It's Not Easy Being Green Power to the People

We take electricity for granted...

Most people just think that electricity comes through a cable

in the ground to your house and that's it.

..and never give a second thought to how it's made.

The flames are nice and bright and bushy.

But behind the scenes,

our power companies are struggling to keep the lights on.

BEEPING

National Grid want that energy now,

we can't afford to miss that instruction.

This winter, we could face blackouts.

I can't say, "I'm sorry, you'll have to turn your fridge off."

It's a fire at a coal-powered fire station.

Power stations we've relied on for 50 years are coming down.

Bills and profits have gone up.

Is anybody home?

How can these profits be fair

when the people cannot afford to pay for their energy?

The energy giants are under fire from all sides.

People hate you, let's be honest. They don't like you guys, right?

I've been told to go hang myself by a customer.

Right, I'm trying to help you, sir. Hello?

Now one of the country's biggest, SSE, has let the cameras in.

Filmed over one critical year...

Basically, if we don't generate enough, the lights will go out.

..this is a surprising story of a hidden world...

Voila, une turbine.

..as an army of workers...

Good morning!

..battle to keep our power flowing.

We need to make a saving of half a million pounds.

Where?!

This time...

This is the biggest transmission project ever undertaken in the UK.

..the story of a revolution in our energy...

It works. It's free.

..a giant gamble on going green.

The power that we generate, I don't think is worth it

for the impact that you have.

But at what cost?

When there is no beauty left, what then?

Tower coming down.

It's not Government money, it's our money.

Everybody wants to know why they can't get enough electricity.

British Electricity plan to build another 25 power stations by...

In the 1930s, Britain embarked on a huge transformation -

to bring electricity to every home.

There lies its greatest task -

to carry into every corner of the countryside

the labour-saving gift of electricity.

Each power station plays its part in replacing

the labour of the German prisoners returned now to their own country.

For a way to plenty is the power line which reaches out

over the hills.

Now, 80 years on, a second revolution is underway.

In the desolate mountains of the Scottish Highlands,

a group of Irishmen are planning something big.

They're about to build a final turbine in the UK's newest wind farm.

I'll put it on for you.

Today, it's all being led by a man known as "Chicken".

-INTERVIEWER:

-How many hours does it usually take, in good weather?

In good weather, if you've had a good start,

you're looking at eight hours, maybe.

Eight-and-a-half hours, you can have a complete turbine built.

Why do you call Chicken Chicken?

Cos he eats a lot of chicken!

Francis is called Fatty for the obvious reasons.

Come on!

Today, weather is not on their side.

There's a storm closing in

and in an operation involving large cranes, huge heights and heavy loads,

strong wind is, ironically,

the one weather you can't build wind turbines in.

The weather's very, very changeable up here,

especially way up in the mountains.

So, hopefully, we'll beat the wind. That's the plan.

The build starts by constructing the tower in which the turbine

and blades will eventually sit.

Three hollow steel sections must be lifted and stood

on one another, end to end,

eventually to make a tower 70 metres tall.

The base section weighs around 60 tonnes.

It's lifted by crane

and guided towards the tower foundations.

OVER RADIO:

The crane lowers the base section over the team below.

Just a massive LEGO set, that's all it is.

It'll all bolt together. Get your bolts in, keep going, keep going.

With the base section fixed to the foundations,

the team climb to the top

ready to receive the 55-tonne midsection.

They're guided slowly together,

like shuttles docking in space.

In these conditions,

it's a precarious job, requiring pinpoint precision.

That's it. It's on.

With two tower sections in place,

now comes the most difficult part - the top.

It's the lightest in weight,

at a mere 40 tonnes,

and is lifted 70 metres above ground level,

where the wind is at its strongest.

Just now, it's borderline. That's the way it is at the minute,

so we'll just watch it and, hopefully, today,

we'll have a full turbine up.

With a 27-metre steel cylinder hanging above their heads,

there's no room for error.

LOUD CLUNK

The tower is complete,

but the most difficult lifts, the rotor and the turbine,

are still to come.

Now let's see what else is in the wind.

And what better than that grand old monument to man's ingenuity,

the windmill?

