About us
SSEN proposals for a new substation and overhead line from Fetteresso to Brechin are likely to have a devastating impact on our Mearns.
Save Our Mearns was founded in May 2023 to bring the community together to campaign against the project and to demonstrate the long term impact on our natural environment and our lives.
We are working with other groups along the Kintore to Tealing line as we believe that we are more likely to succeed if we combine our efforts where we can.
Our aims
We are not opposed to renewable energy, we are against low-cost solutions that industrialise our rural environment when other solutions exist
These plans will blight our landscape, negatively impacting vital farmland and food security, tourism and damaging our community’s health and wellbeing
To save our Mearns, the electricity transmission infrastructure should be re-routed with an alternative solution (underground or through subsea cabling – but we are not qualified to propose alternative solutions)
Wider context
The East Coast 400kV Phase 2 upgrade Reinforcement Project is a scheme to upgrade the electricity network to connect renewable wind energy through the east of Scotland into the national grid.
Proposed by SSEN Transmission, the overall plan creates a super-pylon (on average 57 metres high) and substation route between Kintore, near Aberdeen, to Tealing, just north of Dundee.
The plans impact the Mearns in the proposals for a new substation and overhead line from Hurlie/Fetteresso to Brechin, specifically:
- A new 400kV substation within the vicinity of the existing Fetteresso substation
- A new 400kV connection between Kintore, Fetteresso and Tealing
The Kintore to Tealing overhead line is just one of a slew of infrastructure projects planned by SSEN in the next six years.
A 100-mile power line will travel from the hamlet of Spittal in Caithness to Beauly in Inverness-shire. From Beauly – fast emerging as Scotland’s northern electricity hub – another line will stretch 120 miles to Peterhead on the Aberdeenshire coast with substations along the way.
In the West, a new line is coming in to link the Isle of Lewis with Beauly. It will be subsea and underground when it hits the mainland at Dundonnell. But a £480million upgrade of the 100-mile line between Ardmore on the Isle of Skye and Fort Augustus on the shore of Loch Ness will be overhead.
The arguments
We need to transition to net zero
This is not a just transition: while climate change is an urgent topic, we need to think about long term consequences and not sacrifice Scotland’s natural environment or the health and wellbeing of our families.
It will be significantly more expensive to re-route underground or by subsea cabling
This should be about people, not profit: there are alternatives that are already being implemented elsewhere.
The Peterhead-Drax will be subsea; there is a plan to relocate existing pylons underground in the Cotswolds to enhance the landscape; in Germany, work has started on a 300km long underground cable route known as A-Nord that will transport renewable energy from the north to the south of the country.
This is all about nimby-ism (not in my back yard) and house prices
There have been over 4,000 objections that we know of so far – that is a lot of back yards. Aberdeenshire has regularly been voted as one of the best places to live in the UK and we are proud of our community. The pylons and substations will affect not just us but our children and the generations to come.
This is a foregone conclusion and people should stop moaning and get used to it
This may seem like a done deal but if we don’t make ourselves heardm they will say that no one cared. Get mad, not sad.
SSEN may think it’s a foregone conclusion – and that seems to be how they’ve run their public consultation process. A core value of the Scottish planning service is that it should “be inclusive, engaging all interests as early and effectively as possible”.
This may seem like David versus Goliath but SSEN has underestimated how much we value our community.