Climate Change: Wales

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the hybrid arrangements. Timings of debates have been amended to allow technical arrangements to be made for the next debate. There will also be suspensions between each debate. I remind Members participating virtually that they must leave their camera on for the duration of the debate, and that they will be visible at all times, both to each other and to us in the Boothroyd Room. If Members attending virtually have any technical problems, they should email the Westminster Hall Clerks at [e-mail]. Members attending physically should clean their spaces before they use them and as they leave the room. I would also like to remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn in Westminster Hall.

[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered measures to combat climate change in Wales.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd.

Despite being confronted with a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic, climate change remains the single largest existential threat to people across the world. The UK has a responsibility, as one of the first industrialised countries, to combat climate change and take a progressive, proactive approach to mitigate and reverse its effects.

In Wales, we are extremely fortunate to have access to natural resources that can provide cutting-edge alternatives to curtail our reliance on fossil fuels. How we deal with these issues in the next few years will have a defining impact on future generations and their wellbeing. Changing climate will cause huge problems across the globe and lead to massive population displacement and challenges for food production in many parts of the world. Rising water levels, loss of biodiversity and extreme weather events have already been seen in many places, and we must take urgent action to tackle that.

Wales is a small country, but it can play a big part in the solution. The Welsh Government are taking a progressive and proactive approach to mitigating and reversing the effects of climate change. I am proud that the Welsh Government have gone further than the target set by the Climate Change Committee for the UK and committed to a net zero target by 2050. That is an ambitious target, but one which we have to reach if we want to tackle temperature rises.

When I was granted this debate, I was contacted by the excellent parliamentary Digital Engagement Team and asked if I would like them to use their channels to engage with the public on this issue. The responses that came in were varied and really thoughtful. I would like to thank everyone who got in touch with ideas and comments. There were 168 replies to questions on a wide range of topics, such as reducing consumption, changes to transport use, and housing. There are too many excellent contributions to mention them all, for which I am really sorry, but I would like to pick out a couple and respond to them.

Wendy, along with others, said that we should:

“Retrofit or convert housing stock to passive housing to maintain human health while reducing dependence on energy sources to warm or cool homes”.

The Welsh Government are making £13 million of funding available through the innovative housing programme. The aim of that programme is to make 1,800 homes across Wales more energy-efficient. As well as helping to reduce energy bills for residents, optimised retrofit will help reduce the carbon footprint of each home. There are currently around 1.4 million homes across Wales that need to be made more carbon efficient to help with the 2050 net zero target, so getting retrofit right and making it happen by delivering the skills and training needed will be key to building a strong future economy and helping to tackle the climate emergency.

Several respondents to the consultation highlighted the importance of restoring nature. Both Joshua and Jools suggested that there should be targets for nature restoration and tree and woodland planting. I am happy to say that just this week, Lee Waters, Deputy Minister for Climate Change in the Welsh Government, announced that Wales will plant 86 million trees in the next nine years.

To achieve our net zero target, we need to plant 43,000 hectares of new woodland. Planting those trees will not only help avoid catastrophic climate change, but create jobs and address the nature emergency, increasing wellbeing and mitigating floods and air quality issues. Hon. Members can find out more about that scheme and the support for individuals, organisations and companies that want to get involved in planting on the Welsh Government website.

As part of that, Wales is also putting in place a timber strategy. Using timber in construction has a number of benefits, including the capture of CO₂ during growth, acting as a carbon store for the lifetime of the structure, and it can be used again after the building is no longer in use. The Welsh Government want an increase in off-site manufactured homes as a way of reaching net zero, and the timber industry will play a big part in that.

In Gower, we have one of the most efficient storers of carbon, our fabulous salt marshes. They are a haven for wildlife, with more than 20 species of salt marsh plants, which in turn support insects. They are also used by juvenile fish, and many different birds roost in them. Protecting and, in places, expanding salt marshes could store millions of tonnes of carbon and offset emissions.

I pay tribute to the National Farmers Union, which is encouraging farmers across the UK to take positive steps to make their farms net zero by 2040. We celebrate their positive actions leading up to COP26, to be held in Glasgow in November. There are so many farmers and growers, not only in Gower but across Wales, who are positively demonstrating that they are committed to taking net zero measures on their farms, to help the sector reach the 2040 ambition. I saw that at first hand recently, when my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) and I visited the farm of NFU Cymru president John Davies. To see that vision in action and discuss the future of Welsh farming was very positive.

