'Ring of steel' warning as spectre of Tryweryn hovers over major new battleground in North Wales

North Wales Live

14-06-2025

Almost under the radar in North Wales is an issue bubbling away that threatens to be the defining challenge of the age. In the coming years a 176km pylon link running down the country is to be built to underpin the UK's switch to wind and solar energy.
At stake are some the country's most stunning landscapes amid claims they will be 'industrialised' and spoiled. And wherever the pylons go, wind farms and solar parks are sure to follow, potentially threatening some of the most valuable farmland in Wales.
Worried the route might pass through Eryri National Park, Cymdeithas Eryri (Snowdonia Society) has launched a hands-off campaign amid fears 55-metre pylons will one day march across Cader Idris and the Rhinogydd mountains. A more likely candidate is the idyllic Vale of Clwyd, raising the prospect of pylons blighting views from the country's newest national park in northeast Wales.
Separate pylon routes across Mid Wales have already landed farmers in court amid scenes of mass opposition and dire warnings of 'civil unrest'. In some circles, the spectre of Tryweryn has been raised as a parallel with the destruction of rural Wales to benefit others. Relatively few people in Wales will benefit, it's claimed.
Meeting decarbonisation deadlines, both in Wales and England, is driving an unseemly scramble to beef up the country's electricity transmission infrastructure. While most people accept the need for post-oil energy certainty, it may have unintended consequences, leaving parts of Wales as a junkyard for abandoned pylons erected in haste and regreted for decades.
'North Wales will literally be surrounded by a ring of steel,' said Anglesey-based Dr Jonathan Dean, director of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales (CPRW). 'We are littering our hills and moorlands with industrial wind farms, and stringing them all together using 55 metre-high steel lattice pylons. They are yesterday's technology to solve tomorrow's problems."
To understand what's going on, a broader picture is needed. The UK is on the throes of a new jet-heeled industrial revolution, with governments racing to meet self-imposed deadlines for carbon-free electricity generation. Wales aims to get there by 2035, Westminster wants the grid to be be 95% carbon-free by 2030. Join the North Wales Live Whatsapp community now
Wales, and in particular Scotland, have vast potential for wind power. England does not, so will need to import it, primarily from Scotland. Already five under-sea cables are being routed along England's east coast, with another running down the west coast to Wales via Deeside, Flintshire.
Two more are planned for North Wales, either connecting to Bodelwyddan or Pentir near Bangor, Gwynedd. Or possibly one each. In future, more Scotland-Wales sub-cables might be needed.
South Wales has a solid electricity grid that can cope with the extra transmission. The grid in North Wales needs beefing up. As none exists in sparcely populated Mid Wales, the problem of routing supplies through Wales becomes immediately apparent. 'Strictly speaking there is no Welsh grid,' said Dr Dean. 'Just some parts of the GB grid are in Wales.'
Clearly, a north-south transmission route is needed. In its £58bn Beyond 2030 plan, the National Energy System Operator (NESO), which runs the National Grid, envisaged a route running between Bangor and Swansea. This is to be a 'double circuit' line – meaning pylons. These will carry 'high tension' power cables, their description neatly capturing the anxiety they're creating in parts of North Wales.
An illustrative map of the route shows its running directly through the national park. Rory Francis, director of Cymdeithas Eryri, supports grid decarbonisation but said wrecking some of Wales' most breathtaking landscapes would be an 'act of sacrilege'.
He added: 'The National Grid has a policy, known as the Holford Rules, which calls on them to avoid National Parks if at all possible. We're calling on them to follow this policy, by routing the line off-shore, around the coast, subject to satisfactory environmental assessments.'
The Holford Rules means Eryri ought not to be worried. Besides, NESO says its map is entirely indicative and bears no relation to its final plans, which are still some way off being confirmed. Which begs the question, which other routes are possible?
One speculated route would take the north-south line down the Caernarfonshire coast and across Pen Llŷn, squeezing through the gap between its National Landscape (AONB) and Eryri National Park. From here, a sub-sea cable could be routed to Swansea via Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire.
Some £207m is currently being spent to bore a 3.4km tunnel under the Dwyryd Estuary near Porthmadog. As, overtly, the idea is to replace 3km of unsightly pylons that are spoiling views of Eryri's mountains, the idea of erecting new pylons near the national park seems unlikely.
By connecting the dots of evidence, a more feasible route appears to lie further east. Already a new substation is planned at Gwyddelwern, near Corwen, to service proposed onshore wind farms near Bala and a huge battery storage site nearby. Allied to this is a north-south connection agreement offered to the proposed Mynydd Mawr wind farm at Llanrhaeadr ym Mochnant further south.
Dr Dean notes that Bodelwyddan is 'fast becoming an energy hub' with numerous offshore wind farms coming ashore in north Denbighshire. Piecing these together and a picture emerges of a north-south line running from Bodelwyddan to Gwyddelwern and then to a long-planned substation at Cefn Coch near Llanfair Caereinion.
To avoid pylons blighting hill skylines, the Holford Rules stipulate valleys should be as 'transmission corridors'. Dr Dean suspects the Vale of Clwyd will be one corridor.
'It's no coincidence that pylons were erected on Anglesey a year before the island's AONB designations,' said Dr Dean. 'Perhaps there will be a similar rush to get renewable schemes approved before the new national park in north east Wales comes into being.
