The village of Beauly, near Inverness, marks the starting point of what was once Britain’s largest and most controversial power grid project: a 137-mile electricity superhighway from the quiet Highlands village to a large substation in Denny near Falkirk.
The power line brings renewable energy generated by wind farms in the north to the electricity grids in Scotland’s central belt – but it also ignited a bitter feud between opposing green groups.
The power line was approved in 2010 after Scotland’s longest and most expensive inquiry; with some welcoming the project as a crucial building block in Scottish green energy targets and others fiercely opposing the “needless and myopic act of vandalism” against the Highlands’ most beautiful scenery.
Today, the Beauly-Denny overhead line serves as a preview for the impact that these giant infrastructure projects may have on local communities across the country as Britain embarks on one of the largest rollouts yet of power cables, overhead lines and pylons.
In a report for the industry body Scottish Renewables, economists at the consultancy BiGGAR Economics said fears that the power line would cause irreversible damage to the beauty of the Highlands might have been unfounded.
An analysis of property sales since the line began operating in 2015 showed property price trends along its route mirrored those of the wider local authorities and appeared to be influenced by wider macroeconomic factors rather than the appearance of new power lines.
In Beauly, house prices have increased by 28% since 2015, according to the report, compared with 30% and 29% across the local authority area (Highland council) and Scotland respectively. A similar pattern could be seen in the village of Denny, where property price growth exceeded that of the wider Falkirk council area. Here, prices have grown 62%, compared with 39% and 29% across the local authority area and Scotland respectively.
“The power line has had no noticeable adverse impact on house prices,” said Simon Cleary, a director at BiGGAR Economics and the author of the report. “Our analysis includes the opinions of estate agents in the area, who have first-hand experience of selling houses along the route. While there may be varying opinions on pylons from both buyers and sellers, there was limited experience of the Beauly-Denny power line having any impact on house prices.”
Although property prices near the power line moved in line with the wider market over the past nine years, the same cannot be said for the period between 2007 and 2015, during which the inquiry into the proposed project was held, was eventually given the green light and began transmitting electricity.
In both Beauly and Denny, property prices diverged from the trend in the wider Scottish housing markets, slumping through that period.
The disruption of the construction, and the uncertainty of its impact on the region, appeared to drive a temporary dip in prices, Cleary said. The relatively small number of property transactions in each village will have exacerbated the effect, he added.
Keith Anderson, the chief executive of ScottishPower, which built the Beauly-Denny line alongside SSE, said the findings should encourage the UK government to help speed up the planning system to minimise the period of disruption caused by large infrastructure projects.
“The only impact [on house prices] was in the period of uncertainty around whether and where the line would be built, a clear reason why planning needs to be sped up for the good of the community. Faster planning within two years will deliver vital national infrastructure in the timeframe this country needs and minimise uncertainty for communities, developers and generators,” he said.
The impact of power lines and pylons on property prices is expected to become a significant area of concern for homeowners in the decades ahead. If the UK hopes to meet its climate targets it will need to add about four times as much new transmission capacity to the network in the next seven years as has been built since 1990. This would result in a significant number of homes being in proximity to industrial infrastructure for the first time.
The scale of the challenge has put the UK’s clean power advocates on a collision course with some environmentalists and community groups that fear the haste to meet renewables targets will lead to the industrialisation of the countryside, which in turn could have significant implications for property prices and tourism.
Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, promised last week to tackle the “nimbys” who opposed the Labour government’s plans to accelerate the rollout of energy infrastructure across Britain in the years ahead.
“Previous governments have ducked and dithered and delayed these difficult decisions, and it is the poorest in our society who have paid the price. My message today is we will take on the blockers, the delayers, the obstructionists, because the clean energy sprint is the economic justice, energy security and national security fight of our time,” he said.
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More than 500 miles south of Beauly, communities along the Suffolk coast in England fear that the combination of planned work at the Sizewell C nuclear site and Britain’s offshore windfarm expansion will lead to more energy infrastructure along the coast.
In one property listing for a £2.75m house in the village of Walberswick, near Southwold, the estate agency has included a note flagging the “various infrastructure projects proposed for east Suffolk” such as Sizewell C and the “associated cabling and substation works” to bring power from North Sea windfarms ashore.
Peter Ogilvy, a director at estate agency Savills’ Ipswich residential team, said for most homeowners the effect of new energy infrastructure in the east Suffolk region would be extremely limited.
“I would tell people that they can be reassured that these grid projects are very unlikely to have a long-term impact on the value of their home but it’s important to note that for a very small number of properties, which are right on the doorstep of new infrastructure, the negative impacts could be very significant indeed,” he said.
A new power line could knock up to 10% from the value of a home if the property is within 300 metres of a pylon, according to research by the London School of Economics last year. This impact dwindles to an average reduction of 3.6% within 1.2km, compared with properties beyond this distance.
That would equate to an average loss in value of £7,800 at 2023 prices, according to Steve Gibbons,a professor of economic geography at LSE and an author of the report. The loss of property value is higher than in previous reports and implies the need for larger compensation than is being applied in the UK.
“We are not saying these projects shouldn’t go ahead. Our paper was designed to understand the implied costs of this kind of work to the people who live nearby – and how they should be compensated for this,” Gibbons said.
“Generally, these kinds of projects are sited as far away from communities as possible. But in cases where projects are likely to have a negative financial impact on some homeowners but represent a gain to society overall there are a range of policy options which should be borne in mind to compensate those who stand to lose out.”
The government is consulting on plans for mandatory compensation schemes for homeowners near new power lines that could include a £1,000 reduction in their annual energy bills for a period of 10 years.
A spokesperson said: “Securing Britain’s clean energy future will require improving infrastructure to get renewable electricity on the grid. Without this infrastructure, we will never deliver clean power for the British people.
“It is important we take people with us, which is why it is our view that communities who live near clean energy infrastructure should benefit directly from it.”