Climate change does not respect borders. We all know that the only way to tackle climate change is to work with other countries. That collaboration is sadly lacking in the relationship between Wales and the UK Government. Having promised to electrify the main line to Swansea, the UK Government decided to go only as far as Cardiff. After the big fanfare around the Swansea bay tidal lagoon, the Government decided not to go ahead with the project. That decision meant that, instead of becoming a world leader in tidal technology, we will now have to rely on other pilot projects to pave the way. I believe that Swansea bay will get a tidal lagoon but, instead of being able to export the associated expertise and technology, someone else will do that. We have got to push forward for Swansea and I commit to doing that.

There are many more subjects I could have covered, from halting all new road-building projects, to reducing our reliance on private cars, to buying local produce to reduce food miles. I thank everyone who got in touch with me about the debate; I will pass on all their comments to the Welsh Government. I want to finish with a quote I heard yesterday in Lee Waters’s speech. Mark McKenna, of the wonderful Down to Earth Project in my constituency of Gower, said:

“The solutions are there, we need to invest and we need to plan.”

I am pleased that that is what the Welsh Government are doing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Dowd. I first of all pay tribute to the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), both for securing the debate and the tone in which you opened it. Your tone made me rip up half my speech, and I appreciate that balance. I also echo your comments on digital services and the engagement around this debate, which I think is terrific.

I could touch on the comments of other Members but, in the good old tradition of Welsh Westminster Hall debates, the Welsh Government are good and the UK Government are bad, unless the Member is a Conservative, in which case the UK Government are good and the Welsh Government are bad. We have approached this debate in the usual fashion. I will try to break that down a little bit. I appreciated a lot of the global context that the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) introduced. I was taken aback today at Prime Minister’s questions when it was noted that 52% of the world’s urban global greenhouse gases come from 25 cities, of which 23 are in China. Clearly, the pressure on COP26 this year is immense.

There is excellent best practice coming out of Wales, and there is excellent best practice coming from Powys County Council and the Welsh Labour Government. There is also a huge amount of work, finance and regulatory change coming out of the UK Government, and it would be churlish for Labour Members speaking after me not to at least acknowledge that, if those before me have not. It is absolutely fascinating to see the pace of change. I will touch briefly on an issue that I have a little bugbear with the Welsh Government about— I have been nice, but I will have a little bash—and that is new road building.

Montgomeryshire is blessed with clean air and low emissions. The one thing that has helped Montgomeryshire more than anything to tackle emissions and improve air quality is the Newtown bypass, with Welsh Government studies and independent studies unquestionably showing that emissions have dropped around Newtown—the biggest town in my constituency—and the quality of air has improved. That is to be hugely welcomed.

In conjunction with the banning of new petrol and diesel cars, that means that road building in the future will be very different. The vehicles on the roads of the future will emit very different pollutants, if any. It is old-fashioned and traditional thinking to see road building in the traditional sense—that the roads will have heavy-polluting vehicles on them. They will not. Clearly, that is demonstrated by the ban on petrol and diesel vehicles. Clearly, that is demonstrated by great companies such as Riversimple in Powys investing in hydrogen cars. Clearly, that is demonstrated by the huge investment in hydrogen production and electric car production in this country. I hope there is time for a pause for thought. I welcome that this is a review and not a blanket ban, but road building projects in the future should not be judged on the environmental effects of the past. That is incredibly dangerous thinking as we see smaller, better, cleaner cars emerging on to our roads.

Equally, I want to be nice: Wales has led. The plastic bag tax is hugely welcome. To give credit where credit is due, the Welsh Government led on that issue, and now the UK Government are following. We must do that more in future: where there is best practice across a border—in Wales, Scotland, England, Northern Ireland or across the channel into Europe, or even further—we need to share best practice. We should not be shy in stealing ideas; after all, I read Hansard regularly and we normally steal each other’s speeches, so we might as well share each other’s policies.

In closing, I will draw the private sector into this. Of course, there is a lot of public money and regulatory change, but tomorrow I will visit Garth Holiday Park in Machynlleth, in the middle of Wales, to celebrate its private investment in electric vehicle charging on the site. A huge amount of EV charging facilities are going in now. Wipak in Welshpool—if you pick up a pack of Cathedral City cheese in this country, the packaging comes from Welshpool, in the middle of Wales—is investing hugely. It is a European-based company that manufactures in Wales, and it is investing millions over the next years to improve its production and to help us achieve our net zero ambitions.

If we do this together—the UK Government, with their sheer scale and international leadership, the Welsh Government, with their devolved powers and regulatory functions; and the private sector as well—we can achieve it. I fear that if we continue with a dogmatic, narrow vision of, “We are bad, you are good. This is right, this is wrong,” we will not get anywhere near the achievements that we need, and we will do a great disservice to the constituents that really care about the issue.