'On Anglesey, we've seen how renewable schemes are now planned on sites close to the pylons, like the large solar parks currently in the pipeline. If the north-south line goes through the Vale of Clwyd, it's an area ideally suited for solar. It's relatively flat and near two substations..... I can see solar farms springing up alongside the route.'.
In the latest, slimmed-down iteration of the proposed northeast Wales National Park, much of the Vale of Clwyd is now excluded. Happily for National Grid planners, so too is Gwyddelwern. Yet at some point, to get further south, the north-south pylon line will have to plough through national park land - either Eryri or the new one.
Unless the new national park – based partly on the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley AONB - is scrapped or delayed significantly, Dr Dean suspects undergrounding will be needed here.
In the Senedd this week, Rebecca Evans, Cabinet Secretary for economy, energy and planning, stressed the Welsh Government favours undergrounding new power cables 'where possible' - and not just in designated landscapes. She has set up an independent advisory group to agree principles for the 'most appropriate solutions for Wales'. The group is due to publish its findings by the end of June.
For Rory Francis, undergrounding is better than pylons but the idea leaves him uneasy. 'My understanding is that you would need to excavate a corridor the width of a six-lane motorway,' he said. 'On pristine mountainsides, this has the potential to be very destructive.'
Burying cables is also costly: the energy sector claims undergrounding can be five to 15 times more expensive than draping cables on pylons. Aberconwy MS Janet Finch-Saunders argues the gap is shrinking all the time and upfront costs are soon balanced out by depreciation and maintenance.
An added factor is the expectation that wind energy development in the Irish and Celtic Seas will one day dwarf on-shore wind farms in Wales. If the north-south route runs down the spine of Wales, a host of landing sites for on-shore connections will therefore be needed. Each will require cable trenches to be dug.
It's for this reason that many people would prefer sub-sea transmission cables, seemingly a neater solution all round. Among them is Dwyfor Meirionnydd MS Mabon ap Gwynfor, who pushed the idea in the Senedd this week. In a fortnight or so, he will learn if this is indeed the 'most appropriate solution for Wales'.
Another is Prof Terry Marsden, chair of the Alliance of Welsh Designated Landscapes. He said: 'We support the routing of necessary new conveyors of energy through coastal waters, such that they do not provide a landscape hazard to the public.'
In 2009 a sub-sea route was envisaged running to Pembroke from Anglesey's planned Wylfa Newydd nuclear plant. On several occasions since, the plan has been dusted off but never implemented.
The other pylon routes
Pylon opponents are are not optimistic. They've been here before. Three separate pylon routes are planned running up and across the country from Carmarthenshire to north Powys and into England. They've been proposed by Green GEN Cymru (GGC) to link the electricity network with planned wind farms in Mid Wales.
With the decarbonisation clock ticking, there's suspicion the company couldn't sit on its hands and wait for the north-south route to be devised and built. In February, a public consultation was lauched for the updated northern section – the Vyrnwy Frankton Project – which will run from Cefn Coch to Lower Frankton, Shropshire. It will pass near places like Llanfair Caereinion, Meifod and Llanymynerch.
A 4.8km section will be undergrounded near the Tan Y Foel Quarry but the remaining 45km will be a 132kV overhead line, with 171 pylons, each 28.5 metre-high, spaced every 280 metres. GGC told the BBC it was 'acting now' to build a green energy network for Wales that will 'tackle the energy crisis, the climate crisis and the cost-of-living crisis'.
The three GGC routes have caused uproar, with local protests, roadside banners and court actions against reluctant landowners. Schoolchildren have marched and handed out leaflets as rural communities combine in an attempt to stop the seemingly unstoppable.
In some places, campaign literature has borrrowed from the iconic Cofiwch Dryweryn (Remember Tryweryn) grafitti. This immortalised the battle to prevent the flooding of Capel Celyn to create the Tryweryn reservoir so that water could be exported to Liverpool. The slogan has been cited as the 'inspiration' for the latest efforts to block the 'extraction of Welsh resources'.
Dr Dean is not overly comfortable with the water-pylons comparison. 'We are not drowning homes or displacing people,' he said. "What we are doing is bequeathing to future generations a post-industrial landscape on beautiful parts of Wales.' Sign up for the North Wales Live newsletter sent twice daily to your inbox
He is sure the north-south line will happen regardless. If it must be built, it's the better technical solution, he said. In which case, believes Dr Dean, many of the GGC pylons will be rendered redundant, gently rusting with disuse across the country. 'Wales will have pylon lines built that are ultimately unnecessary,' he said. 'And bill payers will have to pick up the cost.
A coalition of groups has begun working together to push the idea that the north-south link should be off-shored. A website has been set up inviting the public to lobby their local Senedd Members – eight of them have already signed a Statement of Opinion supporting the idea.
This campaign is being run jointly by Cymdeithas Eryri Snowdonia Society, Alliance of Welsh Designated Landscapes, Campaign for National Parks, Friends of the Brecon Beacons, Friends of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, Cambrian Mountains Society, Friends of the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley, the Gower Society and the British Mountaineering Council. You can find details here.