rolling hills and secluded coastal marshes of my former home, Lincolnshire, before Mad Ed’s eco-vandals rip it apart – at least for a few weeks next spring in the motorhome. I feel desperately sad about this. I have so many happy memories attached to this landscape, it actually brings tears to my eyes. Curse these bastards.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/united-kingdom/england/lincolnshire/east-lincolnshire-under-threat-net-zero/
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Jaime, it’s a pity WordPress doesn’t offer Facebook type emojis – or at least it is on this occasion. I have liked your comment, due to my inability to use an emoji to shed a tear. The agenda really does involve mass vandalism; these people are an appalling mix of arrogance (they think they know best); stupidity (net zero won’t work, and won’t change the climate); vandalism (they don’t care two hoots about the environment, culture and history); and Philistinism (I would say they know the price of everything and the value of nothing, but they don’t even have a clue about the price). To use an expression I encountered in Shetland (though it may not be peculiar to there), it boils my p*ss.
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“Protesters to fight cross-border giant pylon plans”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2n76244x5o
Protesters from across the Scottish Borders are fighting plans for giant pylons to be used to run wind farm energy into England.
Scottish Power Energy Networks (SPEN) wants to connect a planned electricity sub station near Lauder with awaiting overhead lines near Carlisle by using 60m (197ft) high steel towers.
Residents living in rural areas along the 50-mile route are concerned about the impact of the pylons and are calling for a complete rethink...
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“Pylon wars: Battle between builders and ‘blockers’ mounts across UK”
https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/national/24822231.pylon-wars-battle-builders-blockers-mounts-across-uk/
...the resistance to pylon lines is springing up across the UK, with local authorities in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire also opposing similar projects.
Rosie Pearson, another opponent of the Essex pylon route, said there is a “groundswell” of support from other campaigns across the country.
She accused Labour of “forcing any old project through come what may” and using “bullying rhetoric” to make it happen.
She said: “More and more people are talking about this, and becoming aware of the issue.”...
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“Why more pylons could be headed your way”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c87d152ljvlo
...Creating enough renewable electricity is one thing, getting that power to where it is needed is quite another.
Energy experts say the UK will need up to 370,000 miles of new power cables and thousands of extra electricity pylons to reach the 2030 target, which the government is focused on achieving.
Wildlife campaigners fear what this will mean for places like Wildmoor Health nature reserve near Crowthorne, Berkshire.
While Matthew Stanton from the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust is generally on board with the government’s rush to net zero, he says ecologists like him should be given more say over where pylons go.
“Arguably, we shouldn’t be having any pylons here, but there are,” he says.
It is imperative, he says, that government bodies are in place to ensure that when new pylons are put in, “there’s proper oversight in place”….
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“Pylons v people – battle lines drawn over UK’s green energy plans”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2d3zlkl4kro
Eileen West has a strange object in her home in Aberdeenshire – a scale model of a huge electricity pylon, built as part of a local campaign against the “monstrous” metal structures.
A new pylon line is proposed just a few hundred metres from her home. The steel towers will typically be 187ft (57m) high – significantly taller than most pylons in Scotland. Some could be as high as 246ft (75m).
They are part of a planned 66-mile (106km) route – between the town of Kintore and the village of Tealing – to transfer power from wind farms off the north-east coast of Scotland to where the electricity is needed.
“I think we’re being sacrificed,” says Eileen, a member of Deeside Against Pylons.…
…For those living in the shadow of these new clean energy projects, the government’s promise to “streamline” the planning process sounds like an excuse for finding new ways to ignore them...
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“MP calls for pylon route to go underground”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyn02nyzyjo
The MP for North Shropshire has said that the company behind plans to build a pylon route through the county should consider building it underground.
The Vyrnwy Frankton Project, proposed by energy company Green Gen Cymru, would see a 31-mile line of pylons running from Powys to a new substation near Lower Frankton in Shropshire.
Helen Morgan, Liberal Democrat, said local communities would be affected both visually and by noise….
Funny how Lib Dems and Green MPs are massively in favour of the net zero project until it affects their constituencies (and chances of re-election).
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“Fresh public consultation over power line plan”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c74e4wdjl3go
A fresh round of consultations over a planned long-distance power line will be held next month.
The 56-mile (90 km) overhead line would run from substations just outside Cottingham in East Yorkshire to High Marnham in Nottinghamshire.
National Grid said it was needed to carry energy from wind farms in the North Sea.
The initial proposals caused controversy in some areas and North Lincolnshire Council previously called for the route to be reconsidered due to the potential impact on the landscape.
