4. Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: Renewable Energy Targets

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:06 pm on 24 January 2023.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:06, 24 January 2023

Diolch, Delyth. I think there's much to agree on there, and then I can do a bit of an explanation of where we are. So, just in terms of the grid itself, the national grid is one of the worst-named bits of it, really, because it's nothing of the sort; it's a series of different organisations that deploy different bits of the grid. It has been very reactive in the past. It has only responded to customer demands for a grid connection in a particular place before it's deployed. The absence of planning has been—well, we've ended up where we are because of the absence of planning and the absence of future-proofing, because I think it has been evident for a long time that the grid was necessary, even for things like broadband and electric vehicle charging, never mind for any industrial strategy, and it simply hasn't been looked at.

We've been calling for it, as a party, since well before devolution and ever since devolution—that it should be either a national service, which we still believe, or, at the very least, that it should be planned and that the national grid should take account of an upfront investment strategy, even if it was going to cost-recover afterwards. We have finally prevailed in having a holistic network design now being put in place for Wales, and that's a huge step forward in terms of what we can plan for, and that's a process that is very much ongoing; my officials are extremely involved in much of the granular detail. But, you know, it would be far better if it wasn't being done for profit for shareholders, and I think that's just a political philosophy that it's unlikely that the opposite benches will share, but we certainly do share it. At the very least, I'd like to see it as a not-for-profit company.

But, really, the big thing here is the planning. So, we are pleased that, finally, they have seen some sense and are looking at holistic network design. That's been partly driven by the big renewables developers, who are clearly screaming the place down about the fact that—the First Minister said it himself—they'll get the energy to the beach and then be looking for a plug. Where is the plug? That's a really big issue for us; we have to get ahead of that and those plans are proceeding at pace. There's a lot of detail on that, Dirprwy Lywydd, that I've been into a number of times in the Chamber, and I won't repeat it.

In terms of the targets that we have set, there are some issues around the percentage of generation. We have a ridiculous amount of the UK gas energy generation here in Wales through previous historic accident, which I would very much like to see got rid of, and that, obviously, affects the percentage, but we're making good progress towards it. The latest data we have shows that in 2021, renewables generated the equivalent of 55 per cent of our electricity use, against a target of 70 per cent by 2030. So, the reason I'm doing this today is because we think that target will be met and we're trying to increase our ambition. I think that's the right thing to do, so it's absolutely the case that we think that the 70 per cent will be met and now we can go further. We've also already achieved around 90 per cent of our target of 1 GW of renewable energy capacity to be locally owned by 2030. That's an estimated 0.9 GW of generation by 2021, so that also is very good. But, what's holding us back is the grid. That's the point: we would have a lot more of these projects coming forward. A lot more just very domestic, farm businesses or whatever would want to connect renewables in if the grid was fit for purpose, and that is a real limiter for us, and so we need to work on that.

We will be developing as part of our co-operation agreement a company that I’m sure you’re all aware of, Ynni Cymru. I hope very soon that we’ll be able to make some announcements about that company’s ability to intervene in assisting people to get community generation to scale up. There’s a lot of ambition across the country for that, and I’m sure we can work with people. We will, though, have to look at closed grids, because we can’t get the grid connections. But we’ve got to make sure that those closed grids are capable, so that when we do get the grid we need, we can connect in. So, we will be looking outside the box for that, to make sure that people can.

And the last piece that you asked me about was the decarbonisation piece. Obviously, I’ve said a number of times what we’re doing about the right technology for the right house. We will, once we’ve got that ready to go, be starting to look at the deployment of grant assistance and so on, for the poorest and worst-fabric households first, to make sure we can run it out. We are now working with local authorities, and it might be part of Ynni Cymru—it’s under discussion. We will be working to see if we can do community decarbonisation projects—so, all the houses in a particular community, because they’re very energy inefficient, come together to do pieces of work, which makes it more affordable for all of them. That means that you get whole communities coming up at the same time. So, there are a number of plans in the pipeline there.