, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 2
So, those are the answers there. I would suggest to the committee that Dŵr Cymru would be very happy to come and talk to the committee about how it invests its dividends.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 2
So, I can answer that, actually, because I asked that question of Dŵr Cymru myself. So, there is a dividend, and it has been invested in social tariffs.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 2
I can see that the Chair is talking, but I can't hear you, Chair.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 2
So, I have a series of meetings with NRW and Dŵr Cymru scheduled. I have a two-hour meeting with them tomorrow morning, for example. The meetings were scheduled already, not as a result of the media response. We meet very regularly with them. The meeting is…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 2
Yes. So, you're absolutely right, Huw. We need to address all of the issues, and we do have a slight media thing of going round the various actors and focusing on different bits of them, depending on what's in the news. But the truth is, as I just said, we've…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 2
It's very, very welcome. Less than two years ago, we were discussing how on earth we could get this up the public agenda. We certainly don't need to do that anymore. It's extremely welcome; we want people to be very aware of it. We want them to be aware of…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 2
We're phasing it because the things in phase 2 are more complex. So, the later inclusions are carrier bags and polystyrene lids for cups and food containers and oxo-degradable plastic products. We just need to consider further particular evidence of needs for…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 2
Yes, I quite agree, and one of the big issues about this whole piece of work is to encourage manufacturers to change their packaging so that they don't fall foul of the regime. So, we really do hope, Janet, very much, that that kind of innovation will spread…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 2
Well, I'm obviously very sorry if a business feels that they haven't been informed, but we've run a big, extensive campaign on this, and it's been in the news for a long time. There's been environmental awareness of this for a long time. I would say, Delyth…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 2
Yes. So, there are two different things there, aren't there? One is to take particular items out of the production stream altogether. We're not suggesting that there's a deposit on plastic coffee cup lids. We're saying you shouldn't have them. They just…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 2
Yes. So, this is designed, obviously, to reduce unnecessary packaging and to do all the same things I've just talked about—increase levels of recycling, promote the use of more environmentally friendly packaging and to encourage the use of more reusable or…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 2
Well, I mean the thing is, the recycling rate in England is so low that anything would work, whereas that's not the case here and it's not the case in Scotland, and that's causing a problem. But the outcome of the consultation and all of the carbon impact…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 2
We haven't made that request, Delyth, because we aren't at the position where we need to do so. All the way through this consultation we had glass included. It's quite clear from the regulatory impact assessment undertaken with the UK Government, and clear…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 2
Yes. Well, this has been a bit of a saga, I'm afraid. So, we've been working with other administrations on the drafting of the legislation for the deposit-return scheme. Right up until very recently, we were working to make sure that there was…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 1
Yes, absolutely, Joyce. That's part of the natural flood defence programme that we've rolled out, and trees are very much part of the natural flood defence programme, along with something called remeandering, where we take away hard culverts and let the river…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 1
Okay. So, we've been doing quite a bit of work on the national forest. We had—as I'm sure the committee knows—a whole series of things that happened at the end of 2022 around a series of recommendations to us for how the national forest should work. The group…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 1
So, it's currently our intention to publish that next year, because it better aligns with all of the other initiatives I've just talked about. So, we've got a delivering net zero project, the net-zero skills action plan, and that consultation is open until 31…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 1
So, the whole thing will conclude by summer next year, Joyce, and we'll publish the whole thing retrospectively, but we have been publishing it incrementally; there have been a number of written statements and other publications going on. We've got a woodland…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 1
Yes, absolutely, Joyce. So, what that does is it drives us towards understanding how to plant a sustainable forest, and it's quite clear, isn't it, that if you plant enormous tracts of the same tree and then a disease hits, you lose the whole lot, so what you…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 1
Thank you, Joyce. So, we have accelerated woodland creation over the last three years. It's gone from 80 hectares to 1,190 hectares. That's the highest level for nearly 40 years, and that's an incredible achievement, but there's an awful long way to go to get…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 1
Yes.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 1
Yes. So, we're looking at a number of things, Jenny. We're looking at a straightforward loan, and that would have to be based on the ability of the person to pay it back over a period of time, but we're also investigating the possibility of doing other…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 1
Yes, so there's a couple of things to say there, Jenny. I've already talked about the behaviour change programme and making sure that people have the right information to make the right decisions. We're going to be having an energy hwb as part of our Welsh…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 1
Yes, so the decarbonisation group and the heat strategy team work very closely together. A series of action plans are being developed as part of the work on the heat strategy, and the decarbonisation implementation group are very well aware of that, and the…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
General scrutiny of the Minister for Climate Change: part 1
Unfortunately, the cost of energy has considerably changed since the climate committee's consideration, so obviously the cost-benefit analysis changes as a result. Energy prices are still way higher than anyone expected them to be, and then, actually, as a…