We've been harnessing the power of wind for centuries,

but only in recent years have we attempted it

on a national scale.

Britain's first commercial wind farm has started generating

electricity in north Cornwall.

Our trusted fossil-fuel power stations

are seen as ageing liabilities

since our politicians signed us up to

a series of legally binding emissions targets.

Politicians at the Kyoto climate conference

finally announced overnight that they had reached an agreement.

It's very good for the environment,

reducing those greenhouse gas emissions,

and it's been good for Britain that we played a major part in it.

The British Government committed to a tougher greenhouse gas target.

Instead of reducing them by 60% by the year 2050,

the new target is 80%.

We have to reduce our emissions to just 20% of what they were in 1990,

one of the harshest targets of any nation in the world.

It's forcing us into an expensive transformation

of how we feed our energy addiction.

In the Highlands, Chicken and the gang are still trying to finish

the UK's latest wind turbine.

OVER RADIO:

The final task is to make the rotor -

three blades measuring 42 metres in length -

all locked into place inside a central hub.

But incoming weather is not looking good.

From tomorrow on, it's looking bad,

so the pressure's on to get this rotor built and up tonight,

even if we have to work on, we're going to have to get it done.

They must complete the turbine today

so that it's structurally stable

before the storm hits tomorrow morning.

With the sun now setting,

the race is on to get this 43-tonne rotor in place before nightfall.

As they say in France, voila un turbine!

Why are we going so mad for wind?

It works. It's free.

It costs a lot for a turbine, but wind's free

and it's not going to stop.

You're always going to have wind.

Do you think they're building too many turbines?

You look at Germany - a very wealthy, powerful country -

it's covered in them.

Covered. And they're still building them.

And they're going to keep building them. Why? Because they work.

You're always going to have wind.

It's turbines or nuclear.

HE SCOFFS

Easy choice for me, like.

I don't want a nuclear plant beside my house.

Don't particularly want a wind turbine beside it either, mind you!

This wind farm has cost £90 million,

funded by us through our energy bills.

It joins 492 other wind farms across Britain

and will be the 47th operated by energy giant SSE.

But they leave us with an expensive problem.

This is where they pylon men turn spacemen.

Pylons themselves certainly have their own kind of grandeur

as they march across the land.

Many of the UK's power lines were built in the 1930s.

They don't have the capacity to carry all the energy renewables produce

from the edges of the country to the cities that need it.

In response, SSE is building a huge new power line,

known as the Beauly to Denny line.

When completed, it will stretch 137 miles down the spine of Scotland...

..from the town of Beauly in the north to Denny in the south,

where it will plug in to the National Grid.

Up to 800 contractors a day are labouring to build it.

It's a project Ewan Macfarlane has been working on

for the last five years.

This is the biggest transmission project ever undertaken in the UK.

I think, even when they built the National Grid,

it wasn't done in such big stages as this. This is a first.

In order for all these renewable targets that we've got to meet,

this had to go ahead.

So it was, I suppose, in the nation's interest.

This thing will probably be... It'll last longer than I will, anyway.

How is all this paid for?

We recover that money through the customer's bill.

How much does this cost?

I think, by the time we complete it,

I think it's about £690 million,

is what this is going to cost.

Easy if you say it quick, eh?

That was the figure I was told, anyway.

Hopefully it comes in a bit cheaper.

HE CHUCKLES

Today, a five-mile section of new pylons is being strung with cable.

Over this difficult terrain, there's only one way to do it.

Taking charge of the operation is Andy Simpson...

known to his workmates as "Chopper".

-Your nickname?

-Yes, aye.

Unfortunately, the nickname Chopper stuck with me about three years ago.

I've not been able to shake that off.

Presumably, that's because of the helicopters, nothing else?

I believe so.

THEY LAUGH

That nickname won't go away if you film things like that!

Chopper's job is to co-ordinate the helicopter from the ground.

It's used to pull the heavy cable through the pylon's arms

from one end of the section to the other

in a process known as "stringing".

It's a job he's been doing all down this line for the last three years.

Right, here we go.

Guided by Chopper,

the pilot must thread the cable through running blocks -

wheels at the end of the pylon's arms -

and all whilst he hovers just metres away.

