Questions now from the party leaders. On behalf of the Conservatives, Paul Davies.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, yesterday, you said that hope is needed to tackle climate change and that people need confidence and trust to make changes in their own lives, and yet this debate generally motivates the usual collection of think tanks, celebrities, politicians and pressure groups. Of course, in reality, much of what is needed will rely on people and families changing their behaviours—how they travel, what they eat and the energy consumption and efficiency of their homes. We can't get that shift in culture just by a top-down approach; we do need a national conversation that recognises that this problem needs local and individual solutions. The point I'm making is that we need to take people with us on this journey, so can you tell us how you intend to engage with people directly on this issue? What assurances can you give that the Welsh Government will help with any costs that families may face in adopting more climate-friendly actions?

I thank the leader of the opposition for that point. It's a point I agree with. I think I said in answer to an earlier question that the Climate Change Committee tell us that about 60 per cent of the actions needed to reach net zero in Wales by 2050 will rely not on the things that Governments do, or even on what great corporations do, but on what each of us do in our individual lives. COP Cymru will be a real opportunity to have the sort of conversation that he refers to, and climate change Week in Wales at the end of this month will be a further chance for us to bring those voices from right across Wales who are very determined to make their contribution around that virtual table together.

He's right; this cannot be simply a top-down set of actions, nor, indeed, a top-down-led conversation. They have to be conversations led in every part of Wales by all the sorts of organisations that are prepared to play a part in it. I quoted a moment ago, Llywydd, the 'little habits together' changes that children in Mynydd-y-Garreg spoke of; in the same document, Llansaint Women's Institute commit themselves to being recycling warriors in their own community. We should take some heart, Llywydd, I think; these are huge challenges and it is easy for people to feel that it's all beyond them and that there is nothing that they themselves can do, but our recycling targets in Wales and the success we've had together, through the actions of local groups and local authorities, I think tell us that when we take those actions, the small things we can do individually add up with things that our friends or neighbours and others in our communities can do, and together, we really can make that difference.

Yes, First Minister, and as nations come together at COP26, we have a crucial opportunity to make some serious progress in tackling climate change. Of course, it requires nations working together, and I hope that the Welsh Government and all Governments across the UK will do just that—build consensus and seek to work with partners internationally to make the progress needed to start addressing climate change. The message is clear: we need to secure global net zero by the middle of the century and we need to reduce emissions by 2030 to keep 1.5 degrees of warming in reach. 

Among other things, tomorrow at the summit, there is a focus on finance and on how to mobilise public and private finance flows at scale for mitigation and adaptation. First Minister, can you tell us how much funding the Welsh Government has currently earmarked for the development of infrastructure needed to transition to a greener and more climate-resilient economy? And can you also tell us what the Welsh Government has done so far to source private finance to help fund technology and innovation on this front?

Let me begin by again agreeing with what Paul Davies said about the importance of countries working together. My day at this conference began by sharing a platform with the Prime Minister, with the First Minister of Scotland, and the First Minister and deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. That was a deliberate decision amongst us all to appear together to emphasise not just the work we are doing within the individual components of the United Kingdom but the way in which those actions add up to something that makes a real difference at a UK level.

In the audience at that event there were world leaders from up to 40 other countries around the globe, and it was an opportunity both to meet a number of those leaders but also, by sharing a platform together, to demonstrate to them that the local actions we take in Wales, which contribute to the actions that the United Kingdom is able to take, are then onwardly connected to the actions that are needed across the globe.

I'm afraid the Member will have to wait until the Welsh Government's budget is laid next month to see how we will plan to invest in the necessary infrastructure to help the actions that are needed in transport, in renewable energy, in housing and so on across Wales. We will set out the successor to the Wales infrastructure investment programme, the 10-year investment programme that we are just ending. We will have another decade ahead of us, and we'll set that out alongside the budget in December.

