Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee

I'm happy to begin, and then pass over to Jen. It's been a very busy year. So, when I re-read the report, it was clear that we'd been extremely busy. For example, we gave a view on a number of different issues: roads, at the beginning of the year, of course; biodiversity, how to ensure that cities and towns in Wales can welcome more nature to the buildings and so on; TAN15, the consultation on flooding in Wales and how we're going to deal with that in the future, and, of course, we'll be working on this in this year's project. We gave evidence on the Infrastructure (Wales) Bill. We have written to different Governments within the UK to ask for more collaboration on the grid. And one thing that is of great interest to me is leaving Twitter and using other methods of engaging with people. So, this was just the informal work that we were doing to try to give a view; not recommendations for Welsh Government, but just to express our views on different issues as a commission. Then there was a formal report, with suggestions on renewable energy. And we also did some work across Wales with study tours to find out what's happening with infrastructure in different areas, including looking at flooding in north Wales, renewable energy in mid Wales, and the ports in Pembrokeshire.

We've worked with a number of different organisations to stage events. For example, we worked with the consumer water organisation, in trying to discover more about water infrastructure in Wales, and also with the Royal Town Planning Institute. And this was the original question I received, asking, 'When you leave England and come to Wales, what's the difference?' Because, for me, when you cross the Severn, well, you can view it as almost the same place. Not now quite as much as it was even a year ago, because you can see that we work bilingually, and there are other differences, and, I think, over the past few years, when I visit areas of England, I feel that the cycling infrastructure, for example, generally looks better in Wales, but you still can't say, after 20 years of devolution, that you see major differences in terms of infrastructure. So, we conducted two sessions, one in north Wales and one in the south Wales, with RTPI to discuss this.

We feel that we have done many things of interest, and many things that we hope will be very useful. One of the questions last year was on the value for money that the commission represents, and we can go into this with the renewable energy report. But, hopefully, the views that we've expressed on issues such as nature and in other areas will have a financial value. And, of course, if the Government accepts some of the recommendations from our report on renewable energy, we hope to get far more value remaining in Wales. But I'm happy, now, to pass over to Jen.

Yes. Jenifer.

Thanks, Dave. So, I agree with most of what Dave's said, that that's been the experience, probably, for myself and the other commissioners as well. But I think one of the things that I've really found, in my interactions both with the other commissioners, but in the work that we've done and consulting with different groups of people across Wales, is how is infrastructure actually affecting their lives and what are the interconnected relationships between some of these different elements. So, biodiversity is a really interesting one. We are struggling, in some ways, to incorporate biodiversity into our new buildings, our new infrastructure that's coming up. So, it's easy to sort of imagine it in housing, but less easy to imagine it if you're building a new road or a rail network. So, it's how is that biodiversity built into this?

So, some of the conversations, for me, around planning opportunities, for changes in the law, have been really interesting, so they've added to my knowledge about how we develop infrastructure. So, I think that's been a really good part. But also trying to understand the adaptation of building new infrastructure, so rather than thinking about it just as low carbon, it's like how is it adapting to the changes that we're going to be seeing in the future. And that's often challenging in the design of new infrastructure, and we haven't seen so much evidence of how Wales as a whole might manage that, as we go five, 10, 20, 50 years into the future, which is where our remit looks.

So, how would you characterise the impact or the influence that you've had, albeit, maybe, you might say it's still early days? How uncomfortable a thorn are you in Government's side, or how trusted a friend are you when it comes to asking your view, do you think?

I mean, Government is a big beast, and we are probably viewed positively by some areas and less positively by others. So, for example, the renewable energy report, we were anticipating a response to that this month, and, of course, there's still time this month—not much.

A few hours.

Yes. A formal response to that. So, my feeling is, perhaps, that they're struggling a bit with possibly some of our recommendations, which, for me, is a good thing. If we don't cause challenge and we don't cause people to struggle and perhaps change the way they're thinking, then we're not doing our job properly.

We've also heard from different sides of Government, through local government as well, about the challenges of TAN 15, for example, where Welsh Government wants to implement stronger requirements on local authorities, where they can't build in floodplains, and local authorities are, in certain areas, resistant to that. Or, in other areas, even where they're supportive of it, they find that their decisions are being overturned by planning committees. So, there are some complexities there where we get support from certain parts of Government more widely, opposition from others, and then, with some of it, the local democratic process undermines that, regardless.

Okay. Huw, did you want to come in on this?

Yes. We're still getting used to you—I say that in a nice way. We're still getting used to your function and what you're set up to do. Are you there—to use a sporting analogy—to look at those areas where there are 100 areas where there can be marginal gains, and to then say to Government, in housing, in planning, whatever, 'This is what you need to do', or to look at something transformative? And, sorry, a second part to this question, because it comes to the role of a commissioner per se: could the Government do the job that you're set up to do if it were to set up a delivery unit within Government, and say, 'Let's task somebody to force us to deal with the nature crisis?' Sorry, it's a fundamental question, I know, but it's a real question.

Yes, I've got quite strong views on that. Jen, do you want to have a go as well?

