Electricity lines: Power to the people

www.guardian.co.uk
28 October 2009

Electricity is invisible; unfortunately the structures that carry it across the country are not. When, in 1928, Sir Reginald Blomfield gave his architectural approval to the six-armed steel monsters that now stalk Britain, the electrification of the country was a national priority. Little thought was given to the route that power lines took, or their ability to drain wildness from the landscape. The result is that tens of thousands of pylons march in lines across the countryside, loathed, immobile and ugly. Worse, there are about to be many more.

In Scotland, it is rumoured, approval will soon be given to the controversial upgrading of the 220km Beauly to Denny line, tangling the Highlands in high-voltage wire – 600 pylons, each up to 200ft high, running through the Cairngorms national park. Meanwhile in England, the new Infrastructure Planning Commission announced last week that two long power lines, in Somerset and Suffolk, are among its priority projects. Anyone with an ounce of affection for rural Britain, able to see it as more than an empty and exploitable space between cities, should hate the prospect of these lines going ahead. But opposition is being tempered by an even greater environmental concern: the pylons are said to be an essential part of Britain's move to low-carbon electricity generation.

The Scottish line is being erected to link future wind and wave power stations with electricity consumers in northern England; the Suffolk and Sussex routes run to the sites of two new nuclear plants, also announced last week. This produces a dilemma: oppose the pylons, and you may play a part in accelerating climate change. That is why some environmentalists – such as the Scottish Green party – back the Beauly to Denny line as the price that has to be paid for clean power.

They should be bolder. Some new lines will be unavoidable. But not all of them. Power companies like pylons because they are cheap, or at least cheaper than any alternative, but many cables should run underground. This is very expensive and for a time destructive – but perhaps less expensive than Britain's National Grid suggests. Here, regulations say massive 400kV cables must run in special tunnels; Denmark and Japan now bury them directly into the earth, much more cheaply. Some lines might also be run through the sea (like the interconnectors with France and Northern Ireland): the Conservatives propose a new offshore grid, although they accept that some onshore lines will be needed too. Eventually, microgeneration might reduce the need for long-distance transmission. Britain's old grid was built quickly and unthinkingly; its new one should be greener, offshore and underground.