The length of cable can then be pulled through,

as the pilot continues to the next tower.

Chopper races ahead to co-ordinate between the pilot

and the ground team feeding him the cable.

Have you got much left on that drum?

What does that mean?

That's three layers of wire left on the drum that he's pulling.

We'll count them down - three layers, two layers, one layer.

Two layers, received.

Two layers, Nick.

OK. Stop, stop, stop.

OK. All stop. Brakes on.

A cable drum only lasts around 1,000 metres,

roughly the distance between two pylons,

so Chopper has to ensure drums are quickly replaced and connected

to make one long, continuous span...

..all whilst the helicopter hovers.

OK, Nick, brakes are off. Good to go.

There are six arms on all these pylons,

meaning the helicopter must fly end to end six times.

The stringing is only complete

when the helicopter picks up a drum of earth cable,

a wire that protects the whole system from lightning strike.

It's threaded through the tops of the towers

and spooled down until it reaches the very end of the section.

-Andy.

-Fantastic. That was really good.

Brilliant, man.

The earth wire spooled out, that's us finished.

-Good day.

-Good day, yeah.

Excellent job.

With the final cable secured,

this section is complete,

but there's still plenty of work to do before the line can go live.

Sir John Lister-Kaye owns the House of Aigas

and its sprawling 300-acre estate

near the start of the Beauly to Denny line.

The house that the man built on the island there,

cost £20 million to build...

..and it's now on the market for £5 million.

As a result of the power line?

Yeah. Oh, definitely. He's got a pylon right in his garden.

Sir John fears 600 new pylons, standing up to 65 metres tall,

will ruin the land near his estate,

including the home of one of Britain's rarest animals,

the wildcat.

That's where it goes through wildcat habitat, there,

and we found scat, which we had analysed,

which was definitely wildcat scat.

Scat is...?

Poo, yeah.

Sir John was just one of many who opposed the line.

With 20,000 objections, it's one of the most objected to

construction projects in Britain.

OK. We'll go up into this...

There you are.

That's how intrusive it is.

Take your pick.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

eleven, twelve.

We have 5,000 to 6,000 schoolchildren a year

who come here to learn about land use,

we teach environmental education, that's what we do here,

and so, obviously, I feel quite bitter

that that has been imposed on us.

What do you see when you look at those?

I see them as a utility.

They are a means for getting electricity from one place

to another.

I don't see them as a great feat of engineering.

I don't think there's anything

particularly clever about the engineering

and it's the impact in very, very sensitive places like this

that I find is so objectionable.

BIRDSONG

Boils down to priorities, doesn't it?

Do you know how this is paid for?

You can bet your life that it's the poor old punter

who will ultimately end up paying.

In our frantic rush to hit renewable targets,

it's not just expensive new wind farms and huge new power lines

we're turning to.

We're also making ever-increasing demands

on our oldest form of renewable energy.

For five years, man battled with nature,

a battle apiece, to harness nature to serve men's needs.

Water trapped in a man-made lake becomes power,

160ft high stands the dam,

a concrete cliff to gather and conserve the waters from the hills,

and send 200,000 tonnes an hour down to the power station below,

and into Loch Lomond the water will empty, when its work is done.

One of the best views in Scotland

is when we go up round this corner here,

especially on a nice, bright day. Beautiful.

Bobby Bennett has been working on the hydroelectric schemes

high in the Scottish hills for 14 years.

He's part of a team known as "the water men",

who roam the mountains,

making sure every drop of rainwater

can makes its way into man-made channels,

and that nothing stops its flow down to the lochs.

What kind of stuff have you pulled out of here before?

Sticks, dead leaves, branches,

the odd dead animal.

Not very pleasant.

That's why we have Davie here. He's good at that!

Hydroelectric usually only produces 1.5% of our electricity,

but it's being called on more than ever before.

Last year, its output went up by a quarter, a new record,

and it's down to the water men to keep it running.

There was a bit of heavy rain the last couple of nights,

so it's washed down an old dead sheep,

it's got caught in the screen,

and we just have to clean that off so that the water has a clean run.

There's no point being SHEEPISH about it!

Just got to go and do it.

