Wales' new energy service

Details of the new Welsh Government Energy Service were announced yesterday by the Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths.

The Ministerial Statement covers some of the background leading up to the decision to change the support provided for energy projects in Wales. What used to be two services (Green Growth Wales, and the Local Energy Service), will now be a unified point of contact which can provide support to public sector organisations and others seeking to develop energy efficiency or renewable energy projects.

The ‘and others’ bit is important because it explicitly rules in community energy. I don’t know yet whether any support to private sector is available, but I suspect not (perhaps unless it’s directed at a project partly or wholly under ‘local’ ownership).

The Cabinet Secretary reiterated the steps which Welsh Government has taken to try to strengthen the weight given to renewables in the planning system. Particularly interesting are the new requirements for local authorities to set targets for renewable energy generation in their local plans.

Whether this is helpful in practice remains to be seen; I suspect that cash-strapped local authority staff will see this as a box to be ticked rather than a strategic opportunity to develop their assets. Perhaps the Welsh Energy Service will make a material difference at this level? That’s certainly the intent as I read it.

Local generation and local use

The Cabinet Secretary goes on to say:

“In the future, energy generation assets close to energy efficient demand centres, with real-time trading and balancing, will be the norm. We must ensure communities and our public sector are at the heart of and investing in this transition if we are to keep more of the benefits in Wales.”

I agree with the intent of energy generation assets being situated as close to energy efficient demand centres as possible. But there are practical limits to what can be achieved — and in any case there is already a driver in this direction via the costs of grid rising the further the project is from a load centre.

The limitation on load/generation matching is mostly down to the resource. Offshore wind will generally struggle to be sited conveniently for human settlements, and onshore wind likewise. Wales’ nascent marine energy sector — a proud feather in our small renewable industry ‘hat’ — will certainly not meet the ambitions of its visionaries if deployments are to be restricted by the size of local habitations.

If we truly want to take concrete steps towards generation and supply co-located, why not have a solar ordnance (à la Barcelona from 19 years ago, now commonplace in other European countries), and implement in Wales the requirements for Code for Sustainable Homes for energy? The immediate difference would be negligible. The difference for Future Generations? Significant, rising every year. And it’s something that we could implement under existing legislation in Wales.

We also need to get to grips with the parlous state of grid in Wales. As I mentioned last year, there are real implications of “grid poverty” in mid-Wales in particular. The fact that you can’t get grid connections for any thermal or battery capacity (larger than 1MW) in any part of Wales until 2026 speaks volumes. I’ll be writing something more about this in the near future.

For someone (me) who’s been working in the sector since 2003, and in Wales on and off since 2005, it feels as though progress to a renewable country has been gastropodal. Not that all — or even most — of that is down to Welsh Government. Industry, local authorities, UK Government and ill-informed opponents of the sector have all played their part in making the transition slower than it could have been.

This marks another small chapter in Wales’ evolution to being a sustainable economy. I suspect much, much more will yet be needed before my small country is playing its part as a global exemplar.