The following amendments have been selected: amendments 1 and 2 in the name of Paul Davies, and amendments 3, 4, 5 and 6 in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth.

The next item on the agenda is the debate on public sector decarbonisation, and I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs to move the motion. Lesley Griffiths.

Motion NDM6339 Jane Hutt

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Notes the Welsh Government's leadership in implementing actions to decarbonise the Welsh public sector, in line with its statutory commitments within the Environment (Wales) Act 2016.

2. Supports the Welsh Government's aim of accelerating decarbonisation in the public sector to provide further stimulus to the low carbon economy.

3. Supports the Welsh Government ambition that Wales' public sector is carbon neutral by 2030.

4. Notes the forthcoming call for evidence which will seek views on the approach to be taken to decarbonise the Public Sector.

Motion moved.

Diolch, Llywydd. This debate focuses on the important role of the Welsh public sector in meeting Wales’s statutory commitments and ambitions around decarbonisation. The Environment (Wales) Act 2016 commits Wales to a long-term target of reducing emissions by at least 80 per cent by 2050, as well as interim targets and five-yearly carbon budgets. This sets out a long-term framework for decarbonisation offering clarity and certainty to drive low-carbon action and investment.

The Deputy Presiding Officer took the Chair.

At my attendance at COP22 in Marrakesh last November, I clearly saw how transitioning to a low-carbon economy brings many opportunities around energy efficiency, clean growth, quality jobs and global market advantages. This cannot only be seen within the economy. There are wider benefits such as enhanced places to live and work, with clean air and water and improved health outcomes. These wider benefits are the very essence of what the well-being of future generations Act is looking to achieve in the public sector. You may question why I’m keen about taking action specifically in the public sector on decarbonisation when it only accounts for a small amount of our emissions in Wales, currently 1 per cent. However, to achieve the depth of decarbonisation required, leadership is needed at both the national and local levels. The public sector is uniquely placed to influential emissions far more widely through procurement, the delivery of their services and engagement with their communities.

Collectively, the public sector has one of the largest estates in Wales, and, therefore, has an important role in reducing its own emissions and influencing its customers and contractors to take similar action. This means cutting both the direct energy consumption and carbon emissions of the public sector estate and the indirect emissions that come from the provision of services such as education, health and well-being, infrastructure and energy, transport and waste.

This is not a new area for the public sector. Our original climate change strategy focused on actions around the sector improving the efficiency of our schools and hospitals. Alongside this, legislation has been implemented through EU, UK and Welsh interventions, and, most recently, our well-being of future generations Act, which highlights the integral part climate change plays in the delivery of our well-being goals.

The Welsh Government has been supporting decarbonisation in the public sector for some time. Our Green Growth Wales initiative is investing over £2 million per annum, supporting the identification and delivery of energy efficiency projects within public buildings and renewable energy projects. The service provides technical, commercial and procurement support, supplemented by invest-to-save-type finance in a public sector support package unrivalled in the rest of the UK. The savings derived from reduced costs are used to repay the investment finance and provide a substantial economic boost for our businesses. By the end of the current Government term, we expect to have invested nearly £70 million in public sector energy projects.

But the opportunity is much bigger. Within Green Growth Wales’s initial work within the public sector, a pipeline of projects with a capital value approaching £500 million was identified. My officials are currently evaluating the current support and seeking views from the public sector on areas for improvement or additional support.

Our finance will continue to enable benefits as it is repaid and recycled into new projects. Using our money in this way means we expect to enable around £650 million in cash savings on energy and reduce emissions by 2.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over the lifetime of the assets we finance. For example, earlier this year, I was able to announce a finance package of £4.5 million to enable Monmouthshire County Council to build Oak Grove solar farm, which will generate an income of over £0.5 million per annum for the authority and achieve savings of nearly 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide over its life. I was also able to support Flintshire County Council’s LED street lighting programme with a £3 million loan, enabling annual savings of £400,000 for the authority and a lifetime saving of over 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

We’ve also made significant strides in the treatment of waste, with the Welsh Government’s waste programme delivering municipal recycling rates that are the third highest in the world, resulting in dramatically reduced carbon emissions and the stimulus for significant private sector investment in Wales.