Pretty bloody rancid, I can tell you.

So, what we do with that, we just leave that there,

and we'll contact the local farmer,

and he'll come and dispose of the carcass that's left.

That is stinking!

HE LAUGHS

DJ, you just stand there? You don't do the sheep?

Aye, I'm skilled. He's unskilled.

THEY LAUGH

This afternoon, Bobby, Davie, Steve and Ryan

are tackling one of the most important jobs

in the hydroelectric world.

You take one side and I'll take the other.

Ditch-digging.

So, this will catch all the water from this side of the hill,

coming in to the aqueduct.

We don't have water, the machines don't run.

At the end of the day, it's as simple as that.

And this gives us extra water.

And then round there...

Quite primitive but very effective...when you see it.

But constantly digging ditches can upset some of the local residents.

-They're voles.

-Wee water voles.

-Water voles.

Watch...

Just to give it a bit of protection. Hopefully it'll be fine.

You wouldn't want someone to go through your own house like that

if they didn't help you out in some way, shape or form afterwards.

It'll be fine. It'll scurry off

and find another ditch to live in. There's plenty of them.

Not a bad office to be in, is it?

A view like that.

Not many people get to work in a place like this.

You can actually see the water starting to flow in the ditch now

and obviously, when the rain comes,

the whole ditch will wash itself out, which is good,

and in two years' time, it'll just close over again.

So, by the time we get from one end to the other,

it's generally time to start again at the other end

and work your way back.

Each ditch may only add a trickle but, together,

these streams carry huge amounts of water into the loch below

and eventually make electricity.

But re-routing rivers, flooding land and constructing dams

has caused problems downstream with young salmon,

known as smolts.

Naturally, the smolts are heading down the river,

they're coming down the loch here,

and obviously they can't get past this structure here, this dam.

If they don't find their way through here, we have a bit of a problem.

Alastair Stephen is an ecologist working for SSE.

There are fears that dams might be stopping young salmon migrating out to sea.

The dams were originally built with a side route for the salmon,

known as a fish pass,

but Alastair is concerned that not all are getting through.

What we are hoping is that the smolts find their way effectively

into the fish pass and downstream.

Alastair has a plan to find out

just how many are making it through the dam.

It starts with him catching as many smolts as possible upstream.

I've had a number of people phone up and say, "There's a crashed

"aircraft in the river." But that's called a rotary screw trap.

That's it in the river down there.

You meet people for the first time and you say, "I work for Scottish

"and Southern Energy." They think you are a meter reader or something

and they can't think that...

Why would you be employing a freshwater biologist?

But luckily they do.

This bank along here, in the autumn, can be absolutely heaving with

chanterelle mushrooms.

Two years ago, I spent a whole week just eating chanterelles.

Another handy thing for wearing these at this time of year.

The place is heaving with ticks. Deer ticks and sheep ticks.

Young salmon have to get out to sea to become adults.

Eventually they must return to spawn.

If they are stopped, the population could be wiped out.

I'm a passionate freshwater ecologist and I'm also an angler,

so I can see why they are important because I recognise

the benefit of having sustainable population of salmon.

Together with colleagues Lynne and Simon from the Fisheries Board,

he wants to electronically tag young salmon

and track their journeys to see if they are making it past the dam.

No. There you are. Do you want to go and do it?

It doesn't catch all of the smolts

but it catches a proportion of them coming down.

Ready? Ouch.

-Oh!

-I'm pleased that's finished.

How many have you got there? Half a dozen?

Half a dozen. There were a few in.

We are anaesthetising the fish

so that we minimise the stress on the fish.

You can tell when the fish is anaesthetised

when it starts going onto its side...like that.

There's no anaesthetic in the water?

It's actually a chemical called benzocaine.

This is 115mm...

..and it weighs 14.2g.

Then a tiny incision there and the PIT tag is carefully inserted,

and that starts to heal in just a few hours.

Ultimately, who pays for all of this? It just comes out of the bill?

Yes. Yes. Everybody pays.

If we didn't do this sort of work, our regulator can shut us down.

They can stop us generating if we are not seen to be a prudent operator.

With hydro producing more electricity than ever,

and plans for new schemes, it's starting to face fierce opposition.

