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Writer's pictureDavid Younger

No More Pylons - Whose Power is it Anyway?

 

While it could be seen as entirely desirable to restructure our national grid, particularly given that the present grid has been seriously underfunded since privatisation and is unfit for the renewable industry, the article above demonstrates what our centralised government must do to steamroller this project throughout the country.

 

Much of the renewable power is generated in Scotland – enough for 2.2m homes – most of the rest off the coast of north east England. While, at the northern end, a subsea cable is to be built, elsewhere in both Scotland and England, pylons are the main form of transmission. And these pylons are 60m high – twice the height of pylons that we are currently used to – 2,260 of them proposed.

 

In limited areas there has been some success in persuading the power companies to site their cables underground – Skye, for example – but even if all power lines were underground there is still the problem of the HVDC converter stations.  These are huge, environmentally disruptive and potentially hazardous. Effectively this is being done to us to take away power generated here and to give us no return.

 

Information about these projects across the country has been very limited and consultation taken in the form of presentations to local community groups offers no real involvement in any meaningful decision making – all the big stuff has already been done without democratic involvement. Not surprisingly, local action groups are springing up across the country – and in England too, by the way.

 

Given the lack of informative debate, two options need to be explored. One is that local campaign groups can be easily picked off no matter how vocal they are. That’s why we suggest bringing them together under a co-operative umbrella provided by the Scotland Decides platform. The other is a little more problematic. In principle, upgrading the national grid is important. Whether it is done this way or some other way is an issue which must be explored. It will be much easier to address this issue if an alternative is explored and to do this requires consultation with experts in this field.

 

It is issues like this that Scotland Decides was specifically designed for. We offer a free debating chamber on the website, auto emailing, zoom facilities, leaflet production and help with public meetings. Registered voters also have access to a verifiable electoral database of proven definitive reliability which can be used as a virtual referendum. This will give a vital edge of validation to the campaign.

 

We are proposing that, in the second half of January, Scotland Decides NE will hold a zoom meeting to which interested parties will be invited. We are also creating a database of relevant information for all to access. Please note that contributions from all sources are welcome but must be referenced to ensure that they are accurate.

 

We are not a campaigning or activist organisation. Nothing in the platform support compromises any local campaign – we don’t interfere. At our initial zoom meeting we will explain more fully our services and how we can help. Please visit us at www.scotlanddecides.org Membership is free but we strongly recommend that you register as well to access our full service for all future high security verifiable voting.

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