Gigawatt power transmission¿environment problems

The bulk transmission of electrical energy in large amounts, i.e. above 1 GW, becomes essential as the demand in urban and industrial centres increases. Although at the present time increase in consumption has largely ceased, there would seem little doubt that, in the long term, electricity will become increasingly the major energy type as resources of oil and gas become depleted. Even with a much smaller rate of increase than the doubling every ten years that has prevailed, it may still be expected that the quantities of energy to be transferred will become very large. Generation will be concentrated in increasingly large units, usually remote from load centres, and implying (certainly in North America) power transfers in the range 10¿20 GW by the year 2000. These vast powers can only be carried economically by the use of very high voltages into the u.h.v. range, i.e. above 765kV