My belief is that we Brits have a proprietorial attitude towards the countryside. We don’t own it – at least most of us don’t! – but we have a clear vision of how it should look and want to protect it from anything we perceive to be a threat to its beauty. Literally high on the list for some people are the twin giants: wind turbines and electricity pylons.
I’ve written about turbines before but never about pylons, so I’ll correct that because they are much in the news: hundreds more of them could soon be striding across the landscape. Controversial structures since the first ones appeared almost 100 years ago (Rudyard Kipling reportedly once condemned them in The Times as a “permanent disfigurement”), there are now more than 90,000 of these pylons across the UK, carrying 4,300 miles of cable.
Many are linked to now-defunct fossil-fuel power stations which, from the 1800s until the last one closed in September last year, had burnt 4.6 billion tonnes of coal and emitted 10.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.
In this new age of ‘clean power’ produced by wind, solar, nuclear and biomass from burning wood, waste and crops, the race is on to provide 95% of our electricity from renewables in five years’ time; right now the figure is around 50%. And demand for power is expected to double by 2050.
So, plans have been revealed to build an extra 1,300 pylons in England and Wales and hundreds more across the Scottish Highlands to take renewable power from where it’s generated to where it’s needed – and protests are growing. “Monstrous” is how opponents describe the height (up to 58 metres) and scale (around 500 pylons) of a new network proposed to run for 66 miles from Kintore in Aberdeenshire to Tealing in Angus. It would carry electricity from offshore wind farms and details of the route were recently submitted to the Scottish government.
One key project in England, a 114-mile line of pylons through East Anglia from Norwich to Tilbury, also carrying power from offshore, has led to a 40,000-signature petition calling for the grid to be either offshore or underground.
But industry experts point out that underground cables are on average around 4.5 times more expensive than overhead lines. After three years of public consultation about the East Anglian powerline and some 20,000 pieces of community feedback, one result is that a section in the glorious scenery of Dedham Vale will go underground – the project is now with the planning inspectorate.
Another of the 17 projects in what’s been called the Great Grid Upgrade – for 420 pylons from Grimsby to Walpole in Norfolk – is fuelling more protests, including from a farming family who fear that two 50-metre-tall pylons planned on their land will destroy their livelihood.
Jon and Judy Homer told BBC News they were worried construction work could lead to their Lincolnshire farm losing its organic status – something the National Grid denies, saying it will reinstate the land. “But every shovelful of soil and every blade of grass would have to be organic for us to be certified,” said Jon. Following concerns raised by councillors and locals, the National Grid has re-examined its plans for this 87-mile route; it now includes low-height pylons on a stretch through the Lincolnshire Wolds.
“We build diversity into all our projects from the start, guided by thorough environmental assessments developed with expert consultees, including Natural England,” a National Grid spokesperson told me. “Our projects aim to leave the environment in a better state, achieving at least a 10% improvement, and most farming can continue around our infrastructure with only land directly beneath pylons permanently affected.”
Some major planning inquiries lie ahead because of the Great Grid Upgrade, but how quickly will we get the results? It may be sooner than usual, as the government says it wants to make the planning process for nationally significant infrastructure projects swifter and more flexible.
Whatever your opinion on pylons, the countryside has always been a workplace and certain aspects of a workplace may never, to some, be pleasing on the eye. Ideally, they should be placed where they least offend – but that’s too easy to say when domineering metal structures are involved.
