Renewable Energy

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:38 pm on 15 March 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:38, 15 March 2022

I thank Jayne Bryant for that very important question in the context of the events we see unfolding across the world today. We have to reduce our reliance on power from volatile parts of the world, with Governments that would not meet our tests for what a reasonable and decent Government would provide. It's very good news that over half the electricity we consumed in Wales, in the latest year for which we have figures, was over half the energy we needed, and we had the longest continuous period where we were able to draw power from renewables in the same time. But we have to go further, of course, and Wales is very well-placed indeed, Llywydd, to do just that: the Garn Fach proposal in mid Wales—we've discussed that on the floor of the Senedd not long ago—about to go into the formal part of the planning system; the Brechfa forest development of onshore wind, in the Welsh Government's own estate; Awel y Môr, to follow Gwynt y Môr, in north Wales, with fixed offshore wind; and the Crown Estate engaged in a leasing round of up to 4 GW of floating wind in the Celtic sea. We have the most enormous opportunities here in Wales, but there is more that could and should be done.

Llywydd, I've revisited the Charles Hendry review report in recent days. I can tell you it makes for very sobering reading, because, amongst the case that it made for the Swansea bay tidal lagoon, energy security was one of the cases that that review focused on. Had that scheme been given the go-ahead, we would be very close now to it being able to supply energy here in Wales, and we would have learnt a tremendous amount, as the Hendry review said, from that demonstration project. Of course the UK Government needs to come back to the table, to be prepared to invest in the renewable energy of the future, and to provide the feed-in tariffs that made such an important difference in bringing solar and wind energy prices to where they are today, and where marine energy can be in the future, but where, in the meantime, investment has to be provided while those technologies are inevitably at their formative stage going to be more expensive than mature technologies will be. We make that case to the UK Government all the time, and I'll make sure that we go on doing so.