1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd on 2 March 2022.
5. What support does the Welsh Government plan to give to companies in Pembrokeshire to help them reduce their carbon emissions? OQ57722
Diolch, Cefin. The Welsh Government offers a wide range of support to help businesses reduce their environmental impact. This includes our Business Wales resource efficiency advisers, who, since 2016, have supported 170 Pembrokeshire businesses in improving their environmental sustainability strategies.
Thank you very much, Minister. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting the port authority in Milford Haven, and had a very beneficial meeting about their plans for the future. It emerged during that meeting that as Wales seeks to increase its efforts to meet its net-zero targets while taking great advantage of the green growth opportunities, it's evident that the main oil and gas employers in Pembrokeshire need to transform from their traditional sectors in order to reduce their carbon emissions and develop new green industries around the port, for example, which sustains 4,000 good jobs locally. So, as well as the Pembroke Dock marine project, which is part of the Swansea bay city deal, as you know, will you outline whether the Welsh Government is ready to invest further, and directly, in some of the technologies, such as hydrogen and offshore wind and carbon capture schemes, in order to provide green jobs in the Pembrokeshire area and unlock possible opportunities worth £5 billion for the region and for Wales?
Yes, absolutely. I'm very happy to do just that, because we're very keen to unlock those green jobs. You will know that our Net Zero Wales plan highlights how we're looking to reduce emissions whilst delivering those wider benefits that you've just outlined. At this point in time we've provided £6 million of environmental protection scheme grant support to Valero, to assist its decarbonisation efforts. That's locked £120 million of investment in the installation of a cogen plant to reduce emissions and take them off grid. We've provided a raft of innovation support, including £100,000 to pump prime the Milford Haven Energy Kingdom project development, which has leveraged in £4.5 million of UKRI funding. As you said, Cefin Campbell, Pembrokeshire businesses play an important role in the south Wales industrial cluster. One of those businesses, RWE, has launched a net-zero centre to maximise the potential of hydrogen, floating offshore wind and carbon capture, and I was very pleased to speak at the ports conference highlighting their efforts. The Welsh Government is funding a £100,000 phase 2 feasibility study for the supply of green hydrogen into Pembrokeshire and Milford Haven, using the ERM Dolphyn offshore wind floating hydrogen production technology.
These companies are all key to the Celtic sea cluster and our emphasis on the offshore renewable industry. We've also got the decarbonisation and COVID challenge fund open to food and drink businesses, so outside of the energy business itself, to seek to aid recovery within the Welsh food and drink sector, which has been adversely affected by the pandemic. We also offer a range of general business advice, information and signposting, as well as specialist strands of advice such as resource efficiency and signposting on green policies to reduce carbon emissions across Wales through Business Wales, and a number of Pembrokeshire businesses have got in touch with us over that. And the last one to just highlight is the Milford Haven Energy Kingdom project in Pembrokeshire, which is that £4.5 million project, which shows the vital role hydrogen can play in a decarbonised energy future. I just wanted to highlight that one point, because that's the key—the transfer over from fossil fuels to a different kind of technology that protects the very highly skilled jobs that are part of that Pembrokeshire cluster.
Minister, earlier this year I had the pleasure of visiting the National House Building Council award-winning Pludds Meadow development in Laugharne, in my constituency of Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, a site operated by Salem Construction, who are producing high-quality, energy-efficient homes on the outskirts of one of Carmarthenshire's most famous towns. The builders had a real desire to minimise their carbon footprint, using local staff and items such as air source heat pumps to heat their homes. Will you outline what support the Welsh Government is providing to businesses such as Salem Construction to help reduce their carbon emissions even further, both through the way in which their businesses are run and by continuing to produce homes that emit a small carbon footprint? Diolch.
Yes, we absolutely welcome the move by a large number of small and medium-sized producers right across Wales to low-carbon housing. We will also be bringing forward changes to our building regulations—my colleague Lee Waters will be bringing forward changes to the building regulations to make sure that the building regulations for everyone are at that sort of standard, and I'm very happy to have the way led for us by a number of SME companies, such as the one you mentioned there.
We provide a wide range of general business advice through Business Wales, as I've just said in answer to Cefin Campbell, which includes resource efficiency, support on green policies to reduce emissions and so on. We also are very happy to work with any green housing supplier to help us use them to build our social housing and to build out mixed-tenure estates so that we have similar housing right across the piece, so that we don't have people going into fuel poverty in the future. And we also are very keen—. Again, the Deputy Minister and I have a construction forum, which is a housing sub-group, and we are very keen to have SMEs such as the one you mentioned come along to that construction forum to share good practice and to hear about a range of other loans and other opportunities we have—stalled sites funds and so on—to bring forward land for development that will allow the SMEs that build such lovely housing to access funding to bring further developments into use in Wales as fast as possible.