Julie James: As I was saying, the UK Government relies far too heavily on the RAB mechanism for funding these things, which adds costs to customer bills, rather than on general taxation. It is regressive and it places a disproportionate burden on those who can least bear it, which in itself slows progress towards the energy system we need. A different model of investment is desperately required. But...
Julie James: Certainly. I don't think you should be as patronising as that to other Members of this Senedd.
Julie James: Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I very much welcome the opportunity to respond to this really interesting debate, and thank you, Janet, for bringing it forward. And everybody is absolutely right: the climate emergency demands that we use all the tools at our disposal to accelerate progress to a net-zero energy system. We are absolutely committed to moving our energy system away from fossil fuels and...
Julie James: Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Today, I am publishing our consultation on revising Welsh Government's energy targets. Alongside this, I am also delighted to announce some important investment we are making to stimulate the renewables supply chain, driving economic growth alongside emissions reduction and energy security. Our current targets signalled Wales's high ambitions for renewable energy and...
Julie James: Thank you, Janet. I hope your throat gets better soon; I have every sympathy. As you know, I've had a very similar problem myself, so many sympathies there. Just in terms of the Crown Estate, obviously, we are in favour of the devolution of the Crown Estate, and the benefits of that are just really obvious. First off, the revenue itself is worth having, just straight up. So, even if we didn't...
Julie James: Diolch, Delyth. I think there's much to agree on there, and then I can do a bit of an explanation of where we are. So, just in terms of the grid itself, the national grid is one of the worst-named bits of it, really, because it's nothing of the sort; it's a series of different organisations that deploy different bits of the grid. It has been very reactive in the past. It has only responded to...
Julie James: Thank you, Alun. I absolutely agree with the last point. The big issue there is to make sure that the community has the renewable energy it wants and needs, but also there’s a huge piece there about not just community benefits, but proper community ownership. So, we are very keen indeed to facilitate any company that’s building an onshore windfarm—I hope we can do this with floating...
Julie James: Thank you, Mabon. Yes, we would like to have much more control over the national grid, absolutely, because of all of the issues we've discussed endlessly—the need to plan it out, the need for better investment, and so on. So, I think that's taken as read, really. The real issue with a number of projects around Wales—on land, onshore, on sea—has been grid connection, and the real...
Julie James: Thank you very much, Joyce. It's a very good point. We've been working for quite some time now with a range of stakeholders—and I know you know this—to make sure that we do a whole range of things. First of all, we attract the right kind of investment, and there are enormous issues with that. We don't want greenwashing, for example, but we do want proper investment in renewables and in...
Julie James: Diolch, Llywydd. We've made the draft Allocation of Housing and Homelessness (Eligibility) (Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2023 in order to amend the Allocation of Housing and Homelessness (Eligibility) (Wales) Regulations 2014, known as the 2014 regulations, so that victims and survivors of slavery and human trafficking granted temporary permission to stay in the UK can access housing or...
Julie James: Diolch, Llywydd. Just on the consultation point that the legislation and justice committee Chair raised, I'll just reiterate what I said: the amendments brought about by the draft regulations clearly reflect changes to immigration law, which are reserved matters. The changes are quite limited, leaving little or no impact on public services, as compared to present. Any consultation would have...
Julie James: Thank you, Janet. The Welsh Government is investing £293 million in reducing flood risk to coastal communities across Wales through our coastal risk management programme. This will reduce flood risk to over 15,000 properties, and includes, for example, more than £19 million of investment in Aberconwy. An interactive map showing our investment is published online.
Julie James: Yes, thank you, Janet. So, just to be really specific, the Welsh Government have recently awarded grant funding to Conwy County Borough Council to develop a full business case for Llandudno, based on maintaining and improving the existing cobble defence on the north shore. The alternative sand option provides no additional flood benefit, at a much greater cost to the coastal risk management...
Julie James: Yes, Janet, I'm very well aware of Michael Gove's various pronouncements. I very recently met with the then Minister for housing, who's now the Minister for culture, media and sport, I believe—it's quite difficult to keep up—to talk about this. I have asked for a meeting with Michael Gove as well, but I haven't had one since his reincarnation. The programme here is virtually identical...
Julie James: Yes, I'm very well aware of this as well. I've had one of the biggest managing agents in to see me very recently. I have a constituency full of people who have got this problem, so I'm dealing with it locally as well. It's sometimes difficult to separate the building safety from building structure issues, which can be complicated as well. So, we’re looking to see whether we can solve...
Julie James: So, it's a multi-angled programme, basically, and so, what we're having to do is calibrate the budget out to the point where we're doing the remedial work. So, you'll see that we're spending less at the beginning of the programme because we're doing surveys. We have done some remediation. We've obviously done remediation in social buildings that meet the criteria, for example. We're about to...
Julie James: Thank you, Natasha. In 2021, renewables projects in Wales generated the equivalent of 55 per cent of our electricity use. Evidence published alongside our review of energy targets shows there is a pipeline of projects in development to meet our 2030 target, an ambitious but credible route to our proposed 100 per cent target by 2035.
Julie James: Thank you, Natasha. Obviously, I won't comment on individual projects because I'm the planning Minister as well, so I'll make some general remarks about that. Quite clearly, we do want solar to come forward, alongside a raft of other things in the renewable energy market. What we want is to get as many different outcomes from energy projects as possible. So, we're particularly interested in...
Julie James: I wasn't quite sure where the edge was there. It's an excellent project, and one of the things we discussed when we were there—I had the great privilege of opening it, so it's now powering the hospital, helping with their energy and carbon footprint—but one of the big things about it is that it has a hedges-and-edges project around the edge for trees, and it's underplanted with a...
Julie James: Thank you, Huw. Llywydd, I'm in danger of needing to give an hour's lecture as the answer to every one of these questions. I won't try to your patience too much. Suffice to say, Huw, we've already announced that we'll make a state-owned energy development company. Part of the point of that is to build exemplar sites with a lot of community ownership and to exploit the resources we already...