Well, I'm trying to think which way around to answer the question, but I think there are different elements to what we do. So, we're a future-looking organisation. The remit is five to 80 years into the future, so a lot of the work that we do is futures orientated, it uses futures models, and we say, 'Well, what is the vision that we feel Wales would benefit most from, whether you're in business, whether you're just a member of the public, whether you're working in the public sector? And how do we work backwards from that point, in order to say to Welsh Government, "Here are some things, some changes, that we believe are needed", as we did in the renewables report? There are 11 recommendations on some quite substantial changes, others not that substantial, that if you do those things, the acceleration of renewables being built in Wales will pick up, and that means that, as we take the next stepping point—say that's 2035, and then 2045—we'll start to see these big differences.

Got it, got it.

So, we're much more futures looking. If you took the second part of the question, 'Could you in-house it?' It depends on what you want out of that. Does it become a regulatory body that has some legislative power to make those, force those, changes? And—

Let me put it another way. If it was a delivery unit that was tasked with exactly the same thing, but with the support of a First Minister and the Cabinet that said, 'Whatever these people come up with', it says, 'This is what we need to deliver', anticipating that long-term future scenario, working back. 'And you will now do it, civil service, you will now do it.' Not, 'Here are some suggestions'; 'You will now do it.'

My feeling is that there's a problem with capture by Government. Because, if you're inside Government, then you're still subject to all of the culture of Government, you're still subject to the networks, you're still subject to the budget, you're still subject to ministerial diktat, if you like. We are independent. So, yes, we are influenced by—for example, within the remit and the terms of reference, there are certain parts of Welsh Government's programme for government that we are tasked with trying to advance. But that doesn't mean that we're answerable directly for our recommendations to anybody within Welsh Government. So, I think it would be a great thing were there to be that department. There is a question, actually, as to whether all Government departments already should be doing this, because Welsh Government is covered by the Well-being of Future Generations Act (Wales) 2015, which, of course, says that long-term thinking is part of what we should be doing. So, arguably, that should already be a function within Welsh Government—

And yet—.

And yet we think that we fulfil a role that is distinct from it.

Okay. That's very good. Thank you.

So, given the long-scale view that you take of things, is a three-year term as chair sufficient? Because you're here one day, gone the other, potentially.

Well, in principle, gone towards the end of this year. I don't have a problem with a term of three years. I think I will probably be requesting a slight extension, because I was brought in, then the new commission arrived. We had a three-year work programme. So, actually, if I were to leave now, I and all the other commissioners wouldn't be able to complete that tour of duty, if you like. So, I'll be requesting an extension for myself and for the commissioners to ensure that the year 1, 2 and 3 projects can be completed.

Okay. But, generally, three years is pretty short, isn't it?

Well, in principle, of course, there'd be nothing to stop me applying for another session, I guess, if that was something I was minded to do. Equally, I'm quite interested in the idea of other people with new ideas coming in. I don't think it's out of line with standard practice in most other regulated public bodies. So—

Well, I think of some of the commissioners that we have, for example; they have terms of seven years, don't they? You don't feel that the three-year term necessarily is—

Well, it wouldn't prohibit me from applying again. I don't have an in-principle disagreement with seven years either, but I don't have a problem with three.

It's not a big issue, as far as you're concerned.

No, no.

Okay. Thank you. Janet.

Can I just ask a question before I ask this one? How does your work then fall in with, like, the future generations commissioner, and then the interim assessor as well that we have of environmental—? Because I just see quite—. Is this duplication, or not?

No. So, the environmental assessor, as I understand it, was brought in, leaving the European Union, to try and ensure that our environmental regulatory mechanisms could be aligned properly. We haven't had any significant dealings with her. With the future generations office, we do have regular engagement, and they might well be working with us this year on a futures project, for example. But the work we do is very distinct. So, our focus is on infrastructure. I don't think there's any other organisation that specifically focuses on that, and there are very good reasons for having that very long-term perspective on infrastructure, because these are decisions that you need to take over a multi-decade period of time. Have you got any other thoughts on—?

I would say that the work that we do is different as well. We're very much about trying to research the future, if you can imagine that, rather than what's happening on the ground today. So, although we have an interest in how what happens today affects what happens in the future, that isn't our core concern. We're very much looking at what are the potential changes, and some of those could be legislative changes as well as strategy and policy changes. What are they and how will those changes actually impact people? So, there is—. It's quite different from looking specifically at regulation; although regulation does fall into it, that's not exactly where our focus is.

And I think the key thing there, really, is about the five years. So, inevitably, most organisations, even though they're tasked with looking into the long term by the future generations Act, will be dragged into the present day because it's crisis time for most public bodies and probably a lot of others as well. We're not allowed, so that means that we have to focus out there, and that really sets us apart, I think.

I think we'll be coming back to some of those issues in a moment.

Are you still confident in the ability of the infrastructure commission to manage conflicts of interest, given the recent media stories?

Yes, I'm very confident. So, I was quite pleased to see that article come out to highlight the process that we undertake when we recruit commissioners. I don't think that the article was entirely objective, if I can put it that way. So, for example, one of the sentences said that Stephen Brooks talked about developers four times within that evidence session. It didn't mention that he talked about communities more than 10 times. So, I don't think it was trying to portray a completely balanced view but, arguably, I wouldn't have been able to be appointed had my interests in renewable energy or any of the other things that I work on been seen as a blocker. And, in fact, we would struggle probably to find people with a wide variety of skills if you decided to rule them out on the basis of any interest that they'd had in the past or any potential future conflict. So, the issue was investigated. Stephen, as far as I'm concerned, has been cleared. There's no problem with him or anybody else.

