Wales PLC: Bring nation with you on road to renewables, NFLA urges Welsh Minister

The Welsh Nuclear Free Local Authorities have written to the Climate Change Minister urging the Welsh Government to open-up the new renewables company for public and community investment.

Following the recent meeting the NFLA held with CND Cymru at the Senedd Pierhead building, Cardiff on 6 December, the Chair of the NFLA Welsh Forum, Councillor Sue Lent, has sent a letter to Julie James MS asking her to allow the public, communities, social landlords, universities and local and public authorities to invest alongside the government in the business of the new publicly owned company ‘in exchange for a modest return’.

The Welsh NFLA believe that this would make available a lot more money for investment in renewable energy, meaning much more capacity could be delivered more quickly, and it would also engage the whole nation in a collective effort to make Wales green.

In addition, the NFLA would like to see any surplus generated used to support the delivery of a national programme of insulation and energy efficiency measures to be installed in the least energy efficient homes or those occupied by households at the greatest risk of fuel poverty; in improving the energy efficiency of public buildings; and in supporting the development of geothermal energy to heat the nation.

“The NFLA welcomes the Welsh Government’s commitment to achieving net zero by 2035, but it does not need nuclear to do this. Instead, the focus must be on renewables for the nation”, said Welsh NFLA Chair Councillor Sue Lent. “Establishing Cwmni Egino is a distraction; nuclear power is too costly and unsafe an energy source, which takes far too long to deliver and leaves a toxic legacy of radioactive waste.

“However the Welsh Government’s recent announcement of its intention to establish a new publicly owned renewable energy company to generate 1 GW of power from onshore wind is a welcome one; but the Welsh NFLAs believe that this company could do so much more good if the people and communities of Wales could invest in it and if the proceeds were used to make more Welsh homes warmer and to tap the vast amounts of geothermal energy that lie beneath our feet!”

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For more information please contact: Richard Outram, Secretary, NFLA email Richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk / mobile 07583 097793

The letter sent to Climate Change Minister Julie James MS reads:

The Hon. Julie James, MS
Climate Change Minister,
Welsh Government,
Correspondence.Julie.James@gov.wales

Tuesday 20 December 2022

Dear Minister,

I am writing to you as the Chair of the Welsh Nuclear Free Local Authorities to welcome the commitment of the Welsh Government to establish a new publicly owned renewable energy company which will, as you are reported to have said, ‘bring more of the profits back to the people of Wales’.

Renewable sources like wind, solar and hydro meet 56% of Wales’s electricity demand, and the Welsh government has declared its intention to reach 70% by 2030 so it is good that you have established the ambition to boost renewable generation by 1 GW through this initiative. It is in line with the ambition announced as part of the co-operation agreement by the First Minister Mark Drakeford and the Leader of Plaid Cymru Adam Price to achieve net zero by 2035.

You will have been aware that CND Cymru and the Welsh Nuclear Free Local Authorities held a joint event, kindly sponsored by Mike Hedges MS, at the Pierhead Building on 6 December. We were marking the 40th anniversary of the Clwyd Declaration signed by the eight original County Councils declaring themselves nuclear-free.

For its part, the NFLA Welsh Forum used the occasion to outline some proposals to take Wales faster along the road to a renewable energy future, and I should like to share some of these proposals with you.

You have referenced the need for partners to take forward your vision for the new renewable company. The NFLA would suggest that amongst these partners must be the people, communities, social landlords, academic institutions, and local and public authorities of Wales. Many of these partners, even in these straitened times, have money to invest so why not make the company a national renewable energy company and let them invest alongside the government in exchange for a modest return? This will not only mean massively more money for the Welsh Government to invest in renewables, and so much more can be delivered quicker, but it will also create a real sense across Wales that the drive for a renewable nation is a collective effort.

And these partners can also provide sites that can accommodate renewable technologies, such as social housing, churches, community centres, universities and town halls, that can be easily and quickly utilised for roof top solar to complement the online wind projects that you have identified.

With reference to the distribution of any operational surplus from the company, following the payment of the modest return outlined above, might we suggest the Welsh Government looks initially to invest this in:

A national emergency programme to retrofit insulation and energy efficiency measures in the homes of those Welsh citizens who are most at risk of fuel poverty and living in our least energy efficient homes. Not only will this mean lower fuel bills for these households making them less likely to experience fuel poverty, but it will make their homes warmer and cosier improving their mental and physical health. Furthermore, more energy-efficient homes require less heat and power and so carbon emissions are lowered taking us towards that net-zero target. And a national programme would mean jobs, lots of them that could be accessed, with training, by members of those poorer communities which benefit most from the work carried out. Grants to public bodies to improve the energy efficiency of their public buildings and their vehicle fleets, perhaps, to go further and have greater impact, matched where this is possible with money of their own or with further investments made by local citizens through local community energy co-operatives. Result – warmer, drier public buildings with a lower carbon footprint, more beloved by the people that use them, and vehicles used for public business that are not carbon-emitters. Financial support for the development of geothermal power, that which lies in the earth beneath our feet, which has massive untapped potential to heat our homes, public buildings and businesses. The NFLAs are delighted to note that tidal power schemes are now under investigation and development around the Welsh coast, North and South (and hope that the Welsh Government will offer every support to the public authorities and businesses involved with them) but remain disappointed that geothermal remains largely neglected. Yes – the Welsh Government gave a grant of £450,000, but Minister this is simply not enough. The UK Parliament’s Environment Audit Committee recently wrote to the Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy pointing out that there is enough geothermal energy in the UK to meet 100 per cent of the UK’s annual heating demand, and Wales has a significant industrial legacy of redundant coal mines filled with mine water from which heat can be extracted for district heating, for power generation, and domestic heat pumps. Let’s get on and get that heat.