Mr Dowd, I have added to the greenhouse gases with my six minutes, so I will sit down, but I very much welcome this debate.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I remind Members not to use the second person singular unless addressing me. I call Jessica Morden.

--- Later in debate ---

[David T. C. Davies]

All I can say is that it has a lot of potential. The figures that were put to us by the leader of Swansea Council were very positive, but obviously the council has to make its case to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. It is certainly not something that we have any problem with in principle.

We are developing a business model to support the application of carbon capture, usage and storage technology to the power sector. That, along with a range of other measures that we are taking, is of particular relevance to Wales, because of the higher proportion of electricity that Wales has historically generated from fossil fuels. We are taking the next important steps to cultivate next- generation nuclear technologies, committing £385 million for small and advanced modular reactors and £222 million for the UK’s first fusion power plant. Both actions align well with Wales’s advanced nuclear ambitions across fission and fusion technologies. I know my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn is particularly interested in those schemes.

That leads me to make another point: a lot of the actions that we are taking need the support of all those who care about the environment. One of the problems we have had with nuclear power is that those people who have clamoured loudly for electricity to be generated from carbon-free sources have not always been willing to commit themselves to technologies such as nuclear, which delivers just that and does so in a predictable fashion that allows the national grid to function properly. The regulation of the electricity network is a matter for Ofgem, and £2.7 million has been earmarked for investment in the distribution networks across Wales and Merseyside for the period from 2015 to 2023.

Turning to business and industry, I am sure hon. Members will welcome the Government’s commitment of £21.5 million to the south Wales industrial cluster, matching £18.5 million committed by industry. South Wales is the second largest industrial cluster in the UK in terms of greenhouse gas emissions—hence the need for targeted action in the region. That funding will enable the cluster to undertake detailed engineering studies into hydrogen and carbon capture infrastructure and to develop a strategic decarbonisation plan. I was very pleased to be in Swansea last week, discussing the region’s low-carbon growth deal projects. Those tie in with the aims of the cluster and are, of course, being supported financially by the UK Government.

All parts of Wales have the opportunity to benefit from funding through the £289 million industrial energy transformation fund, the £250 million clean steel fund, the £240 million net zero hydrogen fund and the £1 billion carbon capture and storage infrastructure fund.

In addition to our funding commitments, we are working to establish policy frameworks to support our industrial partners to make the transition to net zero. We have confirmed a new and ambitious UK emissions trading scheme to create the world’s first cap and trade market for greenhouse gas emissions and, as announced in the recently published industrial decarbonisation strategy, we are encouraging low-carbon fuel switching and growing the market for low-carbon industrial products. Meanwhile, we are developing business models to financially incentivise the take-up and usage of key decarbonisation technologies such as carbon capture and hydrogen.

Turning to transport, as my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams) pointed out, we will end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030. All cars and vans will be 100% zero-emissions from the tailpipe by 2035. Between 2030 and 2035 all new cars and vans will be required to have a significant zero-emissions capability, which would include some plug-in and full hybrids. That will of course entail a lot of changes for consumers, and it is only fair that we bear that in mind.

I share my hon. Friend’s disappointment at the blanket decision to stop building roads across the whole of Wales, because the roads of the future will not throw out the emissions of the roads of the past. He mentioned one in his constituency. The problems of congestion in Chepstow are appalling. We are seeing World Health Organisation guidance being breached. We know what the solution is: a bypass. At the moment, it cannot happen because the Welsh Government have halted all road building. That is a matter of great disappointment to many of us.

The measures that we have taken on transport send an unequivocal signal on the direction of travel that we are pursuing in partnership with industry towards a zero-carbon transport future, but as well as top-down market creation we also need bottom-up technological innovation. In that field, Welsh innovators are ahead of the pack, following in the footsteps of the fuel pioneer from Swansea Sir William Robert Grove, who I looked up on Wikipedia last night. He had a very interesting background.

We are looking to attract at least one gigafactory to Wales. We are supporting the development of electric heavy vehicle trucks in Cwmbran, in the factory that I know as Lucas Girling because I was one of the subcontractors there for many years. It is now known as Meritor, and we backed it with £15.9 million. I am looking forward to going back and visiting, and meeting some of my old friends on goods outward again.