In the UK and elsewhere in the world, we can see specific action on the public sector. The Scottish Government have a reporting duty on public bodies where they are expected to report yearly on a number of areas such as governance, export of renewable energy, estimated carbon savings from future projects and procurement objectives. British Columbia has legislated their entire public sector to be carbon neutral by reducing its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero each year. Since 2010, their entire public sector has been measuring GHG emissions, which include energy use from buildings, fleets, equipment and paper.

In Wales, whilst activity to date has primarily focused on reducing emissions from public sector assets and waste, there is already activity under way that explores how a public sector organisation’s actions can directly and indirectly affect total emissions. These emissions are scoped into direct emissions such as company facilities and vehicles, and two forms of indirect emissions: those specifically from electricity purchased and consumed by the organisation, and those from sources not within the control of the organisation, such as procurement of goods and services and employees’ commutes.

Last week, I met with Natural Resources Wales, and it was pleasing to learn about the great work they’re doing within their Carbon Positive project. The project has shown over 80 per cent of their emissions are indirect, with 60 per cent through the procurement of goods and services alone. This shows the importance of not only looking at public sector emissions from their assets, but also their wider activities. NRW have now installed charging points, procured electric vehicles and are looking to improve the energy efficiency of their building, recognising the economic business case for taking action.

To meet our long-term target, the Welsh Government will have to use all available levers to achieve our 80 per cent reduction, whilst delivering real benefits to Wales. It is therefore our ambition to set challenging but achievable decarbonisation targets for the Welsh public sector as a whole, and to ensure senior colleagues in the public sector place carbon reduction and green growth at the forefront of strategy development, programme delivery and decision making.

The Welsh public sector must take a leadership role in an area that will have such a significant impact upon our citizens, communities and businesses. We are committed to further developing the low-carbon economy in Wales, and driving decarbonisation in the public sector in Wales will provide an important and consistent signal for investors and businesses. Decarbonisation in the public sector, whilst challenging, is also easier to achieve than in other areas of the economy. Decarbonisation must therefore be deep, achieved relatively quickly and across all public sector activities. Our ambition is, therefore, that the Welsh public sector is carbon neutral by 2030.

There are a variety of ways in which the ambition can be achieved and how we can monitor progress to enable the public and businesses to see how our commitment is being delivered, and offer opportunities for learning. Next month, I will be launching a call for evidence around this ambition, which will ask stakeholders to set out evidence on the opportunities and challenges around this headline target, have their say on potential interim targets, and how they feel we should monitor and track progress. The call for evidence will help to inform how we accelerate work within this important area. I welcome your views on our ambition around decarbonising the public sector, how we address particular challenges and realise the significant opportunities and benefits associated with this agenda.

Thank you. I have selected the six amendments to the motion, and I call on David Melding to move amendments 1 and 2, tabled in the name of Paul Davies.

Amendment 1—Paul Davies

Add as a new point 2 and renumber accordingly:

Regrets that the Welsh Government has made slow progress in its efforts to set a Carbon Budget for 2016-2020.

Amendment 2—Paul Davies

Add as a new point 4 and renumber accordingly:

Believes that the provisions in the Well-being of Future Generations Act 2015 relating to sustainable development need to have more prominent influence over the Welsh Government's own budget setting.

Amendments 1 and 2 moved.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I do move the amendments in Paul Davies’s name. I welcome the fact we’re having this debate; I think it is an important subject. I also welcome the significant strides that have been taken to reduce the carbon footprint, and the Welsh Government has given some leadership in this area, but I would say, before I’m viewed as being too generous, that we are still short of where we want to be, and perhaps in comparison to some other areas of the United Kingdom, we could do better.

In 2014, the level of emissions in Wales was around 18 per cent below the 1990 level. That compares with the UK as a whole getting a reduction of 36 per cent. Wales accounts for 9 per cent of UK-wide emissions at the moment with only 5 per cent of the UK population. Now, there are reasons for this, such as our industrial heritage. However, it does mean that we’ve got to take this issue even more seriously than other parts of the UK. It’s an overriding issue for them as well, but it does bring with it extra challenges for us.

The Cabinet Secretary mentioned the public sector, which has relatively low emissions, though I think the—. I don’t know if this is coherent, but the multiplier effect that it can have is quite considerable. I mean, the commute for one thing—all those public servants driving into work individually. But we can be more imaginative than that, looking at the way students get to school and the school run. There are many issues that involve public services that generate very high emissions at the moment.

