#green-gen-cymru — Public Fediverse posts

TOWY VALLEY: Ministers want new power lines buried by default. So what happens to the 22-metre poles?

The power lines planned down the Towy Valley could face a much tougher test, after ministers proposed making buried cables the default for new lines of this kind in Wales.

If the plans go ahead, big steel lattice pylons would be ruled out for new lines of up to 132kV, the voltage of both Green GEN Cymru routes, and anything overhead would be allowed only by exception. Even then, it would have to hang from wooden poles or something shown to be less intrusive.

That leaves a question hanging over the 22-metre steel poles the company now wants to use instead. The Welsh Government is asking for evidence on “wooden poles, monopoles (wood or steel) or other less visually intrusive types of overhead line infrastructure”.

It has not said whether the new rules will apply to schemes already being planned. The consultation closes on 15 January 2027.

Towy Usk and Towy Teifi: the 22-metre poles campaigners say are not low

Last month Green GEN Cymru said it was swapping the lattice pylons on both routes for single steel poles around 22 metres tall, with a prototype due in early 2027.

The company had put the lattice pylons it planned at around 27 metres tall. It says one line of the new poles can carry what might otherwise take up to four wood pole lines side by side.

Campaigners in Llandovery were not convinced. A spokesperson for the Llandovery Pylon Steering Group said a 22-metre pole “is not a low wooden pole, and it is not less intrusive infrastructure”.

Green GEN Cymru said last year that burying the lines in full was not economically viable. Executive director Andrew Hardcastle said in September the monopole gave the company “greater flexibility”, alongside its wooden poles, lattice structures and undergrounding.

Adam Price’s pylon pledge, in a constituency both lines cross

Adam Price, the Cabinet Minister for Enterprise, Connectivity and Energy, whose Sir Gaerfyrddin constituency both lines cross, said: “We’re delivering on our manifesto commitment to end the use of steel lattice pylons and ensuring the default position for new electricity lines in Wales are underground.”

In May he went further, telling S4C there would be “no new pylons and distribution lines in Wales that are part of our control”.

The Welsh Government says the plan delivers a Plaid Cymru manifesto promise to “immediately prohibit the use of large steel lattice pylons for new 11-132 kV lines in Wales”.

Price acknowledged the other side of it: “We know the necessary changes in the way energy is generated and used in Wales will require new grid infrastructure, however we also know that new infrastructure can impact on the communities and the environment that hosts it.”

Burying power lines costs more, and electricity bills pick up the tab

Burying cables is generally more expensive to install and maintain, and brings its own disruption while the work is done, the Welsh Government says. The cost of the network is “ultimately met through utility bills”, it says.

On the other side of the ledger, it says buried lines are less exposed to some types of severe weather and can reduce harm to birds and other wildlife.

Underground first: the three tests a new overhead power line could have to pass

Planning policy in Wales already prefers new lines underground “where possible”, weighed against cost. If the new approach is adopted, anyone wanting to go overhead would have to show, with evidence, why a line should not be buried.

The Welsh Government proposes three tests for when an overhead line might be justified: where burying it does more harm to the environment, where it is not physically possible because of geology, geography or engineering risk, and where it makes the project financially unviable.

Both Green GEN Cymru lines end at a new substation planned at Llandyfaelog. The Gwynt Glas floating wind farm already plans to bury its cables all the way there from the Carmarthen Bay coast.

Underground-first pylons plan: where to send a response

Responses can be made online at gov.wales before the deadline, with a further statement on next steps due early in the new year.

People can also email [email protected], or write to Energy Division, Welsh Government, Cathays Park, Cardiff CF10 3NQ.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

POLES APART: Towy Valley pylon firm swaps steel towers for 22-metre poles, just five metres shorter
The new design for the two lines to Llandyfaelog, and why campaigners are unimpressed.

CELTIC SEA: Giant floating wind farm will come ashore at Carmarthen Bay, with every cable underground
Gwynt Glas, and the drop-ins from 17 to 19 November.

“Greed energy, not green energy”: Carmarthenshire communities fight back
The packed Pumsaint meeting where the pylon plans met their opposition.

OWNED BY WALES: The plan for a public energy company that keeps wind farm profits here
Adam Price’s other energy consultation, open until 30 November.

More on pylons from Swansea Bay News
All our coverage of the power line plans.

