Thank you, Presiding Officer. I’m delighted to open this debate, which, perhaps, doesn’t have any link to the previous debate, apart from the fact that pylons are made out of steel. While we still have pylons, let’s make them out of Welsh steel, certainly. But, really, this debate is more around our electricity future, and how we plan, long term, for an electricity future that strengthens our self-sufficiency. Renewable energy in particular in Wales strengthens the decentralisation of the electricity grid to provide room and scope for more community projects to come on board and deals with and addresses a sore issue, it has to be said—that of the visual impact of energy developments in Wales, and particularly the visual impact that is delivered by electricity pylons. Because we all accept that if we’re going to produce electricity in parts of Wales, then that power has to be transported to the places where people need to use that electricity. The fact is that the parts of Wales that are either richest in natural resources for the production of electricity, which tend to be the mountains and offshore, all those parts of Wales that have a history of energy generation, such as Wylfa in Anglesey, will need some form of transmitting that power. But, very often, the visual impact of electricity pylons can be extremely intrusive.

Although, as I’ve dealt with this for 15 years, on and off, in different fora, I’m not blind to the way that people advocate or talk about energy production and pylons, and although I accept, on occasion, some of the opposition to pylons is actually a proxy for opposition to the actual project in the first place, I do think there’s a way of planning better here in Wales. I say that because I’ve seen it myself. I’ve seen alternatives. When I wrestled in a previous Assembly with the mid Wales generation projects—ones that, unfortunately, never got the go-ahead, in terms of renewable energy, due to the fact that the Liberal Democrat Minister jibbed out at the last minute in giving that go-ahead—. But one of the things that would’ve happened in mid Wales was a proliferation of pylons, and there was a lot of concern about the visual impact of those pylons. The concern about the pylons was wider than the concern about the windfarms, though there was concern about the windfarms as well, I accept that.

In particular, there was concern that there could be a significant impact on areas that people perceived as being of great either historic or beauty value for themselves, but weren’t designated as such. You can have areas of outstanding natural beauty and we have national parks; there are rules within those contexts, but an area like Meifod in mid Wales is not an area of outstanding natural beauty by designation, but it’s a very historic area, and it’s a valley that people value. I certainly engaged both with the campaigners but also with National Grid to understand how they couldn’t actually bury the cables to go through Meifod, which was, in the end, an agreement that the National Grid did provide, though it’s not going ahead now, anyway, because don’t have the windfarms that are coming in. And as part of that, I was taken to see a project that the National Grid were running to bury cables in an area of outstanding natural beauty. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in Wales, because they weren’t burying any cables in Wales. I had to go to Herefordshire, I had to go to the Wye valley outside Wales and see it happening for myself.

Now, burying cables is not without any impact at all. It’s quite messy and noisy, and is quite a scar across the landscape at the time. But those of us who’ve seen both cables and the gas pipeline, for example, from Pembrokeshire, buried over the years will know that, in time, the land does restitute itself and the cables are not to be seen, the pipelines are not to be seen and, in fact, you have a temporary blip on a landscape, if I can put it that way, rather than the more permanent blot on the landscape that pylons represent. So, the purpose of today’s debate is to try and get us to move away from some of the local arguments we have around pylons and have a national approach to this, and a national concept of where we want to take our energy production and our planning for that.

Other countries are there already. Germany, last year—well, I say last year, but it was the end of 2015, so it’s a little more than that now—in the Bundestag, passed a power cable law to ensure that major power connections were built as underground cables, rather than overland cables. In Denmark, which I visited last October, there’s been a cross-party consensus for over a decade that major cables, which—in the motion we talked about the National Grid, because, obviously, the local cables are distributing companies’ responsibility and they are looked at differently. But major cables, the National Grid in this context, should be buried. That’s 3,200 km of 150 kV and 132 kV lines to be buried in Denmark as part of their planning for a renewable energy future. So, Denmark is doing all sorts of things, like banning diesel cars from Copenhagen and going to 100 per cent renewable electricity, but they’re burying the cables. They know that people will accept part of the picture. They will accept, perhaps, changes in their landscape that come as a result of a need to move to a more energy-efficient future, but they don’t just accept it at any price. They want to see those who are responsible for planning and producing electricity meeting with them half way. One of the ways we can do that is by ensuring that we have consistent policies across Wales, not just in our national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty, but across Wales, that respect people’s own appreciation of their landscape and allow them to approach that and to underground cables, in effect.

Undergrounding does cost more, and there’s a range of costs—a range of costs that are often quoted at around seven times more. But in fact, when you factor in the fact that underground cables are not subject to severe weather, they are more reliable if you get it right. On getting it right, as I saw when I visited the undergrounding in the Wye valley, it’s extremely important that the engineering is spot on. It’s quite a technical and detailed process, but if you can get it spot on—if you get it right—then you have longevity, and you have a more robust system. All of us would want to see, particularly as we move perhaps to a more responsive energy grid where there will be less over-production—just in case 1 million people put on the kettle at the same time half way through the cup final, or whatever—to a more responsive grid that has local energy production, local distribution, and a national system, then we need to be spot on with our engineering, and that means that we need a much more robust grid that won’t topple over or won’t be affected by severe weather, and will be there and be reliable.

So, when you factor in those factors, the cost of undergrounding goes to between two and five times more than simply putting a pile of pylons over landscape. I just think that’s one of the things that we have to face: that this may cost us more. But as part of developing a much more robust energy system, and one that can be ready for the developments of the future, whether it’s the tidal lagoon, which I want to see in Swansea bay, or developments in Anglesey, inland power or offshore developments with wind—or, even still, because we still have some potential for onshore development in wind—we want to see that undergrounded as much as possible. So, there’d be lower maintenance costs; lower transmission costs; less susceptibility to the impacts of severe weather; and a way of demonstrating to the people of Wales that we want to work with them, respecting their appreciation of their natural environment and working with them to ensure that energy future.

I hope that this debate will allow us to elucidate. Certainly, Plaid Cymru Members want to talk about their own areas, want to talk about decentralising the grid, want to talk about renewable energy, and I hope that the Government’s amendments, which I note don’t go quite far enough—. But I hope that, at the end of this debate, we’ll at least have come to some kind of agreement, so that when we talk to Ofgem and when we undertake the long-term planning of where the capital investment has to be made by these energy companies, we’ll take that opportunity to ensure that it’s made in the name of the people of Wales and in the name of the long-term sustainability and resilience of our Welsh economy.