Can I turn to our two amendments? We did want to sharpen this motion somewhat, but they’re both intended to improve our general performance here, and to be constructive. The first, on carbon budgets: now, these are a vital tool in reducing national budgets, but the Welsh Government has been very slow to use this particular tool to date. If I take section 31 of Environment (Wales) Act 2016, it does state that we must set carbon budgets for the first two budgetary periods—that’s 2016 to 2020, and then 2021 to 2025—and that these have to be set, or at least the first one, before the end of 2018. Well, we are, actually, nearly half way through the first budgetary period, and there’s still no imminent prospect of that budget being set in legislation—the deadline has not yet been exhausted. But if you compare the UK Government’s action in this area—and that was taken by a Labour administration, incidentally—in the Climate Change Act 2008, statutory obligations were created for carbon budgets. The Act came into force in November 2008, and the levels for the carbon budgets were announced the following April, in 2009, and they were approved and then entered into force in May 2009.

Will the Member give way?

I’ll just finish this bit. So, that means that there was a seven-month time lag before the UK carbon budget levels were implemented. I give way.

I’m grateful to the Member, and I understand the point he’s making, but of course we know that this new Government that he’s referred to—he referred to the Westminster Government—has a confidence and supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party, who are climate change deniers. The confidence and supply agreement relates to financial budgeting but not to carbon budgeting. Does he expect carbon budgeting to continue in the current administration?

I certainly do expect it to continue. I can’t speak for the DUP but I can speak for the Welsh Conservative Party, and we acknowledge man-made climate change. So, our approach is one of supporting and encouraging the Welsh Government, actually, to go further.

But, anyway, we could move more quickly here, and it’s a pity that we haven’t. I realise I’m going to run out of time if I’m not careful. Can I turn to another, I think, inspiring piece of legislation—the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015? It’s quite clear that it has raised expectations across Welsh economic and public life, and that’s important, but one area of disappointment that’s been picked up by WWF Cymru and Chwarae Teg, and has been picked up by our Assembly committees, and the Finance Committee, which the Member, who has just intervened, Simon Thomas, chairs, is that we’ve been relatively slow in embedding that Act into our own budget-setting procedures. Now, in fairness to the finance Secretary, who is listening to this debate, I’m pleased to say, I thought he gave some ground during the budget process in saying, ‘Well, you know, we’re just starting out but we do realise we’re well short of where we want to be in utilising the future generations Act’. But there, again, I think we need to get that Act really effective in our own budget processes as soon as possible so that they help also to shape the decisions we’ll be making to reduce carbon emissions.

I thank you for your indulgence, Deputy Presiding Officer.

That’s quite all right. I call on Simon Thomas to move amendments 3, 4, 5 and 6, tabled in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Amendment 3—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Add as new point at end of motion:

Calls upon the Welsh Government to establish a national not-for-dividend energy company at arms-length from Welsh Government tasked with increasing energy efficiency and renewable electricity generation in the public sector as part of its remit.

Amendment 4—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Add as new point at end of motion:

Calls upon the Welsh Government to include measures to reduce air pollution as part of its approach to decarbonising the Public Sector.

Amendment 5—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Add as new point at end of motion:

Calls upon the Welsh Government to provide support for the public sector to provide electric vehicle charging points on premises for employees and visitors.

Amendment 6—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Add as new point at end of motion:

Calls upon the Welsh Government to provide support for public bodies to decarbonise transportation with the use of hydrogen and LPG vehicles and similar innovations.

Amendments 3, 4, 5 and 6 moved.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I’m pleased to move our amendments, which certainly are intended to improve the original motion and to make a contribution towards the public debate that the Cabinet Secretary has outlined.

May I start with the two Conservative amendments first of all, and to say, although I understand fully the intention behind the two amendments, the first, I think, is a little unfair because the Environment (Wales) Act 2016 itself sets a date of 2018 for the first carbon budget? We may have all been at fault in allowing that to happen without holding the Government’s feet to the fire a little more effectively. But, certainly, the second point on the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 is fairly made, and it’s one that the Finance Committee has also been promoting, and we will certainly be supporting that amendment today.

