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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.
The plans are part of one of the government’s key missions, a drive to decarbonise the UK’s electricity system by 2030. Just over half of our power currently comes from wind, solar, nuclear and biomass - organic matter. The government wants to raise that to 95% by 2030 - just five years’ time.
The target is ambitious, and controversial. Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, told the BBC it is essential to “cut bills, tackle the climate crisis and give us energy security”.
But are local concerns being overlooked to meet national objectives?
BBC Panorama has travelled across the UK - to Aberdeenshire, Lincolnshire and Suffolk - to hear from people in landscapes bracing for change, including Oscar-nominated actor Ralph Fiennes.
…
In Aberdeenshire, Eileen West denies she is a Nimby, she says the pylons should not be built anywhere.
“These things will be standing for another 100 years. That’s not a legacy we want to leave our future generations.”
While not against green-energy ambitions, she argues that the government should be exploring alternatives that are less disruptive to the landscape.
“This is outdated, archaic technology. In Europe they do better, investing in proper, modern undergrounding and offshore,” Eileen says.
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I think they must construct additional pylons.
In Eileen’s garden?
they have not enough minerals
Eileen sounds like a pain in the arse.
Good thing she’s being sacrificed, won’t have to put up with her bullshit anymore.
“I’m not a nimby–this shouldn’t exist anywhere” is basically the refrain of the modern nimby. Don’t worry; they’ve discovered a better way… that’s more expensive, less efficient, whatever. People will be arguing for better alternatives as the ocean rises around their feet.
“Monstrous Pylons” standing next to a model of a 1950s design.
This is what they look like now.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those, but the common design seems … fine.
Yes, that was my understanding. They now bundle a lot of cables together so can make larger structures more… discreet.
These do look better to my mind, not least because they’re shorter than the old plain metal style. I hadn’t heard of them before, so I just read up a bit. As far as I can tell, they’ve only been used for one link so far, connecting the Hinkley power station to the grid, and while this design was originally going to be rolled out nationwide as part of the government’s “net zero” plans, apparently that’s no longer the case due to noise complaints from people living near the Hinkley line as well as higher costs due to them using more steel than originally expected. At least that’s what I could gather from a bit of web-searching.
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I’ve lived next to these things several times over my life; they’re stunning engineering achievements of humanity.
I like to envisage the power above me arriving at a hospital, and that beep beep beep of the electrocardiograph, puffing of the ventilators, pumping of the dialysis machines; all from metal we took from he earth and shaped into a church like structure, pointing to the heavens, but enabling us to play God and save lives.
It is often about the story we tell ourselves.
We have wind turbines nearby but, even though most are offshore, a neighbour really got a bee in his bonnet and started a campaign against them which seemed silly at the time, moreso now. I think they look majestic.
I like wind turbines too.
Almost soothing to look at, especially when you know how useful they are.
And pretty solarpunk to boot!I’m sure they’d be fine with a few old windmills.
Solar farms still don’t make sense to me, we have little farmland left in this country, we should cover every rooftop and car park in the country with solar panels before farmland.
Solar actually makes farmland work better. It’s called “agrovoltaics”.
I work with a lot of farmers. Facts don’t matter to many of them, outside the market value of their crops.
Solar farms don’t stop you using the land for farming completely. Panels don’t have to stop all light, and elevated panels can still have some type of plants grow under them. Grazing animals along side solar farms is apparently quite successful. They serve as shelter from strong sun and rain, and the grasses are fine.
This. Solar is almost never being installed on land that’s any good for arable crops. People don’t want their made up rural idyll made unsightly typically.
Don’t quite understand this attitude of “I don’t care if my children and grandchildren live in a shitty ecological disaster of a world, as long as I see infinite rolling hills of green outside my living room window!”
Especially since rolling green hills isn’t even the original UK landscape! We had trees, once!
Exactly! Seems like this lot buy into the myth of the English/British landscape as envisaged by 19th century pastoral romantics and Capability Brown. Don’t get me wrong, the Cotswolds is beautiful, but it’s almost in spite of humans rather than because of us.
Bring back foreboding forests!
I think a good number of “those people” fully expect to either be able to weather storm, or be entirely removed from it. They go to countries ruined by inequality and environmental disasters but they never see the results so they think everything is going to be gravy.
They don’t get affected by anything else, so why should this be any different?