The other reason I was glad that that article was published was that we have reviewed our process on declarations of interest, and, as far as I'm concerned, it's probably as good practice as you'll find anywhere within Wales or the UK. As an example, yesterday I was informed that I'd won a place on a framework for Health Education and Improvement Wales, and yesterday I updated the website. So, you can now see on my declarations of interest that that is one of my areas of work. Not even the Commissioner for Public Appointments in the UK has that level of clarity or updates their profile—. Our requirements under regulation are for an annual update, which is hopeless, actually, because, in principle, I could start work in six months, have a six-month programme of work, and then finish the contract and nobody would be any wiser because I wouldn't have had to publish it.

So, I think that what we're doing goes way beyond existing good practice, and I'd encourage other people, if they're interested, to have a conversation and see how we can spread that learning.

Thank you.

Just on that point, the Government, in response to some of the media comments, said that there's a requirement for commissioners to remove themselves from discussions or decisions where they have a financial interest, or where their interest might suggest a danger of bias. Has that happened in some of your deliberations in the past?

Yes. So, the reason that David wasn't responsible for the renewables report and wasn't leading on it, and I was, was very much because of that. So, he has an interest in renewables and I currently don't.

Okay.

And there's also been an example in a meeting we held in Milford Haven where I stepped out of—. There were energy developers coming into the meeting, so I absented myself.

Okay, thank you.

And how do you manage your relationship with the Welsh Government as it relates to making sure you're really independent?

Well, we're a sort of independent/quasi-independent body because we're dependent on Welsh Government for budget, and, from that point of view, as a non-statutory organisation, of course, we can never be wholly independent. However, I think you could say that we have editorial independence in that, everything that we say and that we do, we manage ourselves. We have a robust process of internal debate. We don't have any Welsh Government officers there telling us what we can and can't do, can and can't say. So, we're sometimes aware of Welsh Government opinion, which is fed to us through various channels. We don't bend to accommodate that opinion. It's very useful for us when we're forming our own views, but I would say, from the point of view of the information that we debate and that we provide, we are completely independent.

Yes. Huw, you wanted to pick up on this and then we'll move on to Jenny.

Yes, indeed, and it's the reverse of my previous line of questioning of you. If you have that independence, and you clearly value that independence, then how do you see your relationship with Government in terms of being critical or holding a scorecard against them as time goes by? You're still in the early days of this organisation, but, if you bring forward recommendations that do not then see action coming from them, what do you see as your role? As I'm saying this, I'm very aware of things like the Climate Change Committee with Lord Deben, who has been relentless in holding Governments of different persuasions to account, and increasingly frustrated when they haven’t actually delivered against climate change.

Yes. I applaud the Climate Change Committee and what they are doing in terms of raising awareness and trying to hold different Governments to account on what they're doing on adaptation and mitigation. Our remit and role is, of course, somewhat more restricted, but, for example, we had anticipated a response to our renewable energy report. We haven’t got one yet. Tomorrow, or as soon as possible thereafter, we’ll be writing to the Minister to politely enquire as to why we haven’t received a response yet, and we will be following up on that. We also have an impact table—so, on the left-hand side are all the things that we said we would do, and on the right-hand side is how we’re performing against them, and of course the implementation of those recommendations would form a part of that. We’ve also committed to reviewing—certainly for a period of time, because we can’t do this for infinity, but—reviewing the outcomes of previous reports. So, we have looked again at the digital report that was carried out by the previous commission, and our anticipation is that, in future years, future commissions will also want to review progress against any recommendations that were made.

Okay, diolch yn fawr. Jenny.

Just going on to budget, really, you didn't spend all your budget last year. Were you allowed to roll over the £25,000 that wasn't spent?

No, that was taken back by Welsh Government.

Okay. So, you have the same £400,000 in the current year. Have you any idea what you're going to get in the next year, based on the draft budget?

We're not in a position to know the exact amount yet. We have comfort that we'll be provided with a budget that fulfils all of the needs of paying for the secretariat and for commissioner time, and for research of the project that we’re planning for year 3. That doesn’t necessarily mean, of course, that we’ll get the same budget as previous years, but I understand that the world that the Welsh Government and other public bodies is in is highly restricted. We’ll work within whatever budget envelope we get. I think, in the conversation we had yesterday, I was given sufficient comfort that the budget would not be—you know, wouldn't be halved, wouldn't be significantly reduced, even if there is a reduction.

Okay. How have you allocated the money from the last financial year and the current one in terms of—? Presumably, this year you've allocated a lot of money around your renewable energy research and report.

Yes.

Do you then spend the majority of your money next year on the topic that you're planning to concentrate on next year?

Yes. So, roughly a bit more than half will go on the main research topic for that year—so, this year, a bit more than half is going on the flooding. Some of the budget goes onto preparation for the following year's activity, and the remainder goes on the costs of the commission itself.

Okay. So, it's difficult to assess whether you're providing value for money at the moment, because you haven't got the response to your renewable energy report. But how do you—? Are you still able to assert that you're, in the end, going to save Wales more than the commission's budget in the long term?

I've confidence. Jen, do you want to make a response?

I think the one thing that we can say is that, in terms of what's in the renewables report, as an example, if the recommendations were implemented we would definitely save Wales considerably more than the commission has a budget for.