The Plaid Cymru amendments—well, there are four, but they turn around three issues, if truth be told. First of all, the establishment of a not-for-dividend energy company at arm’s length from the Government—Energy Wales, which we have been promoting as part of the solution to decarbonising the public sector in Wales. Secondly, to prominently say that tackling air pollution is just as important to decarbonisation as energy itself. In that context, I realise that the Government does have some sort of taskforce—a task and finish group—on decarbonisation, and as I understand it, the Cabinet Secretary for health isn’t on that taskforce. I do think that decarbonisation is as much of a health question as it is a question of energy and use of natural resources.

The third element to our amendments is one that turns around the decarbonisation of transport. A Member has made the point already on the flow of civil servants travelling from place to place. Part of the solution to that is where you locate offices, and decentralising offices from Cardiff and larger towns, but part of the solution, too, is ensuring that things such as vehicle charging points are available in their places of work so that people can make alternative choices in terms of transportation, and that there is public transport, particularly decarbonised public transport, either through liquefied petroleum gas or the use of hydrogen, which has huge potential in Wales, and there is some innovation and skills available in Wales.

So, Plaid Cymru does believe that if these three areas, and the four amendments, were added to the Government’s motion, we would be more likely to achieve the aim—an aim that we do support—of being carbon neutral by 2030.

Now, as the Cabinet Secretary has already stated, although the public estate is small in terms of its contribution to carbonisation, namely 1 per cent, it’s significant in terms of the size of the estate. So, one thing that we could look at is how we can turn buildings on the public estate into buildings that are energy producers—using solar panels on all public buildings in Wales, for example. Whether they’re listed or not, we could just move that towards the future. We could establish a company, as I suggested earlier—Energy Wales—and look at how local authorities can use more low-carbon vehicles, or lower carbon vehicles. When we asked at the beginning of the year, I was told that only Ynys Môn uses LPG vehicles, and I’m sure that there is scope for more local authorities to do likewise.

If we look at other nearby nations: in Scotland, the Scottish Government has invested £3 million to double the number of hydrogen buses in Aberdeen from 10 to 20. In London, we’ve just seen the development of the first double-decker hydrogen bus, and that city has committed to have at least 300 emission-free or carbon-free buses by 2020. So, although we occasionally tell ourselves that we have good legislation here—the Well-being of Future Generations Act (Wales) 2015 and so on—and although we tell ourselves that we have ambitious targets, the fact is that we are not yet in the vanguard, and we do have some catching up to do. As long as the Government is still on track, and is actually speeding on that track, then Plaid Cymru will support these ambitions.

Can I start by saying that I fully support the Welsh Government’s support for decarbonisation? I believe that unless we take appropriate action, catastrophe awaits us, not just in Wales, but across the world. We cannot afford the earth to keep on getting hotter.

The three main carbon-based fuels are coal, oil and gas. Coal is composed primarily of carbon along with quantities of other elements—it’s a fossil fuel created from dead plant material. Crude oil is a mixture of hydrocarbons formed from dead sea creatures. Natural gas is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon mixture consisting primarily of methane, but commonly including varying amounts of other alkanes. It is formed of layers of decomposing plant and animal matter. What do all three of these have in common? They are carbon based.

Burning carbon, assuming sufficient oxygen, will create carbon dioxide. With insufficient oxygen it produces carbon monoxide. How do we know it’s not creating large amounts of carbon monoxide? Because we know carbon monoxide is a serious poison. If we were creating large amounts of carbon monoxide then people would not be alive. So, we know it’s creating carbon dioxide and we know it’s creating carbon dioxide in large quantities. We could even, using calculations on the weight of material we’re burning, work out how much carbon dioxide we are creating.

Greenhouse gas is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere are water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone. Without greenhouse gases, the average temperature of the Earth’s surface would be about −18 centigrade. So, we do need some of them, otherwise we would be far too cold.

So, we’ve got two ways we’re going to die out now, we can either die out from carbon monoxide poisoning or being too cold. So, we need to get it absolutely right. So, some greenhouse gases are inevitable and beneficial, but the more we have, the hotter it gets. That is why it’s important that we reduce our carbon usage.

How can we be sure that greenhouse gases have that effect? Well, you would think the closer a planet is to the sun the hotter it would be, but we know that Venus is further away from the sun—substantially further away from the sun—than Mercury, but we also know that Venus is hotter. We know why Venus is hotter—because 96 per cent of its atmosphere is carbon dioxide.

