Eileen West has a strange object in her home in Aberdeenshire - a scale model of a huge electricity pylon, built as part of a local campaign against the “monstrous” metal structures.

A new pylon line is proposed just a few hundred metres from her home. The steel towers will typically be 187ft (57m) high - significantly taller than most pylons in Scotland. Some could be as high as 246ft (75m).

They are part of a planned 66-mile (106km) route - between the town of Kintore and the village of Tealing - to transfer power from wind farms off the north-east coast of Scotland to where the electricity is needed.

“I think we’re being sacrificed,” says Eileen, a member of Deeside Against Pylons.

The plans are part of one of the government’s key missions, a drive to decarbonise the UK’s electricity system by 2030. Just over half of our power currently comes from wind, solar, nuclear and biomass - organic matter. The government wants to raise that to 95% by 2030 - just five years’ time.

The target is ambitious, and controversial. Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, told the BBC it is essential to “cut bills, tackle the climate crisis and give us energy security”.

But are local concerns being overlooked to meet national objectives?

BBC Panorama has travelled across the UK - to Aberdeenshire, Lincolnshire and Suffolk - to hear from people in landscapes bracing for change, including Oscar-nominated actor Ralph Fiennes.

In Aberdeenshire, Eileen West denies she is a Nimby, she says the pylons should not be built anywhere.

“These things will be standing for another 100 years. That’s not a legacy we want to leave our future generations.”

While not against green-energy ambitions, she argues that the government should be exploring alternatives that are less disruptive to the landscape.

“This is outdated, archaic technology. In Europe they do better, investing in proper, modern undergrounding and offshore,” Eileen says.

  • UKFilmNerd
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    1 day ago

    Don’t quite understand this attitude of “I don’t care if my children and grandchildren live in a shitty ecological disaster of a world, as long as I see infinite rolling hills of green outside my living room window!”

    • GreatAlbatrossA
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      11 hours ago

      Especially since rolling green hills isn’t even the original UK landscape! We had trees, once!

      • C A B B A G E
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        10 hours ago

        Exactly! Seems like this lot buy into the myth of the English/British landscape as envisaged by 19th century pastoral romantics and Capability Brown. Don’t get me wrong, the Cotswolds is beautiful, but it’s almost in spite of humans rather than because of us.

        Bring back foreboding forests!

    • C A B B A G E
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      13 hours ago

      I think a good number of “those people” fully expect to either be able to weather storm, or be entirely removed from it. They go to countries ruined by inequality and environmental disasters but they never see the results so they think everything is going to be gravy.

      They don’t get affected by anything else, so why should this be any different?