The UK government has named the first 43 transmission projects, mostly in Scotland, whose nearby households will get a £250 annual bill discount for up to ten years under the so-called 'pounds for pylons' scheme. The scheme is funded by adding roughly 80p a year to everyone's energy bill, with payments starting early next year and between 120,000 and 160,000 households eventually eligible. Ministers frame the upgrades, replacing 1960s-era grid infrastructure, as essential to distributing renewable power and cutting bills nationally.
Campaigners like Kate Matthews, fighting a proposed line in north-east Scotland, call the £2,500 total over a decade an insult set against ruined businesses, unsellable homes, and pylons up to 187ft tall looming over the landscape for a generation. National Grid says burying more cables underground, as critics want, would cost significantly more and complicate repairs.
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