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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:46 pm on 2 November 2021.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:46, 2 November 2021

Diolch, Janet. Thank you, Janet. I do admire, Janet, your attempt to champion the Prime Minister in his pronouncements on greening the world. If only he put his money where his mouth is. We know that in the last budget, the Chancellor didn't even mention the word 'climate'. We know that they've decreased the ability of people to go on rail, whilst increasing the ability of people to go on planes, and we know that he himself left Glasgow to go back to London on a plane. So, this is all about your actions, as well as what you say out loud. I don't think that Boris Johnson is, unfortunately, doing Britain proud at all at the moment in terms of what he's proposing to the world.

I also have to say that the refusal to put a moratorium on coal and the refusal to engage with us in changing the remit of the Coal Authority, so that it no longer has a duty to promote coal extraction in the United Kingdom, and even in Wales, which we have been asking them to do for a very long time, is not really indicative of the sort of action we'd like to see. However, I didn't want to strike a note of that kind of dissension.

What we are saying here in our net-zero plan is that, together, across Wales, we can bring things to bear that really will make a difference. So, I think that Janet actually mentioned herself a number of things that I would like to highlight in that regard. So, on coal, we obviously do have a policy here of no further extraction of coal across Wales. She mentioned energy from waste—'waste to energy', as it used to be called when I was in the industry. We absolutely oppose new incinerators and so on; however, some waste will need to be incinerated—she mentioned herself some forms of clinical waste and so on. So, it is important to make sure that we get the right kind of incineration and that we generate renewable energy where waste does need to be incinerated for particular types.

However, I will raise at this point the remarks that Boris Johnson made about recycling, where he seemed to disparage the idea that recycling was a good thing. What he wasn't able to see as part of that was, of course, it's not just about the separation and collection of recycling; it's about what you do with the recyclate. The whole point of recycling is that you put it back into use as the product that it was made. We have enough plastic already in the world to keep us going in plastic products for as far into the future as mankind can foresee. What we need to do is be very good at recycling it and getting the reprocessers here in Wales to recycle it for us into products that can be recycled over and over again, because in Wales we know that people want to come on that journey with us, where you reuse, of course, first, and then recycle second. So, I do think it's important to make sure that we don't disparage individual efforts to do the right thing in making really quite ill-advised pronouncements, I would say, about some of the things that we need to do in the world.

We have some big things to do, as well. She was right to highlight wind energy and the issues with the grid. Again, I think the UK Government could benefit from a proper conversation with both us and the Scottish Government about the way that the national grid currently runs, because it's not a national grid, it's a grid run by four big producers and it's not done in the way that we would like, futureproofed, it's done on the basis of being driven by contractual arrangements. We've had some really useful conversations with grid producers and with Ofgem so far, and I hope very much that we will be able to get the grid into a good place where we can plan for the future, so that communities right across Wales can, for example, have the kind of EV charging points that we'd like to see and, frankly, the broadband backhaul that we'd like to see as well, because the grid is fit for purpose, as well as of course needing upgrading in north and south Wales. So, I completely agree with that.

In terms of the working from home things that she mentioned, of course we have targets for that. My colleague Lee Waters has emphasised on a number of occasions that this doesn't mean that everybody works from home all the time, but that you work from home when you can or that you work locally to you, if your home isn't suitable, in small local hubs. But, of course, what will be very important for that is broadband. As my colleague Lee Waters says, broadband is not devolved to Wales but we have stepped into the gap the UK Government made when it failed to put geographical coverage as part of its provision for broadband across Wales, whereas the Welsh Government has stepped up to that.

So, what we have done is a suite of measures in this plan that set out where we are now, that set out our proposals for the future and set out what we'd like our communities to do. Optimised retrofit is a very good example of that. Excuse me, I'm very much struggling with this cough, I'm afraid, Dirprwy Lywydd. The optimised retrofit is a very good example of that. So, rather than announcing air-source heat pumps for all, we know that each house will be different. Some houses will be suitable for air-source heat pumps, and we will have schemes in order to allow those houses to transition to that. But what we're doing is running a programme to figure out what each type of house in Wales requires to bring it up to the highest possible EPC rating that it can achieve. It's not a one size fits all, it's not a cheap pronouncement, but a hard slog alongside our registered social landlords and council partners to figure out what works and then sort out how we can make people transition to that. And of course, at that point, we will then be able to put grant schemes in place that allow our private sector landlords and our owner-occupier tenancies to come along that journey with us. But, rather than just announcing a grant scheme that will not work, we are doing the hard yards with our partners to make sure that, for Wales, we will have a net-zero plan that actually is robust and will actually deliver the benefits that we want.