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.