CELTIC SEA: Giant floating wind farm will come ashore at Carmarthen Bay, with every cable underground

The 1.5GW floating wind farm planned for the Celtic Sea expects to plug into the grid at Llandyfaelog, and it plans to get there underground. That sets it apart from the two contested overhead lines heading for the same village from the north, where the fight has been over pylons.

Gwynt Glas says its drop-in sessions next month will focus on the onshore works, and project director Mark Hazelton is inviting people to come along and “understand where the cables might go”.

So far the answer is a boundary rather than a line. The scoping area the developer has lodged with the Planning Inspectorate hugs the whole Carmarthen Bay coast, from Folly Farm and Tenby in the west to Burry Port and Llandyfaelog in the east.

The Inspectorate’s project page says the grid connection is expected at the new National Grid substation proposed at Llandyfaelog, with underground export cables from the landfall and a second, onshore substation built near it. Several landfall and cable route options are still under consideration.

The map marks three points of interest inside or beside that boundary: Folly Farm, the National Botanic Garden of Wales and Ffos Las Racecourse.

Pylons from the north, cables from the sea: Llandyfaelog’s substation gets busier

The National Grid substation went out to its own public consultation in June 2025. The plan is a 400kV site around 6km south of Carmarthen, reached from a new access road off the A484 between Llandyfaelog and Idole.

National Grid said at the time it was proposing the site in response to connection requests from Green GEN Cymru, whose Towy Usk and Towy Teifi lines both finish there, and from the local distribution network.

Those two lines have met fierce opposition across Carmarthenshire. Last month Green GEN Cymru said it was swapping its steel lattice pylons for 22-metre single poles, a design campaigners in Llandovery called neither low nor less intrusive.

Now the seaward side of the same substation is coming into view, and on the developer’s plans there are no poles or pylons in it: subsea cable to the shore, then buried cable to Llandyfaelog.

Three drop-ins, 17 to 19 November, all at the Llandyfaelog end

The first session is at Llandyfaelog Community Hall on Tuesday 17 November, from 11am to 4pm, with Pembrey Memorial Community Centre taking the same hours on Wednesday 18 November. The Princess Gwenllian Centre in Kidwelly hosts the last, an evening session from 4pm to 7pm on Thursday 19 November.

Nothing has yet been announced west of Laugharne, even though the boundary takes in Tenby and Folly Farm. For anyone who cannot get to a hall, the information boards, maps and feedback forms go online at gwyntglas.com from 16 November to 11 December.

Mr Hazelton said the project was “at an important stage” of its design. “We are committed to delivering our project with communities and local knowledge is vital to helping us get this right. We want to design a project that not only delivers clean, secure energy but also respects and supports the local environment and communities.”

He added: “Whether you want to ask questions about what is proposed, understand where the cables might go or share your thoughts on local environmental considerations, please come along. The team is looking forward to welcoming everyone.”

42km out, 369 square kilometres, and a decision taken in Westminster

The turbines themselves would sit around 42km off the south-west coast of Pembrokeshire, across an array of roughly 369 square kilometres, according to the Planning Inspectorate. The water there is too deep for turbines fixed to the seabed, so they would stand on floating platforms anchored by cables.

At up to 1.5GW the scheme counts as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project. It will be examined by the Planning Inspectorate and decided by the UK Secretary of State, with a separate marine licence from Natural Resources Wales for the Welsh waters it crosses.

The developer filed its environmental scoping report in June, the first formal step towards that application. The Inspectorate’s note of a meeting with the company in May records that it intends to use standard cable laying and trenchless methods where available, with a survey of the export cable corridor planned for spring 2027.

The site has moved closer to shore since EDF and DP Energy first announced the project in January 2022, when the area of search covered 1,500 square kilometres around 70km out and the target was 1GW.

Gwynt Glas is now owned in equal thirds by EDF power solutions UK and Ireland, Irish state energy firm ESB and Japanese trading giant Sumitomo, which bought in during August. Pembroke Dock-based DP Energy continues to provide development support.

It is one of three floating wind farms awarded sites in the Crown Estate’s Round 5 leasing, which together are expected to power more than four million homes. Port Talbot is among the ports tipped for turbine assembly.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

POLES APART: Towy Valley pylon firm swaps steel towers for 22-metre poles, just five metres shorter
The two Green GEN Cymru lines that end at Llandyfaelog.

Residents of small Carmarthenshire village to have say on new substation plans
National Grid’s 2025 consultation on the Llandyfaelog site.

CELTIC SEA: Japanese giant Sumitomo buys into 1.5GW wind farm planned off south west Wales
How the three-way partnership came together.

