Ed Miliband has been urged to listen to communities while pushing forward with green plans (Image: Getty)
Campaigners have slammed plans to “litter landscapes with towering pylons” up to 246ft (75m) high across the nation’s countryside.
Locals in East Anglia, Wales and Scotland have voiced fury with plans to impose more metal structures, cables and substations across the countryside.
In Scotland, a new stretch of pylon line has been proposed with steel towers between 187ft (57m) and 246ft high.
They are part of a planned 66-mile (106km) route – between the town of Kintore and the village of Tealing – to transfer power from wind farms off the north-east coast of Scotland to where the electricity is needed.
Reform MP MP said: “This entire proposal is utter nonsense. We should not sacrifice our landscapes, wreck our seascapes, and spend billions in the process, for useless vanity projects. Building pylons of 70m tall is a waste of money that should be spent elsewhere.
“Wind energy is unreliable, inefficient and requires huge subsidies. Instead, the focus must be on affordable energy, economic growth, secure borders, and preserving the true greatness of Britain.”
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Communities in Wales are also facing a battle against energy firms. The Llandovery Pylon Community Action Group campaigners against 88ft (27m) tall electricity pylons in the Twyi Valley in Wales.
They said they fully support renewable energy but believe that the need for energy must not decimate the communities it passes through.
Locals there have been offered community benefits – such as money off energy bills or improvements to local halls – to sweeten the blow of hosting the infrastructure.
But farmer and rural Chaplain Simon Bowkett, from the Tywi Valley, said: “There was a very paltry sum of money that started to be talked about as compensation for this at some point or another. It wasn’t appropriate and didn’t fit.”
Campaigner Robert Lankester said locals are increasingly angry that it looks like the option of underground cable-ploughing will not be considered.
He said: “Despite substantive evidence submitted by the Llandovery Pylon Group which verified that the costs of under-grounding cables by the latest cable-ploughing technology is more or less the same as pylons, rumours are growing that the IAG will not even consider this obvious solution. If this is true, then the whole process of consultation will have been a total farce and will confirm that Welsh Labour has slavishly locked itself into Ed Miliband’s net zero pylon madness.”
Meanwhile East Anglian residents are opposing Government plans to “decimate” the countryside with 164ft pylons (50m). National Grid has put forward plans for a 114-mile line from Dunston, near Norwich, to Tilbury on the Thames estuary.
Oscar-nominated actor Ralph Fiennes, who lives in Suffolk, is among those against the plans.
Rosie Pearson, founder of Essex Suffolk Norfolk Pylons action group, said: “Our region is at risk of being industrialised on an unimaginable scale and changed forever under the government’s vision that we should become the powerhouse of the UK.
“That vision, forced upon us without our say, will litter landscapes with towering pylons and vast substations and converter stations. Trees will be ripped out in their millions.
“The fury of communities at this attack on their beloved home is heightened by the well-known fact that the grid can be upgraded to transmit wind power to London without much of this upheaval.”
Campaigners have demanded the current grid be updated to its maximum capacity to avoid the need for new infrastructure.
They have also called for an integrated offshore grid at sea with any cables needed on land buried underground.
Energy experts say the UK will need up to 370,000 miles of new power cables and thousands of extra electricity pylons to reach the Government’s clean power by 2030 target.
The Prime Minister said that “we do need to transition to clean power” while on a visit to the UK National Nuclear Laboratory this week. He also pledged to “build, baby, build” as he vowed to take on the “blockers” holding up development.
Tom McGarry,from National Grid said: “If it was cheaper and quicker to deliver it off-shore, then that’s what we would be proposing, but it is not. We have to deliver this by 2030.
“The infrastructure we are proposing to build will help connect offshore wind to the grid, replacing expensive imported fossil fuels with cleaner and more affordable domestic sources of energy.”
The Government has been contacted for comment.