Tuesday, 2nd February 2010
Scotland’s landscape is priceless: we must protect it or lose it
The announcement that the Scottish Government has approved the highly controversial power line from Beauly to Denny was extremely disappointing.
While I understand the need for the upgrading of the line to help with the transmission of renewable energy I am frustrated that after so many years of planning and debate, approval was given for overhead power lines and mega-giant pylons.
Overhead power lines were first utilised by Stalin during his race to roll out the industrial revolution in the USSR. It seems ridiculous that more than a century later we are still allowing power companies to wreck our landscape and put people’s health at risk by using old, cheap and nasty technology like this.
The 137 mile power line from Denny which will run through the heart of Perthshire and the Cairngorms National Park to Beauly will see 600 giant pylons standing 217 feet tall, destroying our country’s most beautiful landscapes.
The project was opposed by over 18,000 people who wrote letters of objection. It is unbelievable that their protests were simply brushed aside by the SNP government.
What many of us would have preferred was for approximately 25% of the proposed route to be undergrounded across the areas of highest landscape value and away from people’s homes.
Yet, the power companies involved have made it very clear that underground cabling is not an option going forward.
Last year I hosted a seminar in the European Parliament where we heard from leading EU cable experts who told us that contrary to the assertions of the power companies during the public enquiry, the cost of undergrounding does not amount to 12 to 17 times more than the cost of overhead lines. In fact, depending on the terrain, the cost is estimated at around five times more and the extra costs would be shared across the entire British transmission network. Their estimate is that undergrounding a quarter of the Beauly to Denny route would add around £1 to everyone’s electricity bill in the UK, a small price to pay for such an enormous national benefit.
In addition, I am very surprised that none of the power companies involved have sought financial assistance from the EU for this project. Similar projects involving partial underground of cables in the Netherlands, Spain and Germany have all received financial aid from Brussels.
The John Muir Trust and Scottish Natural Heritage have campaigned intensively to save Scotland’s sensitive areas. Scottish Natural Heritage recently claimed that the amount of land unaffected by visual intrusion from built development was cut in Scotland by 25% between 2002 and 2008.
Wind farms will have contributed to that statistic greatly. And, with wind power the fastest growing of the renewable energy technologies in Scotland, there are a large number of proposed wind farms still to be constructed and no doubt more in the pipelines.
While I support renewable energy and fully endorse the need to meet ambitious carbon reduction targets, it is also vital that when considering substantial energy projects that careful consideration is given to Scotland’s priceless landscape.