I’m happy to take an intervention at this stage from anybody who wants to say that they want to deny the fact that we are creating greenhouse gases via carbon dioxide and it is making the Earth warmer. I don’t understand where these people who are deniers of the effect of man-made global warming come from, because it goes against all you get from basic science. Nothing I’ve read out here would come as a shock to a 16-year-old doing GCSEs.

The decarbonisation of the power sector means reducing its carbon usage. That is, the emissions per unit of electricity generated in grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour. This is necessary to achieve the mandatory greenhouse gas emission targets set in the UK Climate Change Act, which requires emissions to be cut by 80 per cent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels. We’ve got to do it, and we’ve all got to do it.

A gradual decarbonisation of the power sector can be achieved by increasing the share of low carbon energy sources like renewables, like: wind, especially offshore wind, which is much more reliable than onshore wind; solar energy, which was very popular and then the Conservative Government, with the help of the Liberal Democrats, decided to cut the subsidy on it; and tidal energy, and I speak as somebody who could speak for the next two and a half minutes on tidal energy, even if you wouldn’t let me, Deputy Presiding Officer. But it’s reliable. It’s the one thing we know—the tide is going to come in and out, as long as the moon stays in place. If the moon’s gone, we’ve got a bigger problem than the fact that the tidal energy is gone.

So, we need to use these alternative energies. We need to use electric cars. We need to start thinking—in those immortal words: there’s only one planet we’ve got; if we destroy it, we can’t go and use another one. That really is the key.

Another argument that has been made is that Wales is too small and it doesn’t matter what we do. What we do as individuals all matters. We know that everyone needs to decarbonise—big countries and small countries, the tiniest islands and the largest countries. Even Donald Trump’s America needs to decarbonise. We need to play our part in ensuring a sustainable world. At what stage do we say, ‘Oh, well, we’ll just go back and start again’? Because we can’t. If the Earth gets too hot, it’ll be impossible for people to live in large parts of it. People will be dying, we won’t be having the food that we’re used to, and water levels will rise. It’s a no-brainer these days: we need to ensure that we decarbonise, and I welcome the decision of the Welsh Government to start doing this.

Thanks to the Government for bringing today’s debate. We are interested in environmental issues in UKIP and, particularly, we are concerned at the worsening air quality. This is an aspect specifically raised by Plaid Cymru in their amendment 4 today. We cannot escape the growing health menace posed by the worsening quality of the air around us, as evidenced by the increasing prevalence of asthma and other related health conditions. Many urban communities in Wales are suffering from worsening air quality and there has been recent evidence that Crymlyn in south-east Wales has one of the worst environments for air quality in the whole of the UK. This is disturbing enough for the residents of Crymlyn, of course, but the reality is that the blight of poor air quality is affecting most of our built-up areas in Wales. We do need to do what we can to tackle this issue and we would back calls for the Welsh Government to include measures to reduce air pollution as part of their programme of decarbonising the public sector. So, we do support Plaid’s amendment 4.

I do take on board some of the points that Mike Hedges just raised regarding what is referred to as denial of climate change. I think, sometimes, the phrase itself is slightly misleading because there is, sometimes, not a denial that climate change is happening, but rather scepticism over how much of climate change is caused by the man-made elements. So, perhaps, sometimes, there are more nuances than a simple, binary choice of whether or not we accept climate change. So, hopefully you will recognise that there are nuances of opinion on this issue.

The Government’s motion as a whole, we do oppose. We think that a lot of effort is expended internationally and on a UK level in attempting to reduce carbon emissions to very little positive effect. Again, I take on board what Mike Hedges just said, that we do need to make an effort in Wales. However, our basic view, our basic premise is that our UK carbon emissions are dwarfed by those emanating from China, for instance. Action to reduce global emissions can only effectively be taken at global level, and must involve binding legislation severely restricting the polluting impact of China and other large-scale polluter nations.

In the UK, there is a considerable negative effect in our efforts to reduce carbon emissions in terms of how these efforts hit the pockets of ordinary people. The Global Warming Policy Foundation produced a report in December 2016 stating that, on average, every British household is paying over £300 a year to cut carbon emissions. This is to pay for the switch to more expensive energy sources in compliance with the Climate Change Act 2008. At Welsh Government level, there is also going to be a cost to the public of implementing these decarbonisation measures, and, ultimately, as several speakers have mentioned today, the Welsh public sector doesn’t make a significant impact on carbon emissions. According to the Welsh Government’s own website, the latest statistics indicate that the public sector is responsible for less than 1 per cent of total carbon emissions in Wales, which the Cabinet Secretary acknowledged in her opening remarks. Another speaker referred to that figure as well, so there seems to be consensus around that figure. So, we do wonder why such great effort is being put into further reducing emissions in a sector that is so very insignificant in the bigger picture.