When it comes to value for money, one of the things that we often find when we're commissioning reports is that initially people might come forward with similar ideas to previous reports that many of us will have read, and so we have been able to make sure that we are looking under our values of areas that are more radical, are going to cause more distinct change, more innovation, are going to look at alternatives where Wales has an opportunity to maybe specialise in certain areas, and where we know that the future generations Act and other policy that already exists would actually welcome it, but hasn't perhaps been able to see where the space is that they could work. We do know that that does exist in the reports that we produce. I think the challenge comes on making sure, as has been said, that there is some sort of implementation of those recommendations. The tracker that Dave mentioned previously, which is all about impact, all about value for money, will be able to describe that in more detail, once we have a response.

One of your recommendations on renewable energy is the devolution of the Crown Estate to Wales—good luck on that one, because people on the other end of the M4 don't seem to be playing ball. So, how could you justify pursuing something that, at the moment, seems politically out of reach?

We want to put that suggestion forward—it's a bit like planting a seed—because we know how it's operated in Scotland, and we've had some really good conversations with the devolved estate in Scotland to understand how they generate money and how that money is used within the economy itself to actually produce the outcomes that Scotland wants. The idea behind that is it may not be something that happens tomorrow, but we are looking into the future. Being able to make sure that Wales takes advantage and is able to generate wealth from its own landscape is something that we would highly recommend and would continue to do so.

I'm sure we all agree. Thank you.

Thank you. Janet.

Could you give me an assessment of progress against the commission's identified outcomes, and can you provide examples of tangible achievements today?

We've got the impacts table, which I'll be able to put online shortly, but, from memory, it's the publication of the renewable energy report, it's work on progress to reducing the impact of flooding by 2050, work on which is under way—

Can I just—? Sorry to interrupt. On that one, on the flooding one, there'll be a report, will there?

Yes. At the moment—I'll give you a quick update on that—we have four streams on the flooding project. All of those are being carried out by consultants at the moment, and in collaboration with the flooding committee in Wales. We anticipate that that work will come to an end from the consultant side just prior to the summer, and then we'll be generating a combined report with recommendations that we'll publish probably in autumn of this year. We've complied with all of our objectives. We have good project governance, we've got good oversight on the projects that we carry out. I'm happy to respond to anything specific that is listed.

So, you've done a renewable energy report, and the flooding—those two projects.

Yes, and then the proposal for next year is to carry out a project on how people understand and respond to communication about existential climate risk in the very long term, and we're thinking particularly for communities that would be most at risk—so, low-lying coastal areas. That, for me, is probably the most interesting and the most difficult project, which is why there's a bit of work going on at the moment to prepare for that.

Thank you. How do you measure your progress?

The first two projects were requested in the remit letter. A third project is something that we've discussed internally, and it's going to be another significant part of research. If you like, the only tangible output that we have to provide is those reports and the recommendations to the Welsh Government. We've taken it upon ourselves to go a lot further than that. We feel that we've got a public duty to communicate infrastructure issues as widely as possible, to work with as many different partnership organisations as possible and to move the nature of the debate and to keep pushing this long-term discussion. And I feel that we've done that. I feel that the organisations that we work with may not always agree with us—in particular, the engineering sectors didn't particularly like the angle that we took on roads and the road review—but I do think that they respect our opinion, and we'll continue to work with them and any other partners in the sector.

Thank you.

Thank you. Huw.

Thank you. I want to turn to renewable energy. You have been quite challenging for the Government in this. We're sort of accepting now that when the Minister says they're doing a deep-dive into something, that's gold standard, but you've said the deep-dive didn't go far enough and you've brought out your own report with some quite far-reaching recommendations. What are the significant parts of that report, which you have not had the Government response to? I'm pleased to hear you're going to be writing, if you don't have it this week, to the Government saying, 'Where is it?' But what are the significant parts of that that you think the Government did not go far enough on, so you're bringing forward some quite specific recommendations?

Jen, you led on this.

I'll do my best to cover the answers to those questions. There are obviously many things that you could do that are not included in here as well. I think one of the key aspects of energy in Wales is the lack of a really coherent strategy. So, although we may be a devolved nation and some of that may not be devolved, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be strategic in our approach to delivering it. One element that I'm particularly keen on, and I've talked about it a lot and we have it actually for flooding as well, is a vision for what does this look like in the future, what does Wales look like, what are its new energy structures going to be, how do people engage with those. So, that's one major key element of it.

There's obviously the everlasting question around grid as well. There's a lot in there about what's the potential for grid, how do we work better with central Government, with our grid partners, if you like—because they are varied—in ensuring that Wales gets its fair share much more rapidly than perhaps is currently proposed, and what are the other opportunities for us here in Wales in terms of microgrids, off-gridding, how do we behave differently. We have other opportunities. So, there are some elements in there—. And again, this is looking into the long term. I think the way in which Ofgem actually delivers on the grid system as well—there are some questions about how we reform that too.

So, there are all sorts of bits in there. There are 11 recommendations here so I'm not going to go through all of them. But one of the other areas is on the review of the regulations around buildings—so, whether it's permitted development, what the opportunities are for installing renewables very quickly onto buildings. Again, that's variable depending on where you want to do it. So, I think those were some of the key areas. And, obviously, we talked about the Crown Estate as well. But I'm happy to answer separate questions.

One of the three areas that you've commissioned consultancies to look at work on—. They're all quite interesting: renewable energy projects, capturing the value of them to Wales, et cetera. But one of them is engaging mid Wales communities on renewable energy projects. Why have you focused on that?

