The proposals for the new Beauly to Denny power line rest on a lot of assumptions about imminent growth in the supply of renewable energy sources in Scotland – what kinds of new generation capacity will be built, where they will be sited, how quickly they will get up and running, and how much electricity they will produce. They also make assumptions that the best way to carry the electricity is overland, overground, and along a certain route.

All of these assumptions are open to question.

At present, developers have submitted hundreds of applications for permission to build huge new wind farms (sometimes more appropriately called wind factories, because they are industrial rather than rural in nature), over a lot of Scotland’s upland areas. SSE’s application to build the new power line seems to assume that many of these will get permission, and will come on stream over the next few years. But there is increasing opposition to wind factory development for a whole range of reasons – from concerns about the damage they will do to the landscape, through a belief that onshore (inland) wind power is not the best or only answer to our need to generate as much electricity as possible from renewable sources, to a deep scepticism that they have much to offer at all.

There are many other ways in which electricity can be generated from renewable and less-polluting resources. These include offshore wind farms (located out to sea), tidal energy, wave energy and biomass (using wood products to produce heat). There are exciting possibilities opening up for the development of all of these – along with the possibility that Scotland could become a world leader in tide and wave power. To do this will need government investment – and that will mean diverting subsidies away from onshore (inland) wind factory development.

So it is quite possible that there won’t be enough new inland wind factory developments to justify a major new power line being built through the centre of Scotland. Because if the investment gets moved over to wave and tide power, it may make more sense for the electricity they generate to be carried on undersea cables – possibly right down to the northwest coast of England.

And even if there is a need for an inland power line, it might be better routed somewhere else – and it would probably be better put underground. SSE contend that underground power lines are prohibitively expensive and hugely damaging to the environment – but recent developments in the technology are reducing both the costs and the damage very rapidly.

All of these uncertainties make Scottish & Southern’s proposals for the new power line highly contentious. And this is all going on in a situation where government – at both the Holyrood and the Westminster levels – has simply not got its act together, and set out its strategy and policies with respect to the future provision of the country’s need for energy. Huge amounts of money are being spent on inland wind factories, and prospectively on the new power line, without any clear idea as to how this will fit into the overall pattern of providing the energy the country needs, at least cost to the environment. So it is not at all clear that these developments are appropriate – but the public will have to pay for them, through taxes and electricity prices and damage to the environment and people’s health, regardless of their usefulness.

Increasingly, and from all sides of the political spectrum, we hear calls for the urgent development of a clear, coherent, comprehensive strategy for how the UK, and Scotland in particular, will meet the future needs for energy while minimising damage to the environment and to people. This should include:

Working out how much electricity will be needed to be transmitted, over what routes, and by what technologies, and how this can best be achieved, at minimum cost to the environment and to people.

These issues have very far-reaching consequences. Constructions such as power lines are likely to stand for 50 – 60 years: beyond the lifetime of most of us. Wind factories have an expected life of 25 years. Decisions made about them will last a generation.

These issues are far too important and far too controversial to be left to the power industry to decide on its own and unchallenged, particularly now that the companies which provide us with energy and its infrastructure operate in a commercial, profit-oriented situation, where they are answerable first and foremost to their shareholders and not to the public. The issues need to be decided at the highest level, by independent judges, taking account of all areas of expertise and all shades of opinion. Matters such as this often warrant the setting up of a Royal Commission.