Bore Da a croeso, Good morning and welcome to this Policy Forum for Wales Keynote Seminar on Energy policy in Wales and enabling the transition to a low carbon economy - priorities for cutting emissions, infrastructure and investment, and supporting the economy.
The 2016 Environment (Wales) Act set a 2050 target to reduce emissions by at least 80% from 1990 levels and provided the legislative framework for establishing a carbon budgeting approach in Wales.
This Act is part of a wider framework in Wales, including the Well-Being of Future Generations Act, which places tackling climate change within the context of wider changes to how Welsh society works.
In June this year the UK became the first major economy in the world to pass laws to end its contribution to global warming by 2050 - by bringing all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, compared with the previous target of at least 80% reduction from 1990 levels.
UK emissions reduced by 42% between 1990 and 2015, when Wales only saw a 19% reduction.
UK emissions as a whole reduced by 5% in 2016, but Welsh emissions increased by 5% between 2015 and 2016.
The UK Government Agriculture Bill sets out how farmers and land managers will in future be paid for “public goods”, principally Environmental enhancement, while supporting profitable food production and contributing to a healthier society.
This will replace the current subsidy system of Direct Payments with a new Environmental Land Management system.
After the Welsh Government received over 12,000 responses to its original consultation, Brexit and Our Land, it launched Sustainable Farming and Our Land Consultation.
RSPB Cymru has welcomed the proposals stating that they “could” help address the twin climate and ecological crisis as well as build resilience in the rural economy and society.
However, the Farmer’s Union of Wales has instead proposed a Sustainable Farming Scheme with key principles including protecting family farms, supporting rural communities, ensuring Agriculture is sustainable and rewarding environmental outcomes.
AND NFU Cymru states that the phasing out of stability support could undermine the competitiveness of Welsh farming and have major consequences for farming families, the rural economy and the wider food and drink sector.
Whatever the outcome, there are many calls for farm-scale anaerobic digesters to play a role in stabilising waste and producing clean energy.
Proposals in the Welsh Government’s recently launched five-year blueprint, “Prosperity for All: A Climate Conscious Wales”, include the creation of 25,000 more energy efficient homes by 2021.
Speaking in the Assembly Chamber last year as Chair of the Cross Party Group on Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency, I stated that “Better insulation, smarter lighting and appliances, and smarter heating systems could reduce the emission of a household by 0.6 tonnes of CO2 per year, and will save the householder an average of £184 a year.
Improving the housing stock will therefore both cut emissions and help tackle fuel poverty”.
However, we must also recognise the challenges presented by Wales have the oldest housing stock in the UK.
Two years ago, I sponsored an Assembly event launching the Transport Infrastructure Company Furrer+Frey’s White Paper, on Developing Sustainable, Agile, Multimodal Transport Solutions for Wales, which focused on sustainable development and delivery of public transport infrastructure throughout Wales by utilising renewable energy and battery solutions.
The ability to store large amounts of energy is critical to renewable energy because sunshine and wind don’t simply appear at convenient times when humans need electricity – but if all conventional cars and public vehicles are replaced by electric cars and vehicles, the World would run out of Lithium, which is used in batteries, in around five decades.
At the recent Assembly Cross Party Group on STEMM, Sarah Jones, Immediate Past Chair of the Institution of Civil Engineers Wales Cymru, spoke about her work as a specialist civil engineering consultant in the nuclear sector. She showed that Germany was now one of the least green European Countries, whereas France, with its focus on Nuclear Power, was the greenest.
She showed that UK energy security, including back up for intermittent renewable energy, was still dependent upon fossil fuels, predominantly gas – and argued that the UK needed far higher carbon neutral Nuclear base-line energy production to address this.
Horizon Nuclear Power told me this summer that Anglesey’s Wylfa Project is not dead.
Trawsfynydd is also tipped as a front runner to secure the development of Advanced Small Modular Reactors.
The UK Government has announced £220 Million funding towards the development of a Nuclear Fusion Power Station by 2040.
AND, this week, the Welsh Government has launched a consultation on its “Clean Air Plan for Wales”.