by Stoker
Stoker’s desk overlooks what would be a typically English rural, sylvan view. It would be, were it not for the electricity and telephone cables which bring life and energy and communication to this tiny remote hamlet. If not for these wires any form of practicable life here would not exist. For income and heating and entertainment and cooking and washing, we need these drooping black lines and strange wooden poles marching down the lanes. If we had any doubts, the infrequent but occasional power outages remind us. So we put up with minor local despoilation of rural beauty for the benefits they bring.
But three years ago we had a very near miss. There is a major turbine wind-farm off the Yorkshire coast and as there is little demand for electricity in the North Sea and a great deal of demand in south-east England, the product of the whirling windmills has to be brought from sea to shore. At least, when the wind is blowing, but not, of course, blowing too much. So it was proposed to bring a very high voltage power-line across East Anglia, strung on exceptionally large and strong steel pylons. East Anglia is flat and suffers in season from strong winds from both east and west; so anything high has to be built so as not to blow over. There are plenty of fallen church towers around Suffolk and Norfolk to prove this point.
But this is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and the locals (the most vocal of whom, it must be admitted, tend to live mostly in well-heated London homes, work there in high-rise offices, and drive here increasingly in electric cars) were thunderstruck by this proposal. And even more so by a proposal to build, in a shallow valley just over the hill from here, a massive converter building, 20 metres high, to step down the high voltage. In a landscape where a serious hill is anything over 30 metres, this was a real intrusion.
The local council and County Council had been told by central Government that resistance would be futile. So they did not resist. But those non-local locals did. Who wants their weekend paradise looking out onto steel giants? And if there is an argument for more second homes, weekend homes, and holiday cottages, this must be it. It was soon announced that the cables would be laid underground and emerge near what passes for a major city in these parts. And then, a second announcement, also that the converter building would be on an industrial estate well to the south of these leafy glades. This followed a further furore when, after being assured that extensive tree-planting would shield the building from view, it was admitted, perhaps accidentally, that the building would emit a continuous low hum and be floodlit at night. In flat, remote countryside low hums can turn out to be rather high hums and travel serious distances (the neighbouring estate’s corn dryer keeps many awake with its “low hum”, but is usually only operational at harvest time.)
So, victory all round. But not so much a victory, as a successful first skirmish. The problem with wind power, and also solar farms, is that the power produced has to be taken to where it is useful. This, oddly, has not really been drawn to the public’s attention, though it is more than a little obvious on driving past any old-fashioned, coal-fired power station, or indeed a nuclear one. Solar farms tend to be on farmland which by definition, is in rural areas, and large tracts of it, such as makes for efficiencies of scale (in grid connections and transmission apparatus) is in deepish rural England. For example: the Badminton estate, one of the largest and most valuable English estates, owned for many centuries by the Dukes of Beaufort, is proposing to create a solar farm covering some 2,000 acres in the eastern Cotswolds. As this is prime (no, not farming country, though it is) second-home country, indeed first-home country, for the rich, fashionable and famous, the uproar is glorious to see. Led deliciously indeed by the present Duke’s ex-wife, a well-known “green” campaigner. To the north of the proposed site is another green and fashionable neighbour, though what the King, from his retreat at Highbury, thinks, has not been shared. The problem is perhaps not so much the solar panels, which can be to some extent be shielded by high hedges and woodland copses, as the cables to get the power away from its source of production.
Pylons are quick and cheap to build. On the scale of wind and sun power which Britain is going to have to adopt to achieve Net Zero even on Mr Sunak’s revised timetable, the electricity entrepreneurs are going to fight a major battle to avoid being forced to put many cables underground. Admittedly for this Cotswolds power source, the investors, or at least their professional advisors, may well live locally; so the anti-wind-farm protestors there may get some qualified support on the transmission front at least.
It is more than slightly symptomatic of modern investment UK and of the headlong rush to Net Zero that putting cables underground is strongly resisted by the wind-farmers. Burying cables (in pipes) greatly extends their life, shelters them from wind damage, and generally allows for easier access for replacement and repair. But the initial cost is much higher. The recent experiences of Britain’s privatised water industry suggests that short-term profit will beat long-term returns anytime. Admittedly the water companies, one of them in particular, have behaved appallingly badly in ripping short-term returns out of their business. But the core problem is that consumers will not pay for cleaning up water and sewage management, and that will be an even greater issue with power transmission costs to get the initial returns investors expect. The solution should be for some far-sighted financial whizzo to develop a financial product which has much longer payback profiles than the market currently wants. It happens in mainland Europe, and more relevantly perhaps, was an accepted way of financing the British railway network in the 19th century. Very-long-dated bonds – up to 50 years – became a useful part of family investment portfolios. That does mean investors have to be confident that inflation will be low over the very long term. With this government’s economic management? With Labour’s spending plans? With the competence of the current Governor of the Bank of England?
In the 1950’s a number of high-profile personalities, ranging from John Betjeman to John Piper to the Duchess of Devonshire (OK, that’s not ranging very far, but they were an eclectic and well-connected group) fought a series of battles to try to protect the UK countryside and beauty. They were not always successful. My own grandfather fought a long battle to stop the Central Electricity Generating Board running the main pylon line from Middlesborough to the south right in front of his remote farmhouse. He won a limited victory – the line went behind his farm buildings. Three years later the CEGB were back, to run another line east to west so that he was at the very junction of the two steel pylon paths. He gave up and moved to Scarborough. But many of those battles were won, and Britain is all the more beautiful for the tenacity of those battlers.
The scale of power lines which we will need to move power to where it is needed from where it is generated is likely to make those battles seem like nothing. If we are to have any parts of unspoiled British countryside left, bar maybe the Lake District and odd enclaves, we must find a solution to funding hidden transmission lines. We have not got long to do it; and to be honest, the current level of financial entrepreneurship and political will makes any solution look very unlikely. Enjoy unspoiled Britain whilst you can.