I agree with the point that Paul Davies made about the importance of private investment in all of this. In fact, private investment will dwarf the investment that is made by public authorities. What we have to do in Wales is to use public investment to crowd in the investment that will come from private investors. We are certainly doing that in Wales, for example in the renewable energy field, where the actions we take as a Welsh Government—in making sure that there is an adequate planning regime, a consenting regime, that we play our part in the necessary infrastructure—bring into Wales the investment that then comes from private companies who invest in Wales to create the renewable energy of the future. And the success we've had in that field, I think, demonstrates that here in Wales we are using our public resources to make conditions in Wales the conditions that allow that additional and far more extensive investment that private companies will have to provide if we are to reach the goals that we have set for ourselves.

First Minister, earlier this year, the Climate Change Committee said that current plans in Wales were simply not sufficient. Indeed, of the 61 risks identified by the committee in its risk assessment of the impact of climate change in the UK, it was worrying to see that 26 of the risks have increased in urgency since the last report back in 2016. Only one in Wales, just one, has decreased in terms of its urgency score since the previous assessment. This week, as you gather with other world leaders at COP26 in Glasgow, I hope you'll take the opportunity to learn from other nations and incorporate new thinking into your Government's policies. Therefore, First Minister, can you spell out for us today what action has been taken since the report from the Climate Change Committee in June? Given the need to accelerate progress and ensure the people of Wales are able to afford to switch to more climate friendly actions, what lessons have you already learnt from COP26 on how we can tackle some of these problems here in Wales? What impact will COP26 have on your Government's policies going forward?

The Welsh Government's response to the committee's investigations is of course set out in our net zero plan published last week. Just for a moment, it's important, because, in the way that Paul Davies said, I want to come away from COP giving people in Wales confidence and hope that, by acting together, this problem does not lie beyond us. And what the plan shows is that we are confident now we will have reached our target in the first carbon budget round to 2020, that we are on track to achieve or to succeed the target we have set for 2025, but that the next five years, the years of this Senedd term, have to be years in which we take those additional actions that will put us on track for the target we've laid down for 2030. Paul Davies is right, Llywydd; there is more to do and more urgent action that needs to be taken. We've taken some of the easier steps already, and it's the more challenging yards that lie ahead of us.

Of course, being in COP is an opportunity to learn from others, and that's exactly what I'm trying to do here. I've had, for example, conversations today with leaders from Bangladesh and from Tanzania. For both of those countries, climate change is not something that they worry about for the future; it's happening there now. Rises in sea levels mean that parts of their communities are seeing today the impact of climate change in their daily lives. Part of my being here, and part of what we will get through other Welsh Ministers, but also third sector and other Welsh organisations that have come to Glasgow, will be a wider repertoire of ideas, looking at things that have been attempted in other parts of the world, sometimes learning of things that need to be done differently and sometimes learning of those successes. Being here is an enormous opportunity for us not simply to tell other people about things that we are doing in Wales, but to learn from them so that we have that wider repertoire of actions that we can take in Wales to allow us to meet the goals we've set ourselves, not just during this Senedd term but on the path that lies beyond it.

Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price.

First Minister, COP26 is the last chance for world leaders to take action in order to safeguard the future of our planet. Westminster holds many of the powers to make a difference, but there's nothing precluding the Welsh Government from taking action now and insisting that full powers for the economy and energy are brought home here to Wales. Liz Saville Roberts has a Bill before the Westminster Parliament at the moment that would lead to the devolution of the Crown Estate to Wales. In this Parliament, Plaid Cymru has called on a number of occasions for those powers, and you are on the record yourself supporting that demand. So, during your time in Glasgow, will you be raising with Boris Johnson the need for a package of new powers for Wales as a matter of urgency? Can you tell us more about your assessment of the length and breadth of the additional powers required here in Wales?

May I thank Adam Price, Llywydd, for that question? I am supportive of the purpose of the Bill that Liz Saville Roberts has presented to give greater options and to put those options in our hands so that we can deal with issues here in Wales. The CCC said that approximately 40 per cent of the issues that count towards our objectives for 2050 still remain here in Wales, whereas 60 per cent remain in the hands of the United Kingdom Government.

In the context of this conference here in Glasgow, we have published a number of documents that illustrate the powers that we would like to have to help us to do more to contribute to the United Kingdom effort as a whole. There will be an opportunity to build on the outcome of this conference post the conference so that we can do more, not just on our own but in collaboration with others. That is something that I have already learned in less than one day up here in Glasgow: I've learned of the possibilities that can be forthcoming when you share ideas with other nations, both within the United Kingdom and outwith it. 

