Taking action now

Wales has some of the most challenging decarbonisation targets in the UK. The Welsh Government started 2023 by launching a consultation on ‘ambitious and credible’ targets for Wales to meet 100% of our electricity needs from renewable sources by 2035.

This is one component of our challenging whole system targets and carbon budgets – with a net zero carbon emissions target for 2050. To meet that, complete decarbonisation of heating and transport – together accounting for 28% of Wales’s carbon emissions in 2020 – will be required. Wales has set a target for 580,000 heat pumps to be installed by 2035 and is expected to have largely converted to electric vehicles by the mid-2030s. Consequently, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) forecasts Wales’s electricity demand to grow between 50-90% by 2035 and 105-180% by 2050, versus the 2020 baseline.

So even in the most conservative future scenario, by 2050, current renewable generation would be equivalent to just 20% of Welsh demand. To put the increase of renewable generation required into content, in their 2022 review of Welsh Energy Targets, Regen indicated that to achieve 100% renewable electricity Wales needs to, by 2035, double onshore wind capacity, triple solar PV capacity, and increase offshore wind by more than seven times.

While offshore wind generation – including Floating Offshore Wind (FLOW) – is expected to play an important role in meeting Wales’s future decarbonisation ambitions, significant challenges remain. These include economic challenges – with  offshore wind currently requiring higher levels of support than previously expected, demonstrated by the failure to secure new offshore wind capacity in the recent CfD Allocation Round 5; and technical challenges – which are inherent in the roll out of new technology at scale, including the challenges associated with enabling grid connections.

In the short term, large scale onshore wind and solar PV remain the most cost effective and readily deployable technologies to provide the low carbon electricity generation growth required to deliver Wales’s net zero ambitions.

New onshore wind capacity, with its established technology and potential for rapid development, remains a vital component in meeting Wales’s future energy needs – and is likely to be operational significantly earlier than proposed FLOW projects in the Celtic Sea. Crucially, onshore wind will generate early investment in the renewable energy supply chain and port infrastructure in Wales, as a precursor and enabler for the infrastructure and supply chain needed for offshore wind’s longer-term supply chain.  Investment made now for onshore wind will also support the offshore wind industry by increasing the immediate economic benefits to Wales and ensuring that we can take full advantage of the opportunities provided by the green industrial revolution.

As well as generating clean, green energy, onshore wind projects can deliver very real benefits for local communities. Welsh communities stand to gain much more than just the broad advantages of large-scale onshore wind development – which include decarbonisation, energy security, and cost reduction. Rather, there is an opportunity for developers to make a genuine commitment to responsible and impactful projects through a significant investment in local communities. At Bute Energy, we’re taking a broad approach to investment in Wales. This includes maximising Social Value through focus on the local supply chain, while supporting our contract partners to invest jobs, time, resources and money into the communities near our projects. Each contract we award during development and construction will see partners sign up to a Social Value Standard, which will support and direct partners to invest jobs, time, resources and money into the communities near projects, aiming to keep as much of our investment in Wales for the benefit of local communities.

Additionally, we’re supporting the delivery of green jobs & skills by working with local education and training providers, the Welsh supply chain and our tier one contractors, to create pathways into the renewable energy industry and build a future green workforce for Wales. This includes work with local colleges to enhance the provision of green skill development programmes available locally, creating green skills centres of excellence across Wales.

But we are committed to the communities closest to our proposed projects too. Each Energy Park we are proposing will come with a Community Benefit Fund which, informed by engagement with local people and stakeholders, will focus on creating healthier, wealthier communities by supporting recreational, health and wellbeing improvements, enhancing local education offering and identifying more pathways into employment for local people. And they will highlight opportunities to celebrate and promote local culture, heritage and biodiversity.

Across our whole portfolio, the combined funds could invest up to £800m through the projects’ lifetimes in communities local to our energy parks, ensuring a lasting legacy for future generations.

Enabling greater deployment at scale of onshore renewables is the lowest cost and most deliverable pathway for Wales to meet its 2035 renewable energy ambitions, and therefore should serve as a priority for current and future administrations. However, clearly significant challenges also remain for onshore renewables development in Wales – particularly in the enablement of the required supporting grid infrastructure. This lack of grid capacity has been the principal barrier to new renewable energy development in Wales for many years – both for grid-scale generation and for local connections. A new network of HV infrastructure would unlock land suitable for renewable energy development in Mid Wales by connecting the region to the existing well connected transmission networks that operate in the north and south of the country.

We are faced with a climate emergency, a nature emergency, a cost-of-living crisis, and significant threats to our energy security. However, as the recent Climate Change Committee’s Progress Report on reducing emissions in Wales outlines, the roll-out of renewables in Wales has slowed since 2016 and now new energy infrastructure must be taken forward at pace. The CCC Progress Report: Reducing Emissions in Wales (June 2023) emphasizes this slowdown, stating that “while the First Carbon Budget (2016-2020) has been achieved, Wales is not yet on track to meet its targets for the second half of this decade and beyond”.

It is evident that continued commitment from Welsh Government to renewable energy deployment targets will drive investor confidence, secure projects in Wales and create significant export opportunities, in energy, expertise and economic terms.

At Bute Energy, it is our view that focus must now shift to delivery: a rapid response from industry, government and other stakeholders is required if we are to meet this target – and future Carbon Budgets.

So we are taking action now.

We submitted our first application for a Development of National Significance earlier this year, for the Twyn Hywel Energy Park, which will generate enough clean, green energy to power the equivalent of 81,000 households a year and help displace approximately 5.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent to taking all cars off the road in Caerphilly County Borough Council each year.  We expect Twyn Hywel to be constructed and generating energy by in 2025, and our wider portfolio to be operational by the end of the 2020s.

Ben Lewis is Project Director at Bute Energy. As a chartered planner, Ben has over 20 years experience in consenting, including for renewable energy infrastructure like wind, solar and battery projects. He is speaking at Future Energy Wales 2023.