Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:36 pm on 30 March 2022.
Well, I'd like to echo what Mike Hedges said about Swansea Council. I think it's an excellent example of a partnership between a Labour-run local authority and a Welsh Labour Government. They themselves have invested some £60 million this financial year in warmer, more energy efficient homes, creating some 25 new low-carbon homes, as well as a programme of energy efficiency for existing homes, totalling around £46 million. I think that is a tremendous effort on their part to deal with the cost of living crisis, by providing practical help to deal with fuel poverty and addressing the net zero challenge.
On the issue of private houses, we are very fortunate that we have Rent Smart Wales, which is something other parts of the UK don't have, which allows us to map the properties in the private sector to see which ones are not currently meeting minimum energy efficiency standards. And then, with that information, we can look at what mix of grant and loan is needed to incentivse those homes to meet the standard and to exceed it. We're taking an approach, as Mike Hedges knows, of trialling our optimised retrofit programme, which is a £220 million investment by us, and taking what we describe as a 'fabric first' approach, recognising that there have been difficulties with retrofit programmes across the UK over the last few years and all houses are different. In particular, Wales has an old housing stock, with very varied housing stock, and what might be a solution for a terraced house in the Valleys might be different for a suburban bungalow. So, we need to trial, which we are, different fabrics to understand what would be the most efficient, and when we understand those practicalities, we can then set out a pathway towards decarbonisation.