We had a very large stakeholder engagement group and it would have been one of the areas that came out of that as an area to look at. We know that as the climate is changing we want to reduce emissions, so wherever we live in Wales we're going to be in contact with some form of renewable energy or some form of low-carbon energy. That is going to happen, we know that for sure. And what we want to make sure is that those people who live in communities that are particularly in areas of outstanding natural beauty, or are in national parks, or are in areas where perhaps there are limited grid connections—so there's a lot of discussion about where new pylons might be placed—that they're fully engaged in what happens to their communities going into the future. And also, if you have ever seen the grid system overlaid on Wales, mid Wales doesn't really have much in terms of the grid system. So, we want to understand how do we do the best work for all of our communities in Wales, and that includes mid Wales. It's slightly easier along the north and south and slightly easier down the coast as well. This is just a part of Wales that isn't well represented. So, we want to be able to support them in the long term.

Thank you. One other particular question here. Two of the commissioners—you, Dr Clubb, and also, if I'm pronouncing this right, Eurgain Powell—sit on the Wales net-zero challenge group. One of the streams of that is how could Wales meet energy needs by 2035 whilst phasing out fossil fuels. That is interesting in terms of the current debate around green primary steel making. That is really interesting. And the potential role of hydrogen—okay, there are other technologies such as carbon utilisation and carbon capture and so on—is interesting. Is that beyond the remit of yourselves as future generations looking up to an 80-year horizon? Or do you see yourselves having skin in the game in the future as part of this just transition to net zero, and whether we should be in the game of steel making or not, or we should just be doing recycled electric arc steel making? Is that something that is of interest to you, either on the challenge group or as the commission itself?

We were just talking about that prior to coming in here, actually.

So, you're one of those people who is going to raise that.

I'll talk very briefly, because I think Jen has got a lot more interesting background on this. I'll just talk about the net-zero Wales challenge group. It's an interesting process and that's going to come to an end, I think, in June, with an event in the Senedd where the report is going to be launched. I sit within the energy group and Eurgain sits on the connected communities group. The energy group has, effectively, endorsed the work of the infrastructure commission and then is looking for other ways to add value. But Jen is actually composing something on behalf of the commission about Port Talbot and so on.

I won't give you too much of a heads-up. The main issue with Port Talbot is a human challenge—the biggest issue is the human issue. And I think that we shouldn't go into the technology without recognising the devastation to a community that has had a steelworks there since 1901, I think. So, I think that's an important point to raise.

When it comes to the different options for Port Talbot, there are both technical and energy issues. So, for an electric arc furnace, there is no reason why you couldn't make all steel from recycled steel. The question comes, then, down to contaminants within that, so we need to have better technologies that identify copper and tin within our scrap metal. And currently, across the UK and in a lot of other parts of world, our metal recycling industries are fragmented, they're perhaps not the best regulated and they don't necessarily look at how they're separating the waste more accurately.

So, you could have an opportunity in Wales that presents you with both playing into our recycling targets—we're very good at recycling in Wales—and delivering a high-quality circular economy around steel. It does come with some questions on the availability of supply. One of the biggest issues in scrap recycling is, 'Do you have enough scrap steel to generate enough steel for use across the UK?' So, there are some questions there.

In terms of the electricity, we know that we don't have the lowest carbon intensity electricity here in Wales—in fact, it's quite high compared to the rest of the UK—so we would have to do considerable work to lower the carbon intensity of our electricity generation, whether it be through renewables, or whether some electricity comes from Hinkley Point in the future, to actually mean that we are making low-carbon steel using an electric arc furnace. So, there are some issues around that.

On the hydrogen question, I do have a background in hydrogen, and the amount of hydrogen that you would need to produce to run a blast—

It's around 17 per cent of the whole of the UK—

Yes. But if you wanted to do it from renewables, you think about how many green electrons you need, it's huge. You would be wanting to run that out of a nuclear power station, the generation of hydrogen. So, this is a different question.

There are also questions, again, within the durability of materials. We know that, in the past, there have been issues around hydrogen embrittlement in steel where there have been fixings—bolts and things—in bridges that have failed and they've never discovered where the hydrogen got into the system. So, if you're adding hydrogen, significant amounts of it, to the steel-making process, you have to be absolutely clear that none of that is getting into the material. So, there are some challenges around all of those elements.

Got it. That's really helpful. But you are the infrastructure commission and there is an issue here, I would argue, around whether we see primary steel making as part of the net-zero transition, as part of the UK sovereign infrastructure—you can see where I'm going on this—or whether we walk away from it and offshore our moral and ethical responsibilities for driving forward the technology, difficult as it is in that area. So, I'm really fascinated as to, with all the stuff around electric arc, which is definitely part of the future, whether the commission is going to come forward with something, in some way, that says, 'Well, it's really difficult, it's really costly, technically it's difficult, it's going to subsume the Government's investment strategy, we've got to find decarbonsied electricity to make it work'—all of that—'but we should do it'.

There is some research in whether or not we have enough supply of scrap steel. That would be my first question: do we have enough to provide us with the steel making that we need? We can get the technologies right to make all of our steel from recycled materials, but do we have enough of it? So, that's the fundamental question. If we don't, we have to invest in green primary steel making. I don't think Wales or the UK wants to get into a position where our resilience, security and ability to manufacture here is compromised.

