The project that's got a lot of East East Anglia fuming is the proposed imposition of a 110 mile line of pylons all the way from Norwich to the Thames. It's needed to help connect an increasing number of wind farms in the North Sea to population centres in London and the southeast, because it's no good having all that cheap energy if you can't deliver it. But it also means plonking 50m-high pylons across swathes of rural Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, for whose residents this is all pain and no gain. [map]
The route starts just outside the ring road at the 50 year-old Norwich Main substation which is being massively extended to cope with inflow from Hornsea Project Three and Equinor Sheringham Shoal and Dudgeon. It then runs south across field after field to almost-Ipswich, almost-Colchester and almost-Chelmsford, diverting slightly to link to the East Anglia Connection Node on the Tendring Peninsula. The end target is an upgraded Tilbury Substation, just downriver from the port, where the energy generated by offshore windfarms will be connected to the transmission network. In the latest version of the consultation they've agreed to bury the cables across Constable Country in the Dedham Vale, which has pleased some, but elsewhere it's pylons all the way despoiling the landscape and furious communities who don't want to have to look at them. As here.
This is where the megapylons will cross Shelfanger Road, just north of Diss by the awkward double bend on the B1077. As you can see it's an open arable landscape, or if you can't see that sorry but this was the best photo I could take through the windscreen. Telegraph poles already stalk the wheatfields so the area's not exactly pristine, but they're not the lofty metal whoppers proposed to dominate instead. "I've never seen people either quite so angry or quite so in despair," said Diss's local county councillor. "I think this development, even the prospect of it, has stolen a lot of my happiness," said Gillian who lives just up the road in Bunwell.
For those who'll benefit from the transfer of green electricity, which is millions of people elsewhere, this moaning is all a bit NIMBY. Pylons aren't exactly a new thing and many areas across the country already have them and manage to live perfectly oblivious lives. My auntie lived under the pylons fanning out from Sizewell for decades and you never heard her moaning about the cables that stalked her lovely garden. Obviously it'd be nicer if all the new pylons were replaced by buried cables or undersea routes, preserving local loveliness, but that'd be prohibitively expensive and also much slower and sometimes you just have to get on and build stuff. Expect a lot more of this kind of tension as the new government goes for growth and if you happen to live in the way bad luck, somebody somewhere has to take the hit to keep the lights on.