Salmon stocks are in a terrible state.

They've declined by about 40% since 1970 and that's

because of all the things we've been doing to these rivers,

taking water out, building dams, you name it.

We've been throwing everything at these fish. In fact, it's a wonder we have any left.

If people have come a long way

and spent a lot of money fishing for a week, and they can spend

thousands of pounds fishing for a week, and they haven't caught

anything, they love someone to have a pop at and to blame

and we are one of the obvious targets.

I mean, I have been called a liar at meetings.

That's quite difficult to square with,

especially if you're running the meeting and taking the minutes.

The power that we generate

I don't think is worth it for the impact that you have.

Really, rivers would be best left as nature intended them.

It's my job just to suck it up

and get on with the work that we're meant to be doing.

-So you're going to put those back?

-Do you want to let those...?

My hope for the salmon that we tag today is that they make

it to the sea, the North Atlantic, and a higher percentage of them

return than have done over the last few years.

The controversial Beauly to Denny power line

is snaking its way down Scotland.

Built to take green energy onto the grid from many suppliers,

most of its cables have now been strung.

Ageing pylons built last century that stand along the same route

must now be removed.

Oi! Oi!

INDISTINCT

These are the original towers of the Beauly-Denny line,

so these operated at 132,000 volts.

Obviously the new line, now up to 400,000 volts,

so we don't need these towers any more.

OK, guys, that should do it.

If you can move away from the tower now, please.

If you can stand all clear, please.

-ON RADIO:

-'All yours.'

Roger that.

Tower coming down.

I think there's about 800 or so that have been taken down for

the old line and about 600 towers in total,

end to end, with the new lines.

These towers are probably in the range of about 25m in height.

The new towers will probably be anything between 45 to 65m.

Tower coming down.

How many of these have you cut down then?

On the whole project, probably about...

We're looking at probably getting up to 300.

I was told to come up here in September 2012 for two weeks

and I'm still here.

Roger that. Tower coming down.

-Do you have a hatred for towers?

-No. I like them.

-Do you?

-Yes, I do.

-What do you like about them?

-Just all the steel.

They just look... They just impress me.

-What do you think of the new ones then?

-They're bigger and better.

Jo Cummings tried to stop the power line being built

so close to her village.

What do you see when you look at these towers, these pylons?

Industrial monstrosities.

They are just so much bigger than the previous ones.

Seven times the overall size.

There's no strategy for these pylon lines and the wind

farms or hydro schemes that the other lines

are going to come in from to join to the Beauly-Denny line.

We need to stop and think.

I am not against renewables at all but we need to think far

more about the devastation that has been caused by their construction.

People look at them and think they ruin the countryside.

I don't mind them. I don't mind seeing them.

Going back to when I was a child and they almost kind of looked like people.

I appreciate what they are there for. There is no way, for the whole of the transmission network

throughout the UK, Scotland, whatever...

You just cannot put this kind of stuff underground.

That's why they are there. It's the most cost-effective way of doing it.

People talk about it's Government money. It's not Government money.

It's our money. We pay for it through our electricity bills.

Big energy companies, like big corporations,

they are thinking of their shareholders.

I think they have got far too much power.

Good girl. Good girl.

Britain's largest renewables operator, SSE,

controls all its sites from here.

The operations room at company headquarters.

Here the company can control how much renewable power it sells to the

National Grid and respond to alarms and faults.

It's a system that earns the company

hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

It's all overseen by ex-trader Martin Pibworth.

-So what's going on today?

-Busy.

The last 48 hours has been pretty busy.

The last few days has been particularly wet and windy,

so we had about 800 megawatts flat most of the day yesterday.

BEEPING

That's an alert from National Grid instructing our hydro up I reckon.

-Is that up?

-INDISTINCT

The reason it's such a vocal alarm is obviously National Grid

want that energy now. We can't afford to miss that instruction.

That instruction has been dispatched and that generation's on.

The control room oversees 46 wind farms and 56 hydroelectric sites

across the UK and Ireland, receiving hundreds of alarms each day.

PHONE RINGS

INDISTINCT

That's someone trying to order a pizza on an emergency line, I think!

