4. Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: Net-zero Strategy

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:55 pm on 2 November 2021.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:55, 2 November 2021

Diolch, Delyth. Yes, so, just in terms of how many are new and how many are not, the plan is a snapshot in time that fulfills a statutory requirement. We expect existing policies and proposals to be updated to increase their impact, and we expect new ideas to emerge as our understanding of the evidence improves. So, it's not a be-all and end-all thing against which we'll test everything; it's a living, breathing document, and we're going to go out after COP—. We're going to COP to get a lot of new ideas, we hope. I know many people are going to COP virtually, as well as in person, to get those new ideas, and we'll have Wales Climate Week at the end of November to try to pull all of those ideas together and get the vibrancy of COP, but then we'll have a whole series of events next year, where we go out to new engagement and we test some of the things that we've got to say. So, this isn't meant to be a thing that we measure it against; this is a rolling, iterative programme of things that we're going to do. So, I think it's important to understand that. 

So, the full plan will not be updated on a regular basis; we'll update bits of it as we go along. So, you'd expect to see the transport bit updated when there's a new development in electric buses, for example; you'd expect to see the housing bit updated if there's a new progressive way of doing photovoltaics in Wales, as I really hope there will be, as I saw something really exciting when we launched the plan last Thursday that I'm hoping we'll be able to invest in. So, you'll expect to see bits of it surge ahead as we get to grips with that. And part of that will be engagement. One of the big programmes we've got for next week is behaviour change and engagement, and we expect to see the plan evolve as we engage with our communities and we evolve new ways of engaging people in what we need to do. And I don't mean individuals only there; I mean industrial clusters, business clusters, communities of interest, geographic communities, and so on. So, there is a whole engagement plan to go with that. 

In terms of data, we're working very hard to make sure that the data is the best that we can get, that we understand what it looks like. We'll absolutely upgrade that every five years, as we're required to do, but we'll do that as often and as iteratively as we can, given where we are with the data collection. And you're right, there is a lag in it, so we need to develop as many good ways of making sure we've got the best data we can get. We absolutely do not want to be congratulating ourselves that we've done well off the back of data that's not telling us that. That's not what this is about. So, we absolutely do want to do that. 

And then the last thing I think you said was the thing about the Crown Estate. I agree, we would like very much for it to be devolved. We're certainly going to talk to them about that. But, in the meantime, I have engaged with the Crown Estate. I've had a couple of meetings with them already. They're very anxious to talk to us, and we're engaging with them to make sure that we have them on board. We understand what we need to do to enter into arrangements with the Crown Estate to be able to put floating wind, for example, and tidal flow and various other things out onto land currently owned by the Crown Estate around Wales, and to liaise with them, with the grid and with Ofgem to make sure that we've got the connections into Wales. Because the other thing we absolutely do not want is to find that Welsh waters are hosting floating wind, for example, but the connections are going across to Devon because the connection to the grid here isn't good enough. To be fair, I've had a very good set of meetings with the Crown Estate, as have my officials, in engagement on how to do that. So, we're doing the sub-optimal thing while we work on the optimal thing that I completely agree with you about.

Have I taken the Deputy Presiding Officer by surprise in my succinctness?