Hundreds gather for Countryside Alliance meeting on proposed sixty-mile rural pylon route

Hundreds of people, along with the media, attended a Countryside Alliance meeting at Llandovery Rugby club on Friday 17 February to discuss the possibility of electricity pylons being used along a sixty-mile route across a part of the Welsh countryside to transmit 132kV of energy.

Green Gen Cymru, which is part of the Bute Energy Group, has been writing to landowners and cold-calling at the farmgate since January, presenting landowners with contracts to sign which will enable them to implement a programme of exploratory work on their land. However, legally minded recipients of the letter have urged landowners not to sign, sighting serious concerns over the content of the contract and are advising people to seek proper legal advice and that of a land agent.

The transmission cable is proposed to run from Nant Mithil in the Radnor Forest to a point in Carmarthenshire, thus increasing the grid capacity using L7 metal pylons. However, the controversial site in the Radnor Forest has not even reached the planning application stage, yet Green Gen Cymru seem confident enough to begin planning the distribution route which will be announced in greater detail when they go out to a public consultation.

Green Gen Cymru have only recently applied to Ofgem for a licence to undertake this project and the Countryside Alliance joined others in objecting to the application stating that it did not seem appropriate for one company to have the monopoly by being the transmitter and distributor of energy. We await Ofgem's decision.

Welsh Government Minister Julie James MS has stated during Plenary that the Welsh Government's policy position is "for the cables to be buried where possible" and the Countryside Alliance firmly believes that this policy intent should have been recognised by Green Gen Cymru, Bute Energy from the outset.

Meanwhile, another meeting has been scheduled to take place in Builth Wells on the Thursday 2 March at Hafod a Hendre Building on the Royal Welsh Showground at 7.30pm.