Thanks to our wealth of natural resources, Wales has an opportunity to be at the forefront of the green industrial revolution and to be a world leader in the climate energy response. It was heartening to see that, I think, in the three years to 2018, there was a 20 per cent cut in emissions, but between 2018 and 2019 it was concerning to see that that reduction stalled. The committee on climate change, in its latest assessment of progress in Wales, gave the stark assessment that the lack of a cohesive, economy-wide strategy for 2050, at both UK and Welsh Government levels means that Wales is not currently on track for the 80 per cent target, let alone net zero. How confident are you, Prif Weinidog, that the new Net Zero Wales plan that you referred to will, in the committee’s next assessment, represent the cohesive strategy that has so far been lacking?

Well, Llywydd, can I just say that we are confident that we will achieve the 2020 target? We measure these things over five years because the target is very vulnerable to single-year distortions. The leader of Plaid Cymru is right that there was rapid progress in the first part of the first five-year programme, less so in the second half. But that is just in the nature, I think, of the way that this particular subject operates. We are on track, we believe, to hit and exceed the second carbon budget—the budget that will be declared after the end of this Senedd term. But as I said in an earlier answer, there is more we have to do in these five years to make sure that the people who sit in the Senedd after this five-year period can be equally confident of reaching a target we have set for 2030. Unless we’re prepared to do more in this Senedd term, we won’t be on track to do that, and that’s why our plan commits us to those practical actions.

And as I said in an earlier answer, Llywydd, these things are challenging, and they’re challenging for every Member of the Senedd, because while we can agree, in principle and in prospect, that we must do more to persuade people, for example, not to use their cars, when it comes to specific examples in particular constituencies, Members will be under pressure to take a different view of that. We’re, all of us, going to have to be prepared to grapple with those challenging decisions in every aspect of our lives, and together, to do the things that will make that difference. Our plan, we believe, sets us on that track. But without that determination, not just in Government, but across the political spectrum and beyond that as well, then that journey will be very difficult indeed to accomplish.    

One example of where Wales has huge potential is in producing green hydrogen by using our massive tidal power—largely latent tidal power capacity, but very, very significant on an Europe and indeed global scale—off both our northern and southern coasts. In grasping that opportunity, is it the Welsh Government’s policy to reject blue or grey hydrogen, which uses fossil fuel to produce the gas, and focus exclusively on green hydrogen, using 100 per cent renewables? Shouldn’t we reject the attempt by the fossil fuel industry to greenwash its impact in the same way that we did also with fracking?

Well, I thank Adam Price for that final question, Llywydd. He’s right to describe tidal power as a nascent technology. It was deeply disappointing to me in the comprehensive spending review that we heard nothing from the UK Government about how it is to help to solve the single greatest barrier to liberating the contribution that can be made from tidal power by creating a pathway to commercial exploitation. Here in Wales, we are making significant investments in the developmental side of those new technologies. But, inevitably, the power that they produce in the early stages is more expensive than more mature technologies. We have to find a pathway to market for tidal energy, and the UK Government has to play its part in that by supporting the price of that electricity during the period that it is developing that pathway. We heard nothing on that, and that really does not help us to make that nascent industry a real industry here in Wales.  

In answer to the Member's question on hydrogen, there’s very little indeed to be said in favour of grey hydrogen. The UK Government has a twin-track approach for blue and green hydrogen. We don't agree with that. Our plan is clear: that what we want is to rely on green hydrogen only, certainly by 2050. There is, I think, a different debate about whether in the short run there is some part that blue hydrogen can play, provided it is clear that it is on a pathway to green hydrogen exclusively, and I think we are at least open to that debate. But the Welsh Government's position is different to the UK Government's position on this. It's not a twin-track approach; it's a track to the use of green hydrogen only.

And I entirely agree with the final point that Adam Price made: we cannot allow the fossil fuel industry to greenwash its actions. Fossil fuels will become a thing of the past during the lifetime of many Members of this Senedd. That journey is inevitable and we need to commit ourselves to it wholeheartedly.