The latest proposals incorporate feedback from two previous consultations, National Grid said….
…National Grid said it expected to apply for consent to build the 400 kV line in 2026 and, if approved, it would be operational in 2031. [My emphasis].
Operational in 2031? Isn’t this an essential part of Ed Miliband’s plan to decarbonise the grid by 2030?
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“Aberdeenshire campaigners ‘not being listened to’ over super-pylons scheme
The planned 70-mile line will see pylons erected between Kintore in Aberdeenshire and the village of Tealing, just outside Dundee.”
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/politics/scottish-politics/6699517/aberdeenshire-campaigner-super-pylons-scheme/
Frustrated campaigners say concerns over the planned installation of super-pylons across Aberdeenshire are “not being heard”, while locals are pushed to the brink.
Campaign groups across the length of the route are fighting back against the controversial developments proposed by SSEN.
Eileen West, member of Deeside Against Pylons, described people “angry, frustrated and depressed”.
She said: “We actually have people in the area suicidal because of this and that is not an exaggeration.”...
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“SNP warned over ‘hundreds of kilometres of monster pylons’ across Scottish countryside”
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/snp-warned-over-hundreds-of-kilometres-of-monster-pylons-across-scottish-countryside-5017763
The Scottish Government has been warned it is overseeing “hundreds of kilometres of monster pylons” across the countryside by ruling out new nuclear power.
SNP ministers have been accused of ignoring public concerns over “monster pylons” as the Scottish Government doubled down on its opposition to nuclear power....
...Scottish Conservative net zero and energy spokesperson, Douglas Lumsden, claimed “energy based on solar and wind is not reliable all year round”, pointing to small nuclear modular reactors as a solution.
He said: “Scotland could be at the forefront of this technology, leading the way – but again this Government insists on holding us back on false science and scaremongering.
“Their only plan is to put all their eggs in one basket, have as much wind energy as possible miles away from where the demand is and cover our countryside in monster pylons, substations and batteries – and ignore the concerns of our residents.”
Mr Lumsden said residents were concerned about “dealing with the reality of hundreds of kilometres of monster pylons” in rural parts of Scotland.
Energy experts have said that across the UK, up to 370,000 miles of new power cables and thousands of extra electricity pylons will be required to reach the Labour government’s 2030 clean power target….
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Is money all these people understand? Objections to pylons are based on principle and on care for the environment, not simple NIMBYism:
“People living near new pylons in Great Britain could get £250 a year off energy bills
Government hopes to avoid backlash against upgrade of infrastructure as it tries to grow UK economy”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/10/pylons-great-britain-energy-bills-uk-economy
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Mark, it’s pathetic; they don’t even understand money. Pylons near a property can knock many thousands off the value of your home, even make it impossible to sell. Two hundred and fifty quid off your annual energy bill when it’s already increased by more than that amount since Labour got in, and will continue to increase further, is beyond contemptible.
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“Bills to rise by 80p to fund discounts for homes near pylons”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyd49dxyxxo
The poor man can’t help what he looks like, but the picture the BBC uses to accompany that article makes him appear ever more like a Wallace & Gromit character.
The cost of reducing energy bills for people who live near pylons will be paid for by increasing average annual bills across the country by 80p, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has told the BBC.
Under the government’s plans, households in Great Britain within 500m of new or upgraded pylons will get discounts of up to £2,500 over 10 years, equivalent to £250 a year.
Miliband said the costs of the scheme were “more than offset” by the benefits of the new infrastructure.
He added that the idea was not about buying people off but “recognising the service” they were doing for the whole country.
However, rural campaign groups said it was “impossible to put a price on the loss of a landscape”....
...The bill discounts, which will be funded by electricity suppliers, are expected to be in place from 2026.
Suppliers are expected to recoup costs by passing them on to other customers.…
Don’t they always!
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“Residents raise worries over pylon disruption”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp8lxjz3lwgo
Residents in an Essex town have raised concerns about potential disruption caused by an electricity infrastructure project.
People living in Linford, near Tilbury, said plans to move some pylons and build a new substation could make it “very difficult” for locals to get around.
National Grid has proposed to build a new substation between Southfields and Linford, as part of the Norwich to Tilbury project, external.
The organisation said the changes would remove the need for 4.5km (2.8 miles) of underground cabling, adding it was committed to engaging with residents.
National Grid wants to install 114 miles (180km) of pylons between Norfolk and Essex to carry electricity produced by offshore wind farms….