We've got an alarm there.

There's three of the turbines, they've gone into alarm state,

so we'll call the guys out.

What do you think the public think of the big six?

I don't think we like being described as part of the big six.

It's the big five and us is the first point I'd make.

I'm calling you the big six.

Right, so if we are accepting that we are included in the big six,

you can't get away from the press descriptions of us.

So we hear phrases like fat cats,

we hear that we are treating people unfairly.

Polls that suggest that we are less popular than some other

unpopular members of the business community.

And obviously, I have to be perfectly honest with you,

I think that probably hurts quite a few of us

and, for our staff, it's reasonably upsetting.

All the public will see is profits, bills and subsidies.

Certainly the media portrayal of the industry does not feel fair to me.

I don't necessarily understand them.

The reason for that subsidy is frankly nothing would have

got built without it.

We as a nation want a stable, secure electricity supply

and therefore, personally, I think it's something that we as a nation

should be quite prepared to pay for.

It's not just building renewable sites

that costs huge amount of money but also continuously maintaining them.

At Hadyard Hill in Ayrshire, it takes a team of 20 engineers on-site

every day to keep the blades turning.

Tony Ryan and apprentice Craig have been called to a faulty turbine.

-Whose is that?

-That's mine.

-Why do they call you The Brick?

Because I'm as subtle as a brick through a window,

according to the guys, so that's why I get called The Brick.

I've got nothing... No comment! No comment!

Inspecting and repairing a complex machine

70m above the ground means a climb through three tower sections

and up hundreds of ladder rungs.

I've been here nearly two years and I've never got used to the climbing.

It's hard every day, unfortunately. It's good for you, it's healthy,

but it's the dreaded part of the job, isn't it?

Eventually they reach the nacelle,

the main housing for the turbine itself.

-It's a beautiful spot.

-The best part, the sight.

It's the joys, isn't it?

Not many people can come to work

and enjoy the views like this, like, you know.

Sometimes, on clear days, in different parts of turbines,

you can see possibly Ireland on a clear day.

I don't think people would realise that it moves.

-It rocks.

-A bit of sway.

-You get a good bit of swaying when it's high winds as well.

First couple of weeks when you start the job,

you're sitting in the shower swaying.

You still feel yourself swaying.

But a couple of days up the turbines and you get used to it.

Take a couple of them off us there, mate.

Tony and Craig suspect this turbine has a faulty gearbox.

I'm just basically checking the condition of the teeth

in the gears, making sure there is no cracks, splits,

bits of rust, spalling, anything like that.

We're going to just check for any damage.

Hydraulics on. Go to menu three.

Found quite a heavy standstill mark.

A standstill mark is if the turbine had ever faulted

and it's standing still.

The gears, obviously with the wind, even though it's stopped,

will still kind of cut back and forth

and it causes a lot of pressure on the teeth sometimes.

And it looks like it's quite a deep one, by the looks of it,

so I'm just going to stop it, put the isolations in and I'm just

going to get a look and make sure that it's not forming a crack or anything.

It costs between £20,000 and £30,000 a year to keep

one of these turbines running.

It's estimated that most turbines only produce their maximum

possible power 30% of the time.

But with healthy profit margins, it's still worth building more.

-How many are on this site?

-Wind turbines, 52.

We have 52 turbines here at the moment,

-but that could change in the future.

-Yeah.

I don't know yet, but who knows how many?

-Don't know. Don't know.

-Who knows?

The company is currently trying to extend Hadyard Hill

by building 31 more turbines nearby.

With the Hadyard Hill extension, we are still...

We are looking at potentially up to 150 turbines...

..in a ring around this valley.

INDISTINCT

Lala Burchall-Nolan is leading a fight to stop

the spread of turbines around the valley.

You're a soggy doggie. Who's a soggy doggie?

You're not filming my dog towels surely?

So there are currently six different developments that would

encircle this village if we allowed it to.

Giant, giant industrial turbines. There's another development here.

There's a development here. There's another one here.

And there's one here.

The subsidies for building them come out of your electricity bill.

The vast majority of it is going to these developers,

who are building enormous, giant industrial scale wind farms.

