Kentish Express Ashford & District
Towering pylons would cause ‘great harm’ to our countryside
Plans for a network of electricity cables across Kent are sparking fears miles of rural land will be destroyed, reports Gerry Warren...
Aline of towering new electricity pylons cutting through the east Kent countryside would cause “great harm” to beauty spots, campaigners fear.
Plans for a series of structures between Sellindge and Richborough have emerged in National Grid’s latest blueprint for Britain.
The energy company says the proposals – aimed at reducing the amount of carbon produced during electricity production – are “at a low level of maturity and subject to further development”.
But the prospect of yet more pylons popping up across Kent – and in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty – is already sounding alarm bells among environmental groups.
The Council for the Protection of Rural England (Kent) fears another pylon scheme would cause “great harm” to the Kent Downs National Landscape.
Already there is concern over National Grid’s plans for a huge new converter station on the Minster Marshes, near Ramsgate, which campaigners say will cause huge damage to wildlife, especially birds.
The facility is being erected as part of the SeaLink project to connect Kent to Suffolk with offshore cabling.
And previously, the upgrading of power lines between Richborough and Canterbury as part of the Nemo Link caused widespread concern about the height of the new pylons.
National Grid’s latest blueprint says the connection between Richborough and Sellindge is needed to increase local capacity to help reduce network congestion and increase resistance in the area.
The proposal is said to be at the “scoping” stage, and the energy company insists there are no start or end points and the scheme is subject to other options.
It says it can also not yet give any indication of the number of pylons that could be erected, or their height.
There remains an option to bury the cables, but National Grid resisted calls for that approach for the Richborough to Canterbury project, which was completed in 2019 and required 60 pylons standing 50 metres tall.
That scheme caused widespread concern about the impact on the countryside but was given the go-ahead following a public inquiry.
But the latest proposals, which could see pylons and cables sweeping through an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and close to numerous villages, have been met with grave concerns.
Director of CPRE (Kent) Hilary Newport says the importance of decarbonising the energy supply is well understood and acknowledged.
“But planning for a sustainable-energy future will also mean reducing overall demand for energy as a national priority, which is essential for reducing fuel poverty and creating ‘green’ jobs,” she said.
While development must address renewable-energy targets,it must also respect environmental goals..
“While development must happen in a way that addresses renewable-energy targets, climate-change goals and security of supply, it must also respect other environmental goals such as limiting harm to the beauty and tranquillity of our finest countryside.
“It is hard to see that any route – even indicative as here – between Richborough and Sellindge would not cause great harm to the Kent Downs National Landscape, which is crossed by important assets such as the Pilgrims’ Way and the North Downs Way.
“Even undergrounding cables would cause landscape damage.
“The Richborough-Sellindge link might be only a speculative idea now, but we are already seeing, and campaigning to improve, proposals that would cause catastrophic damage to irreplaceable landscape and habitats at Minster Marshes in Thanet as part of the Sea Link scheme to connect energy from offshore windfarms in East Anglia with the wider network.
“We believe that investments must also take place in encouraging greater use of local and decentralised energy networks as well as energy efficiency to reduce our dependence on inefficient national transmission networks in the longer term.”
In its blueprint for Britain, National Grid says : “Britain’s electricity needs are set to rise by up to almost 65% by 2035.
“The UK Government has set an ambition to have a fully decarbonised electricity system by 2035. This means producing more electricity and transporting it in a smarter, cheaper, and greener way. A key part of this is efficiently connecting the offshore wind being built around Great Britain in a coordinated way.
“The current electricity grid is reaching its capacity and is unable to transport much more electricity without reinforcing the network.
“Currently, energy is being wasted as the grid cannot transport it to where it can be used. Because of these bottlenecks, as the system operator, we sometimes have to ask wind farms to switch off to prevent the grid becoming overloaded – wasting cheap, sustainable, homegrown wind power.”