THIS COLUMN has for ages been calling for taxpayer-owned renewable energy-generation – probably principally wind-turbines. Allowing for set-up, maintenance and distribution costs, such a system could use local or regional grids to supply consumers with electricity free at the point of delivery.
The idea is that renewable energy-provision could be regarded in the same way as a range of other taxpayer-funded public services, such as health, education and roads, which are all provided free at the point of delivery.
Plans recently announced by the Welsh government to set up a new publicly-owned renewable energy company are a significant and very welcome step towards this goal. But the proposals need to be far more radical.
Initially, the new company will focus on developing windfarms on publicly-owned woodland, and the scheme, very belatedly, will ensure that financial gains are not syphoned off abroad. Currently, the biggest windfarms in Wales are foreign-owned, often by overseas governments, including Sweden and France.
Certainly, the project is a UK first and will do its bit to tackle the climate crisis. But, addressing the Senedd, climate change minister Julie James was unexcitingly vague, suggesting little more than that energy profits could be used for home-insulation for people living near the new windfarms.
The vision needs to be considerably widened. Will energy from our publicly-funded and publicly-owned windfarms simply be fed into the National Grid, with the power entering the general energy pot and fed back to Welsh households at the going price, which in the case of rural counties, such as Ceredigion, is consistently higher than elsewhere in Britain?
What precisely will happen to the potentially huge earnings coming the way of the Welsh public purse? It’s a fair bet that the citizens of Wales would be more interested in electricity free at the point of delivery than in provision of home-insulation, important as that is.
Let’s look seriously, too, at local and regional electricity grids. Why export Wales-generated renewable energy, only for it to be sent back, exclusively via the National Grid, volumes of electricity meanwhile being diminished through moving it about?
Ceredigion organic vegetable-growers used to look askance at the potty system insisted on by supermarkets which saw carrots grown here sent to East Anglia to be washed, before being lorried back to shops in west Wales. The growers rebelled, deserted the supermarkets and started selling direct to customers through local markets and shops. They never looked back. Let’s make it the same for home-grown electricity.
Bronterre News 