So it's win, win, win. You just can't lose in this racket.

Are you a Nimby?

Well, I guess I must be because I really don't want

an industrial scale development in my back yard.

This isn't just my back yard. This is the nation's back yard.

I have met a few people that are right against wind turbines

because they say that it spoils the scenery. And for some reason

they say they're noisy, but I really don't understand where they're

coming from in noise because there's next to no noise off them,

except from the wind that's passing through them,

which is already making a noise anyway.

They are noisy.

People who tell you that they're not have never been close to them.

They sound a little bit like a slower

version of a helicopter blade.

Would they rather a big power station pumping toxic stuff

out into the air rather than something that's environmentally

friendly creating the power that they need in their homes?

I think we've got to really define what we mean by green.

Having to build new access roads, and if they are de-felling,

deforesting, which they do have to,

they are not as green as people would have you believe.

And when there is no countryside left

and there is no beauty left, what then?

And my question to the 3,000 people whose homes are going to be

powered by 17 of these turbines is, "Put them next to your house then."

Truthfully.

It's three months since ecologist Alastair Stephen

tagged some young salmon.

He's about to find out just how many are making it out to sea.

Salmon need to get out.

They need to get down the river to be able to feed

and come back as adults.

Ultimately, do they get out of our dam?

And if they don't then that's a real problem for us.

The fish pass in the dam was fitted with a decoder to detect any

tagged salmon passing through.

At the back end of it, we have a contraption which is an antenna,

which is designed to pick up the PIT-tagged fish

as they drop through.

We are hoping that quite a high percentage do find their way out,

otherwise their survival will be impacted.

In the dam's control room, colleague Simon is accessing the data.

But it's not the news they were hoping for.

So over the summer there have been very, very few.

So most of the smolts coming down came down within just a few

days of being tagged in the spring.

About 30% of the tagged smolts this spring made it out of the dam,

so there is clearly an issue here.

You certainly wouldn't expect 70% loss

over that length of river system.

The fact that we're only finding 30% finding their way out is

a bit disappointing and...we were hoping for more.

And we need to do some more work.

Right, if you can stand all clear, please.

The work to remove old pylons along the Beauly to Denny line continues.

-ON RADIO:

-'Lovely.'

These unwanted towers lie between mountains

deep in the Cairngorms National Park.

It means there's only one way to get them out.

After this tower has now been felled,

we will cut it up into four sections,

a helicopter will come and fly it over to a place

where it will be cut up.

It's a job coordinated once again by Andy "Chopper" Simpson.

There's a lot of skill involved in what he's doing.

Guided by "Chopper", the steelwork is flown over the mountains to

be dropped at an access track nearer civilisation.

INDISTINCT ON RADIO

He'll be coming right over the top here. You'll be able to see him.

Standing by.

INDISTINCT

All good.

There's around 140 tonnes of steel to be moved in this area alone.

RADIO BEEPS

Standing by.

What did you want to be when you were a kid?

I wanted to be a helicopter pilot - I've not quite made it that far!

There's worse ways to earn a living.

Ecologist Alastair Stephen has discovered young salmon are not

finding their way out to sea due to a badly designed fish pass.

-The midges are out.

-Yeah. It's May.

-I know.

He's decided to take matters into his own hands.

What we're doing is catching the fish here, because they can't find

their way out further down, and we transport them

downstream physically in a truck to bypass this

bit that they can't find their way out of.

-You're basically a fish taxi service.

-We are a fish taxi service.

So we pour them into the transport tank.

This minnow cab service transports

the fish on a 20-mile road trip past stretches of river where

Alastair believes the salmon are getting trapped.

How did you get interested in fish?

HE LAUGHS

I've always thought, when I've driven past a river or a loch,

"I wonder what's in it."

I do have interests in other things but fish do fascinate me.

These things that have got a brain not much bigger

than your thumbnail can navigate across the Atlantic

and come back to the very river where they were spawned.

And they've been doing this since the Ice Age and it would be nice

to make sure that they're still being able to do that

when I'm no longer here.

'It would be lovely to see a return to the

'populations of fish that we had in our rivers in the 1960s and 1970s.'