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“Can a re-routed cross-border pylons plan appease locals?”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq80xp9g049o
Energy network bosses hope that a revised route for taking energy to England will appease at least some rural residents of the Scottish Borders.
Since plans for the Cross Border Connection were revealed last year protest groups have been formed in communities near the proposed pylons.
Following the backlash, Scottish Power Energy Networks (SPEN) have altered several sections of the 57-mile route between Lauder and the border, south of Newcastleton.
But Rosi Lister from Action Against Pylons – a collection of local community protest groups – warned: “It’s all very well revising the route, but as soon as you move it from one place you affect another community.”....
…The Cross Border Connection is seen as a vital link in the UK upgrade of the national grid.
Dozens of wind farms and solar energy parks – from the Highlands all the way down to the Borders – are already connected to the grid, with many more projects in the pipeline.
Finding a suitable route for the 60-metre high pylons, between a proposed new electricity substation near Lauder and awaiting cables at the border near Carlisle, is proving problematic for SPEN.
And bosses have ruled out an underground solution.
Mr Borthwick added: “We know from previous projects that it is between six and nine times more expensive for an underground cable solution, rather than overhead.
“Going underground would take this project from the hundreds of millions [of pounds] into the billions, and we have a licence from Ofgem to come up with the most cost-efficient solution.
“It will be the electricity bill payers that will be paying for this over the next 50 years or so.”...
My emphasis – because there’s a candid admission that you won’t hear from pro-net zero lobbyists and politicians. We’re all going to be paying for the trillions that net zero is costing, and Mr Borthwick is right – we’re going to be paying for these costs for half a century. And it will cost each household thousands of pounds every year.
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“Net Zero Pylon Plans Could Cause “Mass Social Unrest””
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/04/07/net-zero-pylon-plans-could-cause-mass-social-unrest/
Net Zero plans to erect pylons across rural Wales could cause “mass social unrest”, an energy company has been warned. The Telegraph has the story.…
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“Labour to press on with pylons as study shows underground cables more costly
IET report says running cables below ground about four and a half times more expensive than overhead lines”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/29/labour-to-press-on-with-pylons-as-study-shows-underground-cables-more-costly
Labour has vowed to press ahead with its plans to build more pylons across England and Wales, a subject of local political division, as a report says underground electricity cables are more than four times more expensive than overhead lines.
Pylons have become one of the key electoral issues in a number of counties including Lincolnshire, which is a local election battleground this week. Reform and the Conservatives have called for electricity cables to be buried underground rather than carried overhead by pylons.
The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, has drawn a sharp dividing line between his party and the Greens after the latter’s co-leader Adrian Ramsay used his first day in parliament to call for a pause on plans for a route of 520 pylons passing through his constituency….
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“More pylons ‘crucial’ despite cost to bill payers”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c628p5989d9o
A £34bn investment in Scotland’s electricity network is crucial for clean energy targets despite the increased cost on bills, a transmission operator says.
The energy regulator Ofgem is consulting on plans to reinforce and expand the network of high-voltage pylons and cables.
Scottish Power Energy Networks (SPEN) says the plan will add an extra £12 per year to the average bill but will pay back in the longer term.
An extra 310 miles (500km) of lines is needed over the next five years in central and southern Scotland to support an expansion in artificial intelligence (AI) and demand for heat pumps and electric vehicles….
If I were a BBC journalist, I wouldn’t simply cut and paste from a press release. I would interrogate the claim. There are around 27 million homes in the UK, so a £34 billion “investment”(aka cost), equates to over £1,250 per UK household. OK, some of the costs might come out of taxation, or be passed on to businesses, but ultimately consumers pay for it, given that businesses pass on their costs to consumers. In other words, that’s a per household cost more than 100 times higher than the annual cost claimed by the article. How do they work that out? Especially when you add in ongoing maintenance costs.
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“over the next five years in central and southern Scotland to support an expansion in artificial intelligence (AI) ” – what for & where?
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“Scottish Highlands to be blighted by hundreds of 190ft net zero pylons
Opponents say the plans risk ‘ruining the countryside’ as the Government gives its backing”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/09/16/scottish-highlands-blighted-hundreds-of-pylons/
Hundreds of giant “super pylons” are to be built across the Scottish Highlands as part of net zero plans…..
Behind a paywall, unfortunately, but you get the gist.
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Seems my question above may have been answered – Microsoft Commits Record $30 Billion to UK’s AI Infrastructure Expansion , short quote – *Billions from American giants put Britain on the front line of AI”
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