A community balance sheet for Pathway to 2030.
SSEN has told Scotland what Pathway to 2030 may add. This report asks what it may cost.
Status: This evidence-led working draft updates the 1 July report. It does not make findings on unverified matters. It separates verified public record, promoter claims, community evidence, reported estimates, reported local intelligence, public-interest questions and clearly identified inference. Fast-moving incident and project information is dated and should be rechecked before reuse.
The 28 July edition strengthens source control, evidence labels, wildfire and climate-adaptation scrutiny, emergency-resilience questions, conditional BESS handling, mitigation-status tracking and the requirement to distinguish what is proposed, secured, monitored and proven.
Evidence method: Verified public record · Promoter claim · Community evidence · Reported estimate · Reported local intelligence · Public-interest question · Inference.
Wildfire guardrail: The July Cairngorms wildfire is used as a dated system-stress case study, not as evidence that any particular Deveron proposal is unsafe. The PDF preserves its 28 July evidence date; fast-moving incident information should be rechecked before reuse.
Save the Deveron Valley does not reject the need for clean energy, grid investment or climate action.
But a benefits ledger is not a balance sheet. A full public-interest assessment must also count the costs, risks, losses, burdens and irreversible impacts carried by host communities, landscapes, rivers, farms, wildlife, roads, public authorities and future generations.
Communities are being asked to respond before many key questions are answered. What roads would be widened? Which bridges and culverts would carry abnormal loads? Which homes, walls, trees, hedgerows, verges and accesses may be affected? Where would the River Deveron and connected burns be crossed? Which protected species have been surveyed, and in which seasons? Has Scottish Fire and Rescue Service been formally engaged? Could the hub attract or enable future BESS, private-wire, energy-park or high-demand industrial infrastructure? Who monitors conditions? Who enforces promises? Who pays if mitigation fails?
These are not side questions. They are the public-interest test.
Before any preferred Strathbogie Hub site is selected, SSEN and the relevant public authorities should publish a plain-English Full Impact Ledger for each shortlisted site.
That ledger should sit alongside the benefits case and should show what each site would require, what each site would affect, what remains unknown, who has been consulted, who would monitor conditions, who would enforce promises and what happens if mitigation fails.
Plain-English visualisations, not only technical maps. A ZTV map is not the same as seeing what people will live with.
Species-specific surveys, seasonal windows, ecological supervision, stop-work procedures and no publication of sensitive locations.
Crossing methods, sediment control, pollution prevention, private water supplies, fisheries interests and public trigger levels.
Haul routes, road widening, bridges, verges, walls, gardens, school routes, emergency routes, parking and farm access.
Show what is current, discussed, technically enabled, reasonably foreseeable, excluded or left open — including storage, private wire, further bays, generation or high-demand development where relevant.
SFRS, ambulance, police, emergency planning, winter access, firefighting water, hazardous materials and pollution runoff.
Distress, neighbour division, private approaches, unpaid evidence work, fear of speaking out and unequal burdens.
Project-level evidence for whole-life carbon, materials, water, heat, waste, circular economy, training and independent audit.
A project should not be treated as environmentally positive simply because it is connected to renewable electricity, transmission infrastructure or net zero targets.
If SSEN, contractors, land partners, supply-chain companies or associated developers use green language, nature-positive claims, sustainability claims, community-benefit claims or just-transition language, those claims should be evidenced in plain English.
The report asks SSEN to show the carbon, the water, the waste, the reuse, the circular-economy plan, the contractor standards, the climate or carbon-literacy training, the independent audit and the public reporting.
The Deveron Valley is not empty space awaiting a more profitable use. It is home, farmland, river catchment, wildlife habitat, working landscape, cultural memory and community.
The report does not claim that today’s infrastructure process is identical to the Highland Clearances. It asks a careful public-interest question: how does a community already shaped by historic clearance experience another wave of externally driven land-use change?
Displacement is not only eviction. It can also be loss of quiet, loss of landscape, loss of trust, loss of neighbourly safety, loss of access, loss of farming continuity, loss of wildlife, loss of confidence, and loss of the ability to stay without distress.
The reviewed 28 July working draft PDF is available below. The earlier 1 July working draft is retained as an archive. Read the current reviewed edition alongside our submitted SSEN response materials and correspondence audit.
Public-safe note: this page does not publish sensitive wildlife locations and does not present reported local intelligence as proof of a formal proposal. It asks for evidence, assessment, accountability and meaningful public scrutiny.