Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:17 pm on 24 January 2023.
Thank you, Mabon. Yes, we would like to have much more control over the national grid, absolutely, because of all of the issues we've discussed endlessly—the need to plan it out, the need for better investment, and so on. So, I think that's taken as read, really. The real issue with a number of projects around Wales—on land, onshore, on sea—has been grid connection, and the real problems with that. So, we are hoping to be able to move that on significantly with the new holistic network design process and, indeed, with the co-operation agreement with Ynni Cymru and a number of other interventions we hope will make a difference. So, I do hope to be able to report a step change in that once we've got those interventions in place and we understand where the holistic network design process is going to take us.
In terms of the small roof-mounted turbines, yes, I'm very interested in exploring permitted development rights for a number of renewables that are possible. We have a small complication in some parts of Wales that are designated landscapes. We need to make sure that the community comes with us on this, and we need to make sure that they're done sympathetically to some of our environments. But yes, in principle we are looking to very closely to see what can be allowed. There are also some other issues people have raised in the Chamber around how close an air-source heat pump can be to another dwelling and all that kind of stuff, which we are having a good look at to make sure we have the most effective, most recent advice about a number of these things. So, I'm very interested in looking at that, but we do want to get it right so that we get community buy-in, and not community upheaval with that.
The last thing is just in terms of that planning point and the grid connections. We are going to be introducing an infrastructure consenting Bill to the Senedd shortly, which will take some of the big projects out of the current system. But again, this community buy-in point is a really important one. I don't want people to have to have high-voltage pylons coming across their land because we've got a windfarm right next door to them without them having a really good say about where and how that energy should be removed. It's often the case that it's not the windfarm itself that people are having a problem with—it's the way that the energy is taken away from it.
You'll be very aware that we need to combine this with all of the work we're doing on biodiversity and landscape preservation. For some landscapes, you do not want to underground it. I don't want to dig up peatland in order to do that. But, for other landscapes, undergrounding may be an option. It's really very much an individual route thing. So, we need to make sure that the planning is calibrated, exactly as for the marine consenting, to hit the sweet spot between the right protection for our landscapes and the right speed for the connectivity, to make sure that the communities who live in all of the areas where this might happen get all of the benefits associated with it and as few of the downsides as we can manage.