Market regulation and planning action: burying the impact of electricity networks?

One of the key dilemmas in environmental governance is how to articulate the uneven and intangible qualities of environment (often expressed through land‐use planning) with the dominant objectives of key economic sectors. In this article, these dilemmas are explored by examining the interaction in Britain between the planning system and electricity distribution companies around the long‐running issue of undergrounding, i.e. could companies reduce the visual intrusiveness of their overhead networks by placing more lines underground, especially in valued landscape areas? The research shows that although the consents process, development plans and collaborative endeavours all provide apertures for influencing investment, in most instances companies underground their rural networks to the extent that it fits with their technical and economic priorities. Improving locally embedded partnerships between the main actors is unlikely to change this position significantly. The challenge is to bridge the institutional dislocation between the ‘case‐by‐case approach’ to addressing the environmental impacts of overhead lines in the planning system and the largely a‐contextual, economic imperatives of national market regulation.