Beauly Denny power line is vandalism

In trampling over people's love of wild landscapes, a depressing split has been opened in the Scottish environmental lobby

Ed Douglas
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 January 2010 12.07 GMT
At first glance, approval for the Beauly Denny power line through the Highlands of Scotland looks like a victory in the battle against climate change. The upgrade was required to plug a series of proposed renewable electricity projects in northern Scotland into the grid. The Highlands may be beautiful, Friends of the Earth Scotland argued yesterday, but in the face of a global crisis, marching huge pylons across mountain landscapes is a price worth paying.
Renewable energy investors may be relieved, but this decision by Scottish ministers is a needless and myopic act of vandalism. Climate change campaigners can mock the 18,000 people who objected as nimbys. But in trampling over ordinary people's love of wild landscapes, a depressing split has been opened in the Scottish environmental lobby.
On one side are groups like Friends of the Earth and WWF. They have acted as bulldogs for the energy lobby, sinking their teeth into conservation groups like the National Trust for Scotland and the John Muir Trust. They will argue this was ugly but necessary, to get a critical piece of infrastructure built. But people like me who love the Highlands won't thank them for it.
The argument was presented in the crudest terms. Either this power line gets built or Scotland's ambitious renewable targets go up in smoke. The truth isn't so simple. Alternative approaches existed but weren't properly considered during the planning process. A less intrusive east coast route was identified. The power cable could have gone under the North Sea and spared the Highlands altogether.
Scottish and Southern Energy, whose subsidiary will operate the new system, will dismiss the undersea route as ruinously expensive. But the costs of undersea power lines have come down fast since the Beauly Denny upgrade was mooted. In fact, an international North Sea grid linking renewable installations across northern Europe and beyond already has the backing of the Westminster government. That will require colossal investment in undersea cabling.
The Electricity Network Strategy Group released a report in March exploring how our electricity supply can be adapted to cope both technically and economically with the complex shift towards a larger proportion of renewable energy. Needless to say, undersea cables form an integral part of their plans. So why not in the Highlands?
The truth is that having set ambitious targets to increase renewable electricity generation, politicians north and south of the border have turned anxiously to energy corporations and asked them what they need to make it happen, even in the face of determined public opposition. Once Scottish and Southern said they needed the Beauly Denny project, it was only a matter of a time.
Imagine if the Scottish executive decided the public should pay for a new motorway through the Highlands. Now imagine the only people they consulted were Tarmac and Eddie Stobart. That is essentially what's happened in the Highlands. Our infrastructure paradigm is currently being rewritten and the people holding the pen are those with the biggest financial interest.
You might think it's overly romantic, even indulgent, to defend wild and beautiful landscapes when climate change and energy security are at stake. The government clearly felt landscape was worth defending when it signed the European landscape convention in 2006. But by allowing this kind of project to go ahead through the heart of a national park, the Scottish executive has shown that everything is up for grabs.