There's a whole day's inquiry around that, I think—

There's a PhD thesis on this, yes.

But we very much look forward to whatever's being pulled together. Jenny, very briefly on this, and then we'll come to Joyce.

I just want to probe you a bit further on this business that, if we could get metal recycling improved and to clear out things that contaminate it, whether you are saying that, in theory, we could be reusing recycled steel even to do the things where the most high-performance steel is required—so, for example, building wind turbines for the Celtic sea, or precision engineering of tools and this sort of thing.

Metals are very good for recycling, but the issue is always contaminants within the system. So, there is no understood reason why you couldn't make everything from recycled steel. It's all to do with what is in the process. I think, in the United States, 70 per cent of steel is recycled scrap steel, and some of that comes from within the process as well as from outside the process. What there isn't is good enough, commercially available, at-scale technologies that sort the contaminants from the waste metals, and it's that area where, if we wanted to really invest some money, it would be into better recycling technologies. So, there's an opportunity there.

Okay—

Okay, and—

No, sorry. We're scrutinising the commission now, and not the future of Port Talbot, as much as we'd like to do that and it is very interesting, but I think we need to move on. So, thank you for that. Joyce.

I'm going to move on to flooding, and I've read the work that you're currently doing. I've always been interested in flooding, and I'm going to flip the question to you, unkindly, I suppose. You're working on flooding, but we've seen that drought is equally a huge challenge, and in my mind the two go together. You solve one to help the other. So, what governance arrangements, expected outputs and time frames do you have on your work?

Are we talking about the flooding project?

Flooding.

Flooding.

I take the point about drought, and I personally have strong concerns about heat, in particular, urban heating and wildfires. I used to work in an organisation that managed big wildfire conferences in the UK, and south Wales, as we know, has got a huge problem with wildfires, which is a social issue, really. On the flooding project, I spoke to Eurgain, who is one of the two commissioners who is leading it, yesterday. She is very confident that the work is going well and that it'll be completed on schedule. The four different work programmes are also working closely together, which is not always the case with separate consultants who are working on things. Each of those different topics has been cleared by a project advisory group and has its own value.

For me, the most interesting one is on land use planning, which is the last one, because this comes back to this cyclical question of why people are consenting housing developments in flood prone areas only for Natural Resources Wales to be then tasked with making them resilient to floods. So, effectively, we have a public body in Wales that is subsidising private development that is being allowed by the public sector. The public sector is throwing money away, and there may be something there about perverse incentives or requirements on the public sector. So, I know that some economic development officers, for example, within local authorities feel quite bitter about the fact that they're not really able to develop not just housing, but anything within these flood risk areas, because they're also mandated to produce economic development. So, I do think maybe there's a bit of a trade-off. I'm not sure who has the levers on that to say, 'Okay, we recognise now that you're not going to be able to meet our normal economic development figures as long as you don't go building these properties in flood risk areas.' But, for me, that's a madness that we just keep on going round this cycle, throwing ever more public money at developments that shouldn't be taking place.

Have you done any research—I've talked about this quite a lot—about storage? We've had more rain this winter, for example, than ever. I've been around a while, so I've got a good recall on what we would normally expect. So, of course, it's causing the problem that you've just said. We know that there are obvious natural solutions and obvious solutions to not building on a floodplain and bailing out the developers afterwards with public money. We know that. But what I'm not convinced about yet is anybody thinking about storage and then release when we've got that requirement. Do you know of any work that's happening in that space?

So, the housing developers and other developers are required to model and account for floodwater risk. That certainly takes place with hard engineering, as you'd call it, on site. I'm much more interested in the ability of the natural landscape to be able to hold more water. So, as a commission, we're particularly interested in green and blue infrastructure, as you might call it, and that's why we push and challenge and suggest that urban environments and rural environments all need to have stronger policies on how to improve and maintain nature. Jen, I don't know if you've got any additional insight, because you're housing.

Yes. I think we do see that, sometimes, when sustainable urban drainage is used within housing, particularly, it's perhaps not done in the most useful way, or it looks particularly at attenuation ponds rather than more at surrounding areas. I think there are also some questions on—which we have seen changing in the planning infrastructure—about not building on peatland areas that contain a lot of water, as well. So, it's about making sure that, as we look at natural solutions, we do build that into our legislative frameworks that say that these things are unacceptable because they actually undermine communities who live either below them or near them to be able to manage their own lives.

Very quickly on your question about drought, I think our third-year programme of work will look at some of the issues around, potentially, what we used to refer to as 'desertification'—so, where we see land drying out and being no longer useful for what it was previously used for—because that is an existential threat to certain communities in Wales, whether it be through farming activities or through areas where they live or where wildlife perhaps has a place. So, I think that that will probably sit under that group as well.

Okay, so how do you avoid any potential duplication, because we've had various groups involved in trying to address the issue of flooding? How do you keep your work unique to and separate from that?

So, the project advisory group is made up of pretty much everybody who's part of other organisations with an interest in flooding, and I think that they will probably be steering that work in a direction that they might be able to take but are not able to because they're part of these regulated bodies. So, obviously, NRW does a lot of work on flooding. There's a committee on coastal and river flooding. Representatives from those are part of the project advisory group. I think this project offers them a freedom that they might not have within a regulated public body to be able to say things or push things that they might not be able to.