The European Union’s position on tackling climate change was that all new public buildings needed to be carbon neutral by 2018 and all new buildings by 2020. So, I’d be grateful if the Cabinet Secretary, in her response, can clarify what the position is, because we are still members of the European Union and we are obliged to comply with its regulations. I think it’s really important to recall that the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 obliges all 46 public bodies to address sustainability, and not put at risk the well-being of future generations. So, I commend many of the points raised by David Melding—very difficult to disagree with him on this subject—although I won’t, sadly, be voting with his amendments.

I wanted to use this opportunity to praise the role of wood, the substance, that it can make for Wales to meet its public sector carbon neutral target by 2030. Because the public sector has a huge role to play in showing the private sector the way towards a low-carbon economy, when we currently have the dominant private house builders so resistant to change and continuing to use ways of building that are not in any way properly addressing energy efficiency. It seems to me that using wood in the construction industry, particularly for buildings, is a way of using Wales’s unique selling point as a country well-endowed with land, as well as land that is suitable for cultivating wood. It’s interesting to note that the wood-based businesses are the fifth largest industrial sector in the UK. So, this is a very large contributor to the economy, and timber construction can change the face of sustainable development. But it’s sad that only 15 per cent of the timber we use in construction at the moment is grown in the UK, and the UK is the third largest importer of wood in the world.

Timber housing in Wales is currently less than 25 per cent of all new builds. In Scotland, by contrast, timber frame accounts for over 75 per cent of the new-build market. We urgently need to grow more trees and that is obviously not a quick fix. That takes between 25 years and 40 years in order to be able to harvest. But we also need to build many more houses in order to meet the needs of our population, including council housing and other social housing. The most efficient, low-carbon and high-performance housing throughout the world is based on wood. So, in the past, there was no reason to challenge the role of steel and concrete in construction, but climate change changes that as everything else. People like Michael Green, a Canadian architect, urges us to swap steel and concrete for timber in a book he published in 2012. Steel and concrete are

‘wonderful materials…but…they are hugely energy demanding to produce and have significant carbon footprints’, he said.

‘Climate change and the need for more urban housing collide in a crisis that demands building solutions with low energy and low carbon footprints’.

‘As a renewable material grown by the power of the sun, wood offers us a new way to think about our future. To do so means reinventing wood; making it stronger, more firesafe, more durable and sourced from sustainably managed forests.’

And it’s not just Green who’s arguing that case. Professor Callum Hill, who’s a materials expert at Edinburgh Napier University, points out that timber products lock up more carbon than is used in their production. They decrease carbon dioxide in the atmosphere both by reducing emissions and removing carbon dioxide and storing it. Wood has that unique ability. I commend the action of Powys County Council in adopting a wood-first policy, which is the first local authority in Wales to do that. We can see from what has happened in Hackney in London, which is obviously a local authority with almost no land, and which adopted a wood-first policy several years ago and has won many, many awards for the quality of its housing, schools and public buildings. This is a way in which I feel we ought to be going in Wales. I’d be interested to know whether the Cabinet Secretary has thought about that.

Thank you very much. I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs to reply to the debate.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you to all Members who’ve taken part in the debate. I think in this very challenging economic climate how we respond to the challenges and the investments we make now will absolutely determine the viability of the public sector and our collective future in Wales. We know that decisions we make today will either usher in a new era of collaboration and efficiency, or they’ll lock us into an outdated and, ultimately, more carbon expensive pathway, which will then threaten the delivery of key services.

If I can just turn to the amendments. We won’t be supporting the first amendment. The approach to carbon budgets, as David Melding pointed out, is following the timeline set within the Environment (Wales) Act 2016. The timing of the regulations was previously discussed and voted on when that legislation went through in the previous Assembly. I’m not going to look to bring the carbon budget setting forward. I think we need to make sure that those budgets and the interim targets are at the right levels. They need to be based on robust evidence and, as you said, we do have until the end of 2018. So, that work is ongoing.