Innovative companies such as Riversimple, which His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales visited last week alongside the Secretary of State for Wales, are developing hydrogen vehicles. Riversimple took me out for a spin in one recently in Monmouth, and good fun it was too. That is being supported by £1.3 million. In the Budget, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced £4.8 million for the Holyhead hydrogen hub—another scheme that was championed by my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn. It is a proposal that aims to supply hydrogen fuel to the heavy goods and maritime vehicle markets on Ynys Môn. I am also aware of the exciting opportunity presented by the LanzaTech proposal to develop sustainable aviation fuel in south Wales, which came up during my visit in Swansea last week—[Interruption.] You are looking at me purposefully, Mr Dowd. I wonder whether I am exceeding my time limit.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

No, I just want to clarify that if people have a proxy vote we can carry on. If not, we will have to suspend for 15 minutes for the Division in the House.

[David T. C. Davies]

I am on a proxy, Mr Dowd, so I am happy to carry on.

Those projects and more show that Wales is leading the way when it comes to low-carbon transport innovation, and they will play a key part in the UK-wide effort to decarbonise the sector, which we will say more about as we publish the transport decarbonisation plan. The plan focuses on the challenges that we need to overcome to reduce transport emissions and ensure that the UK reaches net zero by 2050. It will also review the existing forecasts of future transport emissions from each mode of transport and set out a range of actions to drive further decarbonisation.

The Government are taking a range of actions to put our homes, which comprise a tenth of Welsh emissions, on a pathway towards clean power. A comprehensive overview of the key near-term actions that we will take will be set out in the heat and building strategy, which we expect to publish soon. The strategy will set out a range of policy levers to encourage consumers and businesses to make the transition to clean heat and improve the energy efficiency of buildings. We have already announced our intention to consult on the territorial scope and a key market mechanism to support the delivery of 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028. Hydrogen will be considered as a potential decarbonisation option for heat, and we will be assessing the case for encouraging or requiring new gas boilers to be readily convertible to hydrogen in preparation for any future conversion of the gas network. We will continue to work with the Health and Safety Executive to enable up to 20% of hydrogen blending in the gas network by 2023, subject to the success of testing and trials.

We recognise that different areas will have different heat decarbonisation requirements. Heat networks are one of the most cost-effective ways of reducing carbon emissions from heating, and their efficiency and carbon-saving potential increases as they grow and connect to each other. We have already provided £7.9 million to the heat networks in Cardiff, and I was very pleased to be able to visit them virtually back in April. There is another one in Bridgend, which I hope to see shortly— not virtually, but in reality. Backed by £36 million, the Active Building Centre in Swansea is one of Wales’s most promising innovation projects, working to transform the way in which buildings are designed, constructed and operated by integrating power generation technology into the fabric of the building itself, and of course there is a growth deal in the Swansea area, which is focused on retrofitting buildings. Again, that will be supported by the UK Government.

Central Government clearly have a leading role to play in the net zero transition. We can set regulations, help to incentivise the adoption and development of net zero technologies, and provide further funding for strategic projects. However, in Wales we are seeing our local partners rise to the climate challenge as well, through the city and growth deals and backed by £790 million of UK Government funding. Our colleagues in north Wales are paving the way for tidal energy and new nuclear technologies. Swansea’s low-carbon growth programme is pioneering hydrogen, marine-energy and low-carbon buildings. I have been very pleased to visit those regions and see first hand the innovative projects they are looking to deliver. Cardiff has identified energy and the environment as one of its priority sectors, and I am absolutely certain that, as the mid-Wales growth deal develops, it too will be pursuing net zero projects as part of the development.

Our job is to deliver a green industrial revolution that has reducing emissions as its core objective. It is also about jobs and levelling up: the infrastructure we build and the technologies we develop to reach net zero will spur on a whole new wave of economic development. It is estimated that delivering the net zero infrastructure required by the south Wales industrial cluster alone could create up to 5,000 jobs. Depending on the extent of local supply chain engagement, Rolls-Royce estimates that 40,000 jobs could be created across north Wales and the north-west of England if the production of small modular reactors reaches its peak. The Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult forecasts that the first Celtic sea floating offshore wind projects could deliver 3,000 jobs across south Wales and the south-west of England, an opportunity that would support the Government’s target of reaching 60% of UK content in UK wind projects. Driving up prosperity and driving down emissions is the approach we are taking to confront two Government priorities simultaneously: levelling up across the UK, and fulfilling our obligations to reduce dependency on fossil fuel.

To conclude, the Government are in no doubt about the need to take bold and ambitious action to rise to the challenge of climate change. We have made significant progress, with emissions 40% lower now than they were in the 1990s. We do understand the need to go further, and we will work with local communities, partners, businesses, the Welsh Government, and international partners to do so. This is a collective effort in which we all have a role to play, and I thank hon. Members for their contributions today.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Thank you, and I apologise for my virtual—and then actual—interruptions.