Local Renewable Energy Projects

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 2:14 pm on 11 January 2023.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:14, 11 January 2023

Diolch, Cefin. Yes, a very important point. So, we have 897 MW of locally owned renewable electricity and heat capacity in Wales in 2021, which was 90 per cent of the way towards our 1 GW target for 2030, which is really good news. We've got a total of 2,201 new renewable projects commissioned across mid Wales and the Swansea bay city region in 2021. They represent a capacity increase of 31.5 MW and comprise mostly small scale and domestic installations, exactly as you said. We've been supporting a wide range of community and publicly owned renewable projects which are around 4.8 MW of capacity. I'm telling you these things because I don't want a doom and gloom effect for this industry, because I think it's pretty vibrant and people are really interested in it, and this kind of diversified community energy is very important to energy security, of course. But there's no doubt at all that the grid is a limiting factor. As I've said in this Chamber a number of times, and it still remains the case, I'm very pleased to say that the UK Government has belatedly understood the need to plan the grid. We have a process in place now to put a planned grid in place, a higher network operator arrangement, and we've got a lot of work going on to understand how and where that will be, what needs to be upgraded.

A lot hinges on a pipeline project that will be put from north to south Wales to connect the two offshore wind projects, both the fixed offshore wind and what we hope will be an enormous project of floating wind in the Celtic sea. The exact route of that pipeline is up for consideration. I have officials very much involved in that and I'll be meeting the energy Minister again soon. I've already had a really good encounter with the energy Minister, to be fair, so I think they are on this page at last. The big issue for us will be to make sure that we get the new grid we need coming down through the middle of Wales, which we absolutely do need, and that we have that in a way that allows the connections in, but we also need the grid strengthened right across south Wales and in north Wales. It's not good enough to say, 'Well, those two bits are all right'; they are not. I have to tell you that, if you live where I live in Swansea, you get brownouts quite a lot. So, we need the existing grid to be strengthened and we need the incoming energy from the new Celtic sea and from the huge investment in the north-Wales coastline to benefit the people of Wales. I want that energy to come here. I don't want it to go to Devon or the Republic of Ireland or into Liverpool or somewhere. So, we've been working very hard to make sure that that stays on track and that we get the right level of consultation and involvement in Wales, and so far so good, but watch this space.