We won’t be supporting amendment 2. Carbon budgets will fully incorporate the provisions within the well-being of future generations Act. I am working with the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, who is watching us very closely, believe me, in the decarbonisation area, to ensure that we do fully embed all principles and goals within the Act in all our decarbonisation work, not just within the public sector.

We will not be supporting the third amendment. In considering whether the Welsh Government should either develop or promote a public energy company, it’s really important to be very clear about the purpose of such a body and the potential benefits, risks and costs. Many of the functions proposed by Ynni Cymru are already being taken forward by Welsh Government-funded programmes of support, such as our Warm Homes programme, the Local Energy Service and the Green Growth Wales public sector support office.

Colleagues will be aware from previous discussions that we’ve had a series of events to initiate a stakeholder conversation in March this year, and that was about the potential for such an energy company for Wales, and how this might fit with our role in advancing the process of the decarbonisation of the energy system in Wales. And I think what those events did, really, was provide a very clear consensus around the risks, the challenges and the tensions inherent in Welsh Government setting up and then running an energy supply company, which would heavily outweigh, I think, the potential benefits of doing so. And I think the message that I took away from those events is that we need to focus our resources on filling the gaps, linking up and supporting things that wouldn’t happen naturally.

We will be supporting amendment 4. Actions taken to reduce carbon emissions can also address emissions of air pollutants, and it is important to maximise synergies and avoid unintended negative effects. We will be taking a collaborative approach in the development of our clean air zone framework for Wales and, again, that work will be reflected in the Brexit stakeholder working group on air and climate.

We’ll be supporting amendment 5. We do have support available to the public sector to utilise to deliver electric vehicle charging points, for instance, on their premises, for employees and visitors. And we supported NRW’s Carbon Positive project, which I referred to in my opening remarks, and that led to the installation of such infrastructure. It’s not hugely complex, it’s not cost prohibitive, and I do expect the public sector to simply deliver on that.

And we will be supporting amendment 6. Our Smart Living programme is working with the public sector, academia and business to deliver a range of smart demonstrators, including ambitions around hydrogen. Hydrogen may well be an important energy carrier and storage medium in the future, and as part of this work, we’ve set up a hydrogen reference group that is convening stakeholders right across the sector, with the aim of delivering a hydrogen demonstrator that could involve transport.

If I can just turn to Members’ comments, I think David Melding absolutely grasped why we’re doing this with the public sector, even though it accounts for only 1 per cent of our emissions; it is that multiplication factor that you spoke about. And I am, just to reassure you, working very closely with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government to align our finance budgets and our carbon budgets going forward.

Simon Thomas referred to staff commuting, for instance, and again talked about the NRW Carbon Positive project. It was very impressive the work that they’d done around their staff commuting, getting the infrastructure around low-carbon vehicles. I’ve asked officials to look at doing a similar project across the Welsh Government estate and our officials, and I think we’ll be quite shocked to see what comes out of that. I’m currently going through a procurement process to have electric vehicle charging points put in our estate, and I’m hoping that will be completed by the autumn.

Mike Hedges reiterated that we can’t just have business as usual and the reasons for that. It’s not just about jobs and opportunities that a low-carbon economy brings forward; it is about the health benefits, and Gareth Bennett referred to the need to look at air quality within that. And that’s why we’re supporting amendment 4.

Jenny Rathbone talked about wood being used for the construction of houses, and I’m very keen to see that. And in my bilaterals with not just the Cabinet Secretaries but Ministers also, this is something that we’re very keen on. Julie James and I had a long discussion about skills, because it’s really important that the skills to do that are there. I was very pleased to open Pentre Solar last year, which are houses in west Wales that have been constructed through timber. I absolutely agree with you that we need to grow more trees, and you’re right: the policies that we’re doing now are very long term; we’re talking about 30 years. Last week, I managed to get Confor and NRW in the same room, because it’s really important that we’re not only planting more trees, but we’re planting the right trees in the right places going forward.

I mentioned that our ambition is for the Welsh public sector to be carbon neutral by 2030. I think I’ve set out the evidence that shows that the sector really does have substantial influence in this area, and it’s really important that they show that leadership. And I’d just like to urge all colleagues to respond to the call for evidence on the public sector decarbonisation, so that we have that wide breadth of evidence to consider how we can deliver on this very important issue. Diolch.

Thank you. The proposal is to agree amendment 1. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Therefore we defer voting under this item until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.