Okay. Yes, that's useful, but what I'm hearing, then, from you and what I've heard from everybody else is that nobody is looking at storage, beyond the footprint of a house. I know that there's storage there. I know that you can have storage in the footprint of where you're building, but the facts are, at the moment, we're being deluged. Those are the facts.

Do you mean storage in the sense of reservoir storage?

'Rainwater harvesting' it's called.

Okay.

Well, I'll call it what I like.

No, no, but that's the term that they use.

Okay, I don't want to step in here, surely. [Laughter.]

I would call it storage, and I mean on a larger scale than the existing footprints.

Yes. I'm not sure who's dealing with reservoirs. I know that there's a call-out in England and some landowners respond, and there are some ones being produced there, but it's not straightforward; there's a lot of conflict around this.

Something to take away, maybe—

No, I know it's not straightforward. That's why nobody's looking at it.

Okay. Thank you, Joyce. Huw.

If I turn to your working with the UK National Infrastructure Commission—and you've previously described the relationship as 'good' in previous evidence sessions—how is it at the moment? How effective is that working relationship, and, in particular, can I ask whether you were involved in any way on the UK national infrastructure assessment?

So, the relationship is very good. We meet quarterly with the National Infrastructure Commission—or I meet quarterly with them—and, in terms of being involved, we have the opportunity to respond in the same way that other organisations do. The National Infrastructure Commission for the UK is different to the one in Wales in that it has a staff of around 50 people who are looking at making suggestions as to what infrastructure should be, and they don't necessarily do it in the same long-term way that we do, so it's a slightly different set-up. We definitely had a heads-up from them about what was in the second infrastructure assessment last November, and we will also share with them where it's appropriate, and access information that they've already done, for example, on surface water flooding. I think they have similar experiences that sometimes it takes a long time to get a response from central Government on their recommendations. So, in that sense, it's all very positive, but their work is quite specific in what they do, which is very different to the work that we do.

Okay, but it sounds like, from what you're saying, that it's dovetailing nicely—

Yes.

—you are being consulted, you're getting a heads-up on things.

Can I turn to one specific thing, and, Chair, genuinely I'm not heading back to steel just for the sake of it, but because it's directly relevant to this?

No, no, go on.

In their regular assessment of UK infrastructure—the second assessment, published back in October—they made several recommendations. One of them was around a hydrogen pipeline. Now, you've touched already on some of the technical issues around hydrogen and steel, but this is key, actually, in terms of their recommendations on infrastructure. They recommend that the UK Government should commit to the development of a core hydrogen pipeline network, operating no later than 2035, and, interestingly, they've identified half a dozen places around the UK that that should focus on, including south Wales, but go on to state:

'The argument for connecting South Wales largely depends on what role hydrogen plays in decarbonising the steel industry...if the steel industry does not require hydrogen then the case for a hydrogen pipeline to the area is weakened.'

Did you have any engagement with that? Did you have any input in that? Do you have a view on that?

I probably have a personal view on it, but we don't have a commission view, that's for sure. So, this is a really interesting selection of questions. Now, the biggest issue with hydrogen is one that comes up in all sorts of areas, and that's about supply. To have a hydrogen pipeline by 2035 feels entirely unrealistic because we don't make any green hydrogen, or really any blue hydrogen, in the UK at all. So, there doesn't seem to be a space for that to happen.

Now, you might say, 'Build the pipeline and the hydrogen will come', but, actually, there are other issues around electricity generation. There are also issues with the reliability of electrolysers—that most of them are not working reliably enough to produce green hydrogen in the way that we want. We need to settle on what we're doing with the captured carbon from blue hydrogen and where that may be made, and the new Net Zero Industry Wales have been doing a lot of work in that area and would be able to give more information on that.

There have been suggestions for small batches of hydrogen pipeline all over the UK, for different reasons. Now, in Wales, the main area where I think that we'll see it used quickly is—. It's useful in all sorts of industries, but predominantly I think we might see it in freight first, and there is work going on along the M4 corridor with various different companies and public local authorities, public bodies that are involved in that process. But I think, critically, the issue here is all about supply—if we can't get our supply correct for hydrogen, it's going to be much further into the future than we might have hoped that it would be.

So, I guess my short supplementary to that is—. I accept that what you've got is a very well-informed, but personal opinion based on the science and the evidence as you know it, and so on. My worry is that what we have is that you are an organisation, as a commission, that looks at 80 years, as you've described, and then tails it back to what we need to do now. We could have paralysis by what comes first—what do we need to do first? There is a clear recommendation by the UK National Infrastructure Commission that, by 2035, we need a core pipeline network that could include these half a dozen places, including south Wales. The director of Greenpeace has said that Port Talbot could indeed be one of those that should be first to be piloted with that. So, I'm just a little bit worried, from what I'm hearing, that because of that long horizon and the technical and scientific complexities, and the other things that need to come into place, we could have paralysis and we just don't do it and we miss the opportunity.

I think there are a couple of things there. I think one is that the National Infrastructure Commission for Wales specifically has a remit to look into the future—that's what we're designed to do. But there are other organisations across Wales that are looking at current affairs, current needs, and we work together with them to make recommendations as well. So, we don't say, 'We're not going to talk about anything that's not 20 years into the future.' We do know that anything that changes today, in policy or in our regulatory frameworks, will have an impact on those parts of the infrastructure systems that are built 10, 15, 20 years into the future.

