Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 2:09 pm on 9 October 2019.
I thank the Minister for that response, and I recognise the work that is going on, particularly as a Labour and Co-operative Member, around that community ownership. But back in 2017, the UK Energy Research Centre had a look across local authorities throughout the UK, Wales included, and they found that their engagement in energy management was limited, and they had limited capacity, in fact, to get involved in strategic energy management. This is despite great individual projects, including the one in Caerau in my constituency, the geothermal mine water project. But the report went on to make 10 quite radical far-reaching recommendations, including the idea of a local authority statutory duty to develop and implement area-wide, low-carbon plans, mandatory local planning for low-carbon heat and a central energy efficiency fund dedicated to investment in localised energy provision and services. There were 10 quite radical proposals, and we can’t do them all overnight, but I’m really interested in whether she’s had time to look at those and other proposals to see how we can use the power of local authorities and their expertise and might, with some devolution of funding as well to go with it—because that was one of the recommendations—to transform local energy and put power literally in the hands of local people, through co-operative measures, but also through local authorities stepping up to the mark.