The release site for the smolts is, as always,

downstream of the lowest dam on the system, so there's nothing

to impede the fish heading all the way to the sea from here.

It's only 5km to the sea from here.

This is a one-off.

Those fish could be, within the next couple of days, hitting the sea.

Modifying the dam is the only long-term solution

but that's costly, so, for the foreseeable future,

Alastair will help Simon transport up to 12,000 fish a year by road.

I don't think the public understand that we could end up with not

enough energy to supply everybody's needs.

There's coal fire power stations coming off-line for various reasons.

There's nuclear, it's coming to the end of its life.

Basically, if we don't generate enough,

especially at certain times of year, the lights will go out.

Renewable energy is not the perfect solution,

it is part of the solution,

as is probably nuclear, probably gas,

and probably still some coal.

We need it all.

The Beauly to Denny Project is on the brink of completion.

Only one major task remains.

This is the last tower to be completed

on the Beauly-Denny Project. Once this is finished, that's it.

We've been putting up towers for close on four years now.

This will be the 600th pylon built across 137 miles of wilderness.

In total, the line has used 22,000 tonnes of steel

and nearly 1,000 miles of cable, all for green renewable energy.

-How does it feel?

-Marvellous.

Because it's a milestone for the last tower to go

up on the Beauly-Denny line and it's a big achievement.

Erecting this final tower is a crack team from the Philippines.

Good morning!

MUSIC: Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke

Come on, boys.

LAUGHTER

Right, boys, we're here today. This is the last tower.

-How do you feel about it? Happy? Sad?

-Happy.

You don't look very happy.

LAUGHTER

These specialists travel the world building giant power lines.

They've completed schemes in the Middle East, Australia and Asia,

but this has been one of the longest routes they've attempted.

How long have you been in Britain?

What was the first thing you noticed when you came to Scotland?

How do you live? All together or...?

And you have family back home?

The team build the tower from the ground up.

Each section is lifted

and then lowered as they guide it into position.

They bolt it together

and then scramble higher again to receive the next section.

Working this way, they can get a whole pylon built in just a day.

It's always impressive, do you know what I mean?

To see these guys working and the way they all work together as well.

Every tower is impressive.

Is it a bit different

when you're looking down than when you're looking up?

The guys will just kind of keep going up and keep going up.

I think this is about just shy of 50m, this one,

so these guys will be about 45m

up by the time they actually land the top section.

I don't mind heights - it's the falling!

This is quite a difficult lift this, for this section.

It's actually the landing of the actual tower itself.

It's just like a big Meccano set, joining it all together,

but this is the most difficult part.

INDISTINCT

The final tower will officially be complete

when the crane hook, 55m up, is released by the climbers.

APPLAUSE

-Good.

-Feeling good.

-Finished.

Last tower on Beauly-Denny completed.

Delighted. It's an achievement.

How are you feeling?

I'd just like to say, on behalf of SSE, thanks, everybody.

That's the last tower gone up on the Beauly-Denny line.

Well done, everybody. OK. Thank you.

APPLAUSE

Lads, well done for what you've done.

The effort - absolutely amazing. All right?

I can't thank you enough, what you've done.

LAUGHTER

OK.

I'm counting now. I can see one, two, three, four, five,

goes behind the trees, six, seven, eight.

This has been done in a frantic rush to try

and justify political targets

without it being properly thought through.

If we're going to have wind farms dotting up all over

the Highlands, we've got to get the electricity away,

therefore the sensible thing is to bash on and get it done.

The Beauly to Denny line may be complete,

but there are now plans for five new wind farms near Sir John's home.

It was always going to be the case that endless wind farm

applications would pop up to plug into that pylon line.

And the closer they were to the line, the better it was going to

be for the developer and for Scottish and Southern Energy.

You know, if an intelligent Martian were to land here

and say, "How have you planned your energy requirements?"

I think they would be speechless to discover that, for decades,

we did nothing about renewing our nuclear facility.

It is seen to be politically

unacceptable or unpopular to tell people to use less energy

and instead we just plough on producing more

and more energy at any cost to any thing.

'Try putting together your own power grid with the Open University's

'Power My Postcode interactive tool.

'Go to...

'and follow the links.'