CELTIC SEA: 21 underwater microphones are listening for whales and dolphins before the floating wind farms arrive
The seabed survey under way where the turbines would go.

Everything we have written on the Celtic Sea

“Greed energy, not green energy”: Carmarthenshire communities fight back against wave of energy park and pylon plans

The people of north Carmarthenshire say they are staring down an unprecedented transformation of their countryside — one that could leave turbines on every hill, pylons in every valley, and centuries of heritage carved up by access roads and quarries.

At a packed meeting in Pumsaint earlier this month, more than a hundred residents crammed into the Coronation Hall to hear what campaigners describe as the “industrialisation” of rural Wales. The gathering, organised by the Carmarthenshire Residents Action Group (CRAiG Sir Gâr), was called to rally opposition to a series of vast energy projects now on the table.

The mood was one of anger and disbelief. Speaker after speaker warned that the county — long branded the “Garden of Wales” — was being turned into what one campaigner called a “Net Zero sacrifice zone.”

A county under siege

The proposals are staggering in scale. In Brechfa Forest, the Welsh Government‑owned company Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru is planning the Glyn Cothi wind farm, with 27 turbines towering above the treeline. To the north, Galileo’s Bryn Cadwgan Energy Park would see 25 turbines straddling the Carmarthenshire–Ceredigion border. Bute Energy’s Nant Ceiment project, just south of Lampeter, adds another 13 turbines to the mix.

Alongside them come two major pylon routes from Green GEN Cymru, designed to carry electricity across the Towy Valley and into the National Grid. Campaigners say the lines will slice through farmland, villages and historic landscapes, including the scheduled Roman fort at Pumsaint and the unique Dolaucothi Roman Gold Mines.

For residents, the cumulative effect is overwhelming. They fear Carmarthenshire is being earmarked as the dumping ground for Wales’ renewable ambitions, with little regard for the communities who will live in the shadow of the infrastructure.

“Ignored by Cardiff”

Havard Hughes, spokesperson for CRAiG Sir Gâr, told the meeting that people felt abandoned by their political representatives.

“Residents are shocked by the sheer scale of these developments,” he said. “Yet they are the utterly predictable result of Welsh Government designating a third of Carmarthenshire as an industrial wind zone in Future Wales 2040. Communities face a decade of disruption as roads are carved through countryside, bridges built for massive machines and quarries blasted out of hillsides. People are looking for support, but so far they feel ignored — both locally and in Cardiff Bay.”

Others went further. One Brechfa resident of more than fifty years said the projects were not about sustainability at all: “This isn’t green energy, it’s greed energy. Gwynfor Evans would be horrified at what this government is doing to its own country.”

Clash of visions

Developers insist the projects are essential if Wales is to meet its climate targets. Bryn Cadwgan’s backers say the scheme could power 115,000 homes and bring investment to one of the most rural parts of Wales. Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru argues its Glyn Cothi project will generate enough electricity for 144,000 households while creating jobs and improving access to Brechfa Forest for walkers and cyclists.

Green GEN Cymru, behind the pylon schemes, says it is investing nearly £1 billion in strengthening Wales’ energy infrastructure. “We will always seek to reduce the visual impact of our projects wherever possible,” a spokesperson said, though they added that fully undergrounding the lines was not economically viable.

Bute Energy, which is developing the Nant Ceiment site, claims its projects could deliver £3 billion of inward investment, create 2,000 jobs and generate a quarter of the energy needed to meet the Welsh Government’s 2035 renewable target.

But campaigners remain unconvinced. They argue that the benefits are being overstated, while the costs — to landscapes, tourism, farming and heritage — will be borne locally.

A fight for the county’s future

The language from CRAiG Sir Gâr has grown sharper in recent months. In July, the group warned that Carmarthenshire was being “concreted over” and that the removal of the county’s 18 Special Landscape Areas had left communities defenceless. “Before future generations ask ‘how grey was my valley,’” Hughes said, “there needs to be a moratorium on piecemeal renewables development.”

The group insists it is not opposed to renewable energy, but to what it sees as a chaotic, developer‑led rush that risks destroying the very qualities that make Carmarthenshire special.

For now, the immediate focus is on the Bryn Cadwgan consultation, which closes on 1 October. But campaigners are clear that this is just the start of a much bigger battle.

As one resident put it in Pumsaint: “We should be leaving the planet in a better state for future generations. Instead, we’re being asked to sacrifice our countryside so that foreign companies can profit. That’s not a future we’re willing to accept.”

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