3. Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: Climate Change — Final Statement for Carbon Budget 1

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:05 pm on 6 December 2022.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:05, 6 December 2022

Thank you, Janet. I completely agree with you that much of what we've achieved, of course, is only possible with the people and the communities of Wales, and that means communities in a geographical sense but also communities of interest like, for example, our businesses, our industries, our agricultural sector and so on. So, I completely join with you in that—I'd do it more loudly, only, as you can hear, I'm struggling a little bit with my voice today.

In terms of the sector emissions, we've got five sectors—so, power, transport, industry, waste and fluorinated gases—that have seen strong declining emissions over the period. You're quite right that some of that is because we've closed Aberthaw power station, and that, obviously, makes it even more pressing that we manage to close the remaining fossil fuel power stations, including the gas-fired power stations in Wales, as soon as is humanly possible. Therefore, making sure that we take full advantage of the renewable opportunities right across Wales is where we need to be.

So, two sectors, in buildings and agriculture, have seen more limited change in emissions over the period. The—I always have to look this up—LUCF, which is the land-use change and forestry sector, has seen a substantial decrease in the size of the sink it provides over the period, although it remains a sink and achieved the anticipated contribution.

The emissions reductions are driven by changing patterns in Wales's consumption and production activities, which are tracked by 57 of the tier 2 indicators. You asked me which ones were on target and which ones weren't. Twenty eight of the activity indicators are green, including major increases in the proportion of electricity generation from renewables, major decreases in the proportion of waste sent to landfill and a strong decrease in transport energy use and industrial energy use.

The sectors seeing the highest proportions of green-rated tier 2 indicators were power at 89 per cent, for reasons we've just discussed; waste at 75 per cent, which is due to Wales's stellar performance in recycling, again thanks to the people of Wales; and in the public sector, driven by our ambition for the public sector to decarbonise by 2030. Of the remaining activity indicators, seven were red, 11 amber and 11 could not be rated.

The sectors seeing the lowest proportions of green-rated tier 2 indicators were the land-use change and forestry sectors, buildings and agriculture. So, buildings have done particularly badly and agriculture is only at 17 per cent. What that's telling us, Janet, is that we need to redress the balance, to some extent, about how we address some of these things.

This isn't aimed in any way at berating our farmers, for example, but in agriculture, if we just look at that, we've had a number of supportive schemes for farmers through the red meat development programme, dairy improvement programme, sustainable production grant and Farming Connect. There was a 6 per cent increase observed in the total agricultural area from 2016 to 2020, and a small decrease in agricultural land area from 2018 to 2020, but output per hectare of land increased by 3 per cent. So, there are some really complicated statistics involved in this.

There has been delivery in some key policy areas, and overall emissions have declined over the carbon budget 1 period, but emissions have not declined at the rate anticipated in the Climate Change Committee's pathway, and the anticipated contribution, therefore, to the 2020 pathway is not yet met. Having said that, though, the reason that we've introduced the sustainable farming scheme is to help our agricultural sector to do what it needs to do to get to where it needs to be.

The other sector is buildings, which I anticipate my colleague and friend Jenny Rathbone is about to ask me about, so I'll answer her on that, but, basically, we need to do a lot more in retrofitting our buildings as well. Diolch.