Well, I’m delighted to take part in this debate and I’ve read with interest the paper that has been produced by Simon Thomas, but I have some difficulty in understanding how such a company could, in practice, make any material difference to the provision of power in Wales if it doesn’t have access to capital from private markets. I assume that we’re not thinking of setting up a nationalised energy company. Of course, there is a role for co-operatives and so on, but that is not likely to make more than a marginal difference to the current state of the market. I’m not opposed to this, in principle, but I do see certain practical difficulties in bringing it about to make a difference.

I do have some difficulty with some of the claims that are made in the context of this paper, on which the proposal is based, which I’ll come to in a moment. But, I mean, the background to all of this is the Climate Change Act, and this is explicit in the foreword to the document. We have an obligation to reduce our carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. We need to be absolutely clear that this can only be done by imposing colossal costs, both on households and businesses in Wales. In considering, as we heard in the last debate, that we have some of the poorest parts of not only the United Kingdom, but also western Europe, that is a significant burden that has to be taken into account.

The costs of the Climate Change Act distributed amongst the population in 2014 were £5 billion per annum. This is reflected in our electricity bills, as well as parts of the costs of providing ourselves with power, which are met by companies and feed into the power bills in other ways as well—a combination, therefore, of direct green taxes on the one hand and increased generating costs on the other. That figure of £5 billion in 2014 will rise to £14 billion a year in 2020. Let’s put these figures into real perspective. What does it mean for average households? In 2020, the average household in the United Kingdom will be paying £584 a year for the obligations that we’ve assumed under the Climate Change Act. In 2030 that figure will have risen to £875 a year. By 2050 it will be £1,390 a year extra that people are paying on their electricity bills. Those are in constant prices today. So, in the 16 years between 2014 and 2030 the average household in Wales will pay an extra £11,000 in the costs of electricity. That is not an insignificant sum and, of course, the further down the income scale you go, the greater the burden that is felt. So, we have to be pretty clear that what we’re doing is worthwhile and ultimately to the public benefit. I don’t believe that that is the case.

It is said in the justification for this change that there is a list of present and future challenges facing energy supply in Wales. It refers to, for example, increased incidents of erratic weather events due to climate change. I know of no evidence whatsoever to justify that claim. In fact, the evidence is all the other way. What is it that we are seeing in world weather patterns that is any different from any time in the last 100 years? The data sets, of course, beyond that are not available, so we can’t compare like with like for a very long period. So, we’re making dramatic assumptions on the basis of inadequate data, on the basis of which we’re imposing real burdens upon real people. I don’t believe, as legislators, that it’s a responsible way for us to behave.

If we just take hurricanes, for example, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the climate alarmists in the world said that, you know, the end of the world was nigh and we had moved into an era of greater volatility that was going to impose massive costs upon the world. Well, the evidence of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, which go back to 1851, is that no major hurricane of category 3 or more has hit the continental US since Wilma in October 2005. So, we have the longest pause on record, and the NOAA says:

It is premature to conclude that human activities—and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming—have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane…activity.’

In the bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in 2015, there was a very interesting article upon understanding trends in extreme storms and the state of knowledge. That noted that there was:

No significant trend in the number of US hurricanes hitting the US since 1900; the increase since 1970 appears to be natural variation.’

The variation occurs within years and within decades, but not over the whole length of time of the data sets. This experience could be replicated for tornadoes, for droughts, and all sorts of other natural weather conditions.

In the course of five minutes, of course, I can barely begin to argue this point. But all that I would like to say in conclusion in this debate is that there is no scientific basis that we can rely upon unambiguously to justify the vast costs that we, deliberately, as legislators, are imposing upon ordinary and vulnerable people.