Opposition to expansion of overhead lines in northern Scotland could disrupt the UK administration’s commitment to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030.

This is according to a new Financial Times report on the specific case of a family-owned food manufacturing plant in rural Aberdeenshire. The business itself is committed to environmental sustainability and plans to build a solar farm to complement its wind turbines. The use of green hydrogen boilers is also being investigated by the business, which employs 240 people.

Now, however, a representative of the firm says energy giant SSE’s proposed route for overhead pylons “will impact many future plans, just after we have spent £10mn modernising the site.”

Apparently the route will place as many as eight pylons on the company’s land, “destroying the water supply and also disrupting a peregrine falcon nest.”

For SSE and the UK government, new renewables projects and the associated electricity infrastructure are vital to transitioning the UK’s energy mix away from fossil fuels. In particular, the expansion of overhead lines in the north of Scotland plays a fundamental role in the plan to deliver 55GW of offshore wind power by 2030.

The activists, on the other hand, are fearful of the damage the pylons will do to the landscape and to house prices. They see underground or undersea cables as the only acceptable way to transmit Scotland’s glut of renewable power to areas of higher demand in England.

According to SSE’s transmission arm SSEN, geographical constraints limit the use of offshore solutions, and overhead lines could carry about three times more power than subsea cables.

A consultation process regarding consenting reform is expected this autumn. Head of Scottish Renewables Stephen McKellar has also referred to “plans for a nationwide campaign to explain the benefits of the proposed infrastructure next year.

Read the full story here, as well as associated Financial Times articles The world’s renewable energy potential is gridlocked and UK’s clean power 2030 target unachievable without reform, warns National Grid.