I had a very timely visit last week to the Pen y Cymoedd windfarm. For anyone not familiar, it's the largest onshore windfarm in England and Wales, and it straddles the top of my constituency and several others. It has got 76 turbines, hardly any of which are visible from the valley floor, and in an average year it will power the equivalent of 188,000 homes. To put that in perspective, that's about 15 per cent of Welsh households—a really important contribution. It has also put a lot of money in the Welsh economy; 52 per cent of the original £400 million investment went directly to Welsh firms, and this secured work for more than 1,000 workers in Wales during its construction. It has created apprenticeship opportunities, and it has also protected the environment and boosted biodiversity. I'm a species champion for the nightjar, which nests at this site, so I've welcomed the opportunity to be able to follow this aspect of their work.

The windfarm has also operated a particularly ambitious community benefit fund. Each year until 2043, £1.8 million is available for businesses and groups across the Cynon, Afan, Neath and Rhondda valleys. And importantly, I think, the fund hasn't been imposed by external agents. Rather, the people who have been involved in drawing up the vision are the local experts—people who live and work in those communities, who know and use local services, who understand the area they live in, what's available and what's missing. This fund has been supporting communities since the windfarm went operational in 2017. Between then and April 2021, in my constituency alone, 129 organisations and businesses have been directly supported. That funding, just to groups in my constituency, is worth around £3 million. Some grants are small, for example hundreds of pounds made available through a microfund grant, but other funds, accessed through the vision fund, are more substantial, for projects that contribute to delivering the communities' vision.

So, what's been supported with that money? Well, businesses, choirs and cultural groups, mental health support and well-being promotion, environmental initiatives, community halls, heritage projects, sports teams, family groups, schemes to support older people and to commemorate those who served their country. The fund has also supported transformational large-scale projects like Aquadare, the popular splash pad in Aberdare park. It's helped repurpose St Elvan's church to become an attractive community space, and it's played a role in creating the newly opened Cynon Linc community hub. The fund has supported everything from arts societies to defibrillator charities, and, more recently, it launched a COVID emergency fund, which can be accessed to provide urgent-needed cashflow or to support diversification for something COVID-specific. Over £0.5 million has been distributed through that to support 32 businesses and organisations, and it's enabled a further 23 COVID response projects to get off the ground and support those most in need within local communities.

It's clear that we need renewable energy. But with that, we need projects that benefit their communities. Turning to the third point of the motion, that calls on Welsh Government to insist that developers of energy projects must prove the community benefits of their proposed developments by having to conduct community impact assessments and present a community benefit plan as part of the planning process. I fully agree with this proposal, and I'd like to see us empower our communities to have the very highest expectations from community benefits, to co-produce plans for community benefits and to think more about upfront investment schemes, such as one seen in Scotland recently, where the community weren't content with the traditional fund that local good causes could apply into, and instead, what they wanted was a fleet of electric cars that could be shared by the village, and they got it. The opportunities for community benefits are truly endless, but this potential can only be fully exploited if people are given ideas and information about what is possible.

I just want to close by noting one important point that the motion omits, and that's how we can best encourage community and co-operative energy production. The cross-party group on co-operatives and mutuals heard last week from various speakers who all emphasised the benefits of community schemes. Robert Proctor of Community Energy Wales, for example, described how 100 per cent of the profits from these go to the local communities that control them. They produce green energy at a local level, but they also create—