I think the question around 'what technologies?' is one that we struggle with as a nation—a UK nation—just generally, about: what are we going to build, where are we going to build it? And even with renewables, which feels like the easiest of those, we're still pushing an elephant around, trying to get them built more quickly. So, there are some other questions about whether or not that's something that we should do or another organisation should do, but I do think that we work very closely with all of the other groups who are actually making now-time recommendations as well. We don't do a national infrastructure assessment here. That's not to say that it's necessarily something that we need to do, but it is an option to consider as well.

Okay. Thank you. Delyth.

Thank you. I wanted to ask about public engagement. How is that going? I know that you mentioned that you want to strengthen your engagement with young people particularly, so how has all of that been going?

Well, we asked a company to look at this particular issue, and they came back telling us, 'Well, you have options to do a lot of things on TikTok' and so on.

The dreaded TikTok. [Laughter.]

That's it. And if I did have staff and a budget that would allow us to do that, of course that would be beneficial, but I don't. So, at the moment, I do feel, and the commission feels, that with the time available and the budget available, we're doing as much as we can and as well as we can. We're using a number of different social media platforms, we make videos, we produce blog posts, we're out with representative bodies. There's not much more we can do as individuals or as a commission, because we have only one full-time equivalent, and that's the whole commission, essentially.

The only thing we can refer to are the stats on the website, which show that there have been 7,000 visits over the past year, and this is increasing annually. So, we need to hopefully have more material on the website and we'll attract more people to that website and to follow us on social media platforms too. There aren't enough statistics to say that we are meeting our targets in terms of engaging with young people. It helps that I do have a young person on the commission, but it's impossible at the moment just to respond to your question with data because I don't have that data.

No. Thanks for that.

And I know that you'd conducted a survey and that there were only 15 respondents, and you admitted that that meant that it couldn't be seen as statistically sound in that way.

Yes.

Do you think that that smaller response is indicative of a lack of engagement that people have? I don't know, is it because you think that what you're doing is focused more on the future and people tend to worry more about the everyday? I know that's a bit of an existential question for you.

Reasons for not filling out a survey—. We're not central to most people's lives, I think it's fair to say, even though I would wish it to be somewhat different. It's a bit of a niche topic. Our profile is still building. I would anticipate and hope that we get significantly more than 15 responses this year. There were already indications of which of our key performance indicators, if you like, we were succeeding on from those 15 responses, but I would hope that we'll get a better response this year, and I think that's almost inevitable, if our profile keeps developing.

Thank you. In terms of how you would like the public, or members of the public, to view you and the associations you'd like people to have of you—because I know you were talking about the start about what people might think of you and people's perceptions of you—if there was an ideal word cloud of people's perceptions and associations of you, what would that word cloud include and what would be the massive things you'd want to see people associating with you?

Well, honestly, I'd like our values to be that word cloud. So, at the beginning of each of our meetings, we read out the values and the reasons for having them. So, inclusive, transparent, radical, challenging and practical. So, those are things that I feel are necessary within an organisation like ours, and actually necessary for people within Wales. They need to feel that there's a body on their behalf that is taking radical decisions or making radical suggestions, challenging not just Welsh Government but challenging other organisations. And, above all, we constantly hassle people about the long term. Nobody else is doing it, or very few other people are doing it, and yet it's so important because I think, if you think about somebody being born in 2100 and them looking back at us now and the decisions we're taking now, half of the decisions they'd probably say are absolutely crazy. And I think that starting from that position can help us make better decisions now.

Thank you.

Okay. Are you radical and challenging enough, then? Because, clearly, you're not making enough waves to be registering out in the public consciousness, because the data we've just been talking about reflects very poorly on that.

I think we are a niche organisation. I think if you'd speak to the stakeholders we have within the infrastructure sector, they probably think that we are quite radical and we are challenging. So, within—

So, does that say more about them than you then, does it?

Well, the infrastructure sector, broadly speaking, is probably quite conservative, because they're very long-term investments, slowly developing skills. So, I think that we do act as a useful challenging point for an established sector.

I think I'd add that we don't have public relations or a function for marketing ourselves either. So, all of the work that we do is soft influence. So, whether we're writing blogs or speaking to journalists, that's very much done by individual commissioners. I think when we talk about being challenging and inclusive, one of the things that we are is really challenging. We've certainly had some tricky conversations with different organisations, particularly about active travel and what prevents people from participating in active travel, and how we should consider our transport systems from multiple perspectives, rather than perhaps, often, from one. And I think some of those conversations, particularly in relation to women, don't come up, and women are under-represented in infrastructure discussions, more generally. So, we are—. And a lot of what we're presenting is radical, because it doesn't exist out there, otherwise people would be doing it, and it is sometimes just presenting almost the same idea but from a different angle, but it means that it is deliverable. Whereas in the past people have said, 'Oh, that's just too hard, we've got to do something that's really difficult and it will take years to change primary legislation', for example, but, actually, our view is, 'Well, if you need to change it, then change it, because it will make it better for the people of Wales in due course.'

Okay. Well, on that note, I think we'll bring the session to a close. May I thank you both for joining us? We will send you a copy of the draft transcript, so that you can check it and ensure that it's a reflection of what's been said. And we as a committee will also be weighing up the evidence and producing a report with some of our reflections, perhaps, on the work that you're doing. But thank you for everything that you're doing and for joining us this morning. Thank you very much.

Diolch yn fawr.

Diolch.