Coupled with this, the Welsh NFLA would like to see new homes built to the highest insulation and energy efficiency standards. They should be fitted, wherever possible, with solar panels that are optimally sited to provide the maximum amount of electricity and to heat water, with batteries to store generated power, and heat pumps to warm the home. Provision should be made for electric vehicle charging points. The owners of existing properties should receive financial incentives to convert their homes to be eco-friendly and the planning system should encourage this. Ideally every home should have the lowest energy consumption possible whilst still being warm and cosy and where possible both electricity and heat should be generated on site. In effect every home should become a power station – as should ditto public buildings.

The other advantages of home-grown or community-generated energy are that

it reduces the requirement to invest in an expensive national grid, electricity is not lost in long-distance transmission, homeowners and communities become energy independent and more resilient, communities are brought together with a collective purpose, and they are not at the mercy of large energy producing plants that can be subject to shut-down because of defective parts, essential maintenance, or climate change (as in France) or attack by hostile powers in times of war (as we have sadly seen in Ukraine).

These concepts are not new; in the past we had communal windmills and waterwheels and local authorities had their own municipal gas and electricity companies to supply local needs.

Nor are these notions fanciful; they are necessary, they are achievable, and they are exciting, and the Welsh NFLAs can see so much potential to do so much good for our nation’s people and our environment if this new renewable energy company is established as a partnership between government and nation.

It is with regret that I have now to end with reference to those two ‘nuclear elephants’ in the room – Trawsfynydd and Wylfa. The Welsh NFLAs see the establishment and financing of Cwmni Egino by the Welsh Government as a retrograde step that is contrary to the government’s commitment to net zero by 2023.

New nuclear is not net zero, not is it carbon free. If a new nuclear plant were to be built at Trawsfynydd here are some of the activities that would contribute to its carbon footprint:

The construction of any new nuclear plant requires a tremendous expenditure of concrete, steel and numerous other materials and the deployment of a vast construction workforce to achieve its completion. The movement of materials and workers to and from the site and the erection of the reactor building and associated works. Reactors once operational require uranium which is mined, the ore milled to produce a uranium ore concentrate, sometimes called yellowcake, converted to uranium hexafluoride (UF6), enriched to enhance the concentration of U-235, manufactured into fuel, and shipped to site. The plant is staffed by hundreds of workers and requires 24-hour armed security, necessitating countless vehicle and personnel movements to and from site. Fuel once expended must be stored on site, cooled in special tanks and removed to Sellafield for storage. The plant must at the end of its life be decommissioned, a massive, costly, complex and, at times, labour intensive process that takes decades. The resultant radioactive materials must be taken off site for disposal in an underground or undersea waste repository (dump), an operation that is massively expensive and massive carbon intensive with train movements of material to site and into the dump and with the movements of the site personnel.

And this takes no account of the fact that nuclear operations come with accidental risks, lead to the contamination of surrounding land and watercourses, are linked to past local clusters of cancer cases, and in the case of Traws, poison the adjoining Lake.

Minister, why not then simply repurpose the Traws site to be a renewable energy hub? Indeed, the Welsh NFLAs have already suggested to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which is carrying out decommissioning work there, that renewable technologies be installed on-site as land becomes available with the green power generated used to support their operations.

Cwmni Egino could focus on making the site a centre of excellence for renewable technologies and this would also compliment the work showcased at the Centre for Alternative Technologies located not so many miles away at Machynlleth.

There may be a pressing reason to have a small reactor to produce medical isotopes, but to locate this at Trawsfynydd, which is relatively isolated, appears illogical; most such institutes are co-located in an academic facility. The Welsh NFLAs believe that the Nuclear Futures Institute at Bangor University would be the most logical location.

We also believe that Wylfa could be repurposed as a manufacturing facility to support on- and off-shore wind and tidal energy generation. Why cannot it be used as a hub to produce wind turbine blades or components for tidal power schemes? It is an exciting time for Welsh tidal with Council and business backers, North and South, looking at projects off the West Coast of Ynys Mon, off the coast of Denbighshire, near the port of Mostyn, across the Severn Estuary, a body of water with the second highest tidal range in the world, and once more at Swansea with the Blue Eden project.

The late Dr Carl Clowes a renowned anti-nuclear campaigner produced a Manifesto for (Ynys) Mon in which he estimated that on Ynys Mon 2,950 new and sustainable jobs in energy conservation, from wind, solar, tidal, biomass projects, organic farming, eco-tourism and supportive industries could be supported with a renewables approach. Wylfa could be at the heart of that vision.

So, in summary Minister, the Welsh NFLAs urge you to:

Make the new renewable energy company a partnership between government and nation, with public, communities, social landlords, academic institutions, local and public authorities invited to invest and participate Invest the surplus generated by the new company, after the payment of a modest return to investors, in a national emergency programme to retrofit the homes of the poorest citizens; to support energy efficiency in public buildings; and to back geothermal power development Repurpose Cwmni Egino as a renewable energy company, repurpose Trawsfynydd and Wylfa as sites for renewable energy development and manufacture, and move the medical isotope facility to Bangor

The NFLA is convinced that Wales can meet its needs quite simply through utilising the plentiful natural resources with which it has been blessed by God and Nature – the wind, sun, tides, rivers and heat from beneath our feet. Each represents an enormous power source for our nation. We wish you and the Welsh Government every success in doing so.

Thank you for considering this letter. Please direct any reply to our NFLA Secretary Richard Outram by email to richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk.

Yours Sincerely,

Councillor Sue Lent,
Chair, NFLA Welsh Forum