Landowner and music festival founder claims mass pylons will 'ruin' Highlands

A Highland landowner and the founder of a popular music festival has claimed the area will be “ruined” by a series of large scale energy transmission projects which will cross hundreds of miles of countryside with new pylons and overhead power lines.

Joe Gibbs, owner of the Belladrum Estate near Beauly is seeking to protect his land from the incoming overhead power lines which are being proposed by Scottish and Southern Energy (SSEN) Transmission.

In a £20bn investment, the company has proposed three 400kw overhead powerlines in the Highlands to deliver renewable energy to the National Grid. Two of the lines will be supported by steel towers measuring up to 58 metres in height with most existing towers around 30 metres in height.

A map from SSEN Transmission which illustrates the new overhead powerlines which cross the Highlands and the Kintore to Tealing line from Aberdeenshire to Perthshire. PIC: SSEN Transmission. | SSEN Transmission

Mr Gibbs said there was mounting concern locally about the scale and volume of projects coming at once.

The plans are part of SSEN’s Pathway 2030 which seizes on recommendations from the then National Grid Electricity System Operator to meet demand for capacity from Scotland’s growing renewable developments.

Mr Gibbs said:“I am very troubled by the way SSEN is operating in the Highlands.

“You feel that you are in a country that is owned by a company.

“SSEN feelers are absolutely everywhere at the moment. They are even in primary schools handing out models of windturbines.”

He added: “We host the music festival here and I know a lot of people come to the festival to enjoy this beautiful place. Although the pylons won’t be crossing Belladrum, they will very easily be seen from Belladrum.

“We are all going to be under these powerlines for the benefit of a private company and its shareholders. This is going to ruin the Highlands.”

He also condemned a “threat to local democracy” after SSEN Transmission backed changes to the Electricty Act which would remove a local authority’s ability to trigger a public inquiry into such energy projects and thus delay developments. Only Scottish Ministers would be able to call for such an inquiry under the plans.

Applications for the new overhead lines from Beauly to Peterhead and from Spittal to Loch Buidhe and Beauly will be submitted to Scottish Ministers by April.

Plans for an £480m upgrade of the powerline between Skye and Fort Augustus - which will have smaller pylons and some underground sections - have already been lodged.

Meanwhile, an application is due for a fourth overhead line from Kintore in Aberdeenshire to Tealing in Perthshire. Applications for several substations on the routes will be made to local authority planners in due course.

The north side of Belladrum Estate will sit less than half a mile from the southern end of the new 114-mile powerline proposed between Beauly and Peterhead.

A giant substation at Fanellan to support the powerline will sit 1.2miles from the estate.

Mr Gibbs is seeking to protect the designed landscape of the estate with a designation of national importance by Historic Environment Scotland. HES, which agrees to the designation, is consulting on the proposal with the listing potentially making it harder for developments to take place in the vicinity of the estate.

Mr Gibbs first sought the designation 20 years ago but has intensified his efforts given the “threat of the pylons,” he said.

SSEN are fine tuning the applications following a consultation process, which started in 2023.

The company said 300,000 people were invited to consultation events with more than 220 events held. It described its consultation as “one of the biggest ever such listening exercises across the north and northeast of Scotland”.

Community councils across the Highlands have been inundated with large-scale energy development applications to consider and, in several cases, have joined together to submit their responses.

In May, community councils from Garve, Marybank, Scatwell and Strathconon, Strathpeffer and Contin submitted its response in light of plans for the Spittal to Loch Buidhe and Beauly Line. Three new substations will be built at each of these points, including one at Fanellan, which will sit close to Belladrum Estaste.

SSEN said the line was necessary given the growth of wind projects in the Caithness area, with current transmission capacity now full.

In their response, the community councils said: “We recognise the threat that climate change means to our planet and we support the need to move away from fossil fuels.

“However, we do not believe that this threat provides the electricity industry with the right to ride roughshod over the wishes of these communities.

“Our economy relies heavily on the beauty and wild nature of our countryside to drive tourism. Little consideration, if any, seems to being given to the impact on our communities and our economy.”

The new powerlines and increased transmission capacity will also seek to address the high constraint payments paid to renewable energy companies to reduce output at times when more power is being produced than can be used by the grid.

Latest figures from the Renewable Energy Foundation show that Seagreens offshore windfarm, Scotland’s largest which has 114 turbines off the Angus coast, received £63.7 M (correct) in constraint payments in 2024. SSE Renewables owns 49% of the development.

At Moray East, the figure rose to £87.4M with constraint payments worth £9.4m paid in 2024 to limit production at the Viking windfarm on Shetland, which opened last August.

Dr John Constable of the Renewable Energy Foundation said: “The extra transmission capacity could reduce the constraint payments but the extra grid lines are very expensive. It might not reduce the cost to the consumer overall.”

A spokesman for SSEN Transmission said the Highlands was a “key location” in enabling the “transmission of clean power delivered by offshore windfarms located in the north of Scotland, supporting UK and Scottish energy security and clean power targets and reducing our dependence on and price exposure to volatile global wholesale markets.”

It added: “In taking forward our developments we have consulted extensively with the public and statutory stakeholders, while considering constraints such as environmental designations and existing infrastructure locations.”

The investment would bring “substantial economic benefits to the Highlands” and support jobs and local supply chain opportunities with community benefit funding expected to exceed £100m for communities in the north of Scotland.

A statement added: “Furthermore, we have pledged to deliver at least 1,000 new homes in the north of Scotland as a legacy of our workforce accommodation requirements. This commitment reflects ongoing work led by SSEN Transmission with the support of our contractors and partners, focused on finding workforce accommodation solutions that will provide a legacy for communities where the lack of housing for local people is a key issue.”