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.
Green GEN Cymru (GGC) wants to build a 60-mile-long network using 33-metre-tall pylons through the Tywi and Teifi Valleys to connect onshore wind farm projects to the national grid.
However, the project has been met with strong opposition from communities since it was proposed in 2022 and several landowners have turned down the firm’s requests to access their land to carry out surveys.
GGC has made 11 applications to access the private land, with a number of court cases set to take place from Monday against those who have refused permission.
The court battles could prove a stumbling block for Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, who plans to build hundreds of pylons across Britain’s countryside in his Net Zero push.
Eirian Edwards, the Co-Chairman of the Llandovery Pylon Community Action Group, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the pylons would have a “real impact” on an otherwise “unspoilt part of Wales”.
He said: “It’s agricultural land, very beautiful. It’s going to affect our landscape drastically, while there are other options available such as undergrounding.”
The group have urged GGC to instead opt for the “undergrounding” of cables, rather than using pylons.
Mr Edwards said farmers were not allowing the company access to their land because the plans were “contrary to Welsh Government policy” which “clearly states” that any new electrical infrastructure in Wales should be undergrounded.
He argued that undergrounding – which is favoured in Denmark – was not as expensive as it once was and that using a process called “cable ploughing” made it “cost comparative” to pylons.
Adam Price, the Plaid Cymru Senedd member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, said the company should reconsider and warned that their plans could cause “mass social unrest”.
Worth reading in full.
I’m intrigued by the idea that, of all the things inflicted on the long-suffering British public by a high-handed political class, pylons could be the trigger for mass uprising. But who knows?
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They are seeking permission to put a line of these across Shropshire to provide power for Wales. They will need to build a new transmission site to link to the national network, also in Shropshire at ridiculous cost. There are a number of other suitable places which already exist in Wales to link to the grid but as these cross national parks, the line would have to be put underground and would be too expensive, so Shropshire will be blighted for Welsh electricity
You do have our water haha!
And you have our tax receipts.
We used to drink your water, soft yes, but brown like s*#@ and they charged us a fortune, so Severn Trent drilled a borehole and we now drink hard but crystal clear water. The brown stuff is still piped through to Liverpool and they don’t seem to mind
Nothing that couldn’t be fixed by a few likely lads with angle grinders…
“…power for Wales…”
Intermittent, occasional, now and then and which we the taxpayers subsidise at massive cost.
No unnecessary extra pylons required for the 24/365 coal-fired cathedrals of power, that up to 25 years ago were located in close proximity to centres of population and coal fields.
Transmission losses and costs minimised, fuel transportation costs minimised – the elegant and definitive solution.
Blown to smithereens by energy philistines, in favour of a dog’s breakfast grid that burdens Britain with the highest unit electricity prices in the world.
Non-existent problem, reaction. non-solution. Go figure, Kommissar for Energy Insecurity, Edward Samuel Miliband.
The Kommissars Must Fall.
Is “underground Ed” a Welsh word or has AI clumsily translated their word to something not much like English.
Possibly an aspiration?
Wire cutters?