How sincere are they?

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Yesterday’s announcement by Plaid that it would seek to produce 100% of Wales’ electricity needs from renewable sources within 20 years sets a clear and achievable target which I’d entirely support.  Coupled with proposals for reducing demand, it sets the scene for an approach to energy in Wales which will help to decarbonise our economy as well as creating jobs in a more sustainable economy.  There is nothing in the announcement by Llŷr Gruffydd with which I would disagree, and if the party is serious about it, it would draw a very clear line between Plaid and the other parties currently represented in the Assembly on the issue of energy.

There is inevitably, however, a question about the extent to which the policy is credible.  Is it one supported by the party as a whole, or only by its energy spokesperson and friends?  If we vote for Plaid Cymru candidates, are we voting for this policy, or are we voting for whatever the individual candidates say, which may well be very different from the stated policy?

There are two large holes in the party’s credibility on this issue, and there was nothing in yesterday’s statement which gave me any confidence that the party intends to plug those holes.

The first and most obvious is Wylfa B.  How can anyone who is planning to generate 100% of Wales’ electricity requirement from entirely renewable resources support the building of a new nuclear reactor in Wales, particularly if such a reactor is likely to meet Wales’ electricity needs anyway?  It makes absolutely no sense at all.

And the second is that making use of renewables includes more use of wind energy, yet Plaid politicians are often prominent in opposing wind energy schemes wherever they’re proposed.  Supporting something ‘in principle’ and then opposing it in practice doesn’t make for credibility.  And I’m not even sure that many of them support it in principle.  I’ve certainly heard some of Plaid’s elected members repeating the lies and half truths of anti-wind campaigners.

It frequently sounds as if the party is in favour of wind turbines only where no-one wants to build them and against nuclear power schemes only where no-one wants to build them – the latter being a point I made in the party’s 2010 conference.  Simply announcing a new policy does nothing to bridge that yawning credibility gap.

I’d be delighted to be able to vote for the policy announced yesterday – and in some parts of Wales, voting for the Plaid candidate might amount to the same thing.  But in wide swathes of Wales, voting for the Plaid candidate would be, effectively, a vote against the policy the party announced yesterday.  For sure, all parties have problems at times with individuals who disagree with the party line on a particular issue.  But in this case, the problem is much more fundamental and widespread than that, to the extent that claiming that ‘the party’ has a policy is rendered meaningless.

There's more to fracking than safety

Tweet I feel a certain amount of ambivalence about the opposition to fracking being expressed by some politicians in Wales.  Personally, I’m opposed to fracking.  We really shouldn’t be seeking new sources of fossil fuels at all; we should instead be seeking a renewables-based future.  But in the absence of a clear plan to achieve that, our economy has become increasingly dependent on gas.  Both the availability and the price of that gas have been impacted by fracking in America, and even if the gas we use isn’t directly produced by fracking, it would not be so readily available on world markets were it not for fracking.  It seems to me that a willingness to go on using gas whilst refusing to exploit domestic resources is a less than honest position to take.  It’s like saying that we’re OK with the environmental damage as long as it’s happening somewhere else.

The decision of the Assembly last week to call for a moratorium until the safety of the technique is proved has been hailed as some sort of success.  I fear that they are celebrating too soon.  Calling a temporary halt to something for a reason which can be overcome is not the same as stopping it completely.

I would have thought that AMs would have learnt something from the debacle of the M4 relief road.  During the One Wales period, there were plenty of people calling for the plan to be scrapped entirely on environmental grounds.  But caution prevailed, and it was, instead, shelved on narrow cost grounds.  It was obvious – or should have been – at the time that the cost objection could be overcome, and that the scheme could and would then be resurrected.  And it duly came to pass.

Back to fracking, and the comparison is simply this: if it can be shown that fracking can be undertaken at an acceptably low level of risk (and nothing is ever entirely risk-free), then the objection is removed and fracking is back on the agenda.  Those opposing fracking may believe that the safety arguments are strong enough, but I’m not convinced.  Certainly there have been problems in the US, and I wouldn’t want to dismiss them out of hand, but as the technology matures and more experience is gained, I’m sure that those who stand to make their fortunes from fracking will be able to produce adequate evidence that it can, in most circumstances and locations, be undertaken safely.

So if we really want to stop fracking, we have to reject in principle the exploitation of further fossil fuel resources, rather than reject one technique on narrow grounds at a point in time.  And we can only do that if we have a plan to stop using fossil fuels and move to a renewables-based future.

And that highlights another problem.  Some of the politicians opposing fracking also oppose every plan which comes forward for renewable energy; others support new nuclear build.  Their position seems to have nothing to do with putting forward a coherent renewable energy policy, and little really to do with the safety of a particular technique – it’s all about jumping on populist bandwagons in their own electoral interests.  We need rather more long term thinking than that.

Subsidising coal, oil, and gas

Tweet This report is worth a read.  It’s not exactly recent (November 2013) but it’s one of those things that I’ve only just got around to reading.

One of the frequent refrains of the opponents of wind farms is that they wouldn’t be built if it weren’t for the subsidies.  Take away the subsidies and no one would ever build a wind farm again.  Like all good propaganda, it has the advantage of being true, as far as it goes.  It isn’t the whole truth though, and they get away with it only because the subsidies for renewable energy are more obvious than the subsidies for other forms of energy.

What this report highlights is that when the subject is looked at more comprehensively, it becomes clear that for every £1 spent to support renewable energy, £6 is spent on fossil fuel subsidies.  The total subsidy, just to the producers of fossil fuels (i.e. without counting consumer subsidies) amounted to some $523 billion worldwide in 2011.  The subsidies aren’t always obvious, and take many forms, some of which are set out in the report.  But the basic message is clear – we are paying more to subsidise fossil fuel then we are to subsidise renewable energy – it’s the complete reverse of the claims made by those opposing renewable energy schemes.

Now, of course, statistics can be selected and it’s important to compare like with like.  We also need to consider the state of development of different technologies.

So, for instance, the world uses much more fossil fuel than renewable energy; even if the subsidy per kilowatt hour were to be the same, one would therefore expect a higher total to go on fossil fuels than on renewables.  In fact, given that renewables is a newer and still developing technology, the subsidy per kilowatt hour is generally likely to be higher than in the case of fossil fuels.

That is not, however, enough to “prove” the point which the antis make.  Subsidies – any sort of subsidies – for fossil fuel encourage their continued use, and mean that renewable energy is competing with subsidised fossil fuel and that people are still being incentivised to continue using fossil fuel.  Take away those subsidies completely, and the requirement for any subsidy for developing new technologies reduces dramatically.

So why does it happen?  At its simplest, the governments paying subsidies are afraid of exposing us to reality when it comes to the cost of energy.  Energy represents such a large proportion of household and industrial costs that governments believe that paying the true cost would be an enormous price shock.  So they take all sorts of actions to reduce and/or hide the costs.  We still pay in the end of course through taxation.  We just delude ourselves.

It can’t continue indefinitely though.  Sooner or later we need to face up to the real cost of our demand for energy.  Perhaps then we’ll do what we really need to do, which is to reduce our demand rather than play games with the price.

Back to Silk

Tweet Another of the Silk 2 proposals relates to control over the planning of large energy projects.  It’s worth noting here that this isn’t about control over energy, as it’s been billed in a lot of the coverage, it’s merely about planning control.  In fact the report makes it very clear that they’re not talking about energy policy; most aspects of energy policy would remain as reserved powers.  The right to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to proposals put forward by the energy companies is a long way short of the right to determine energy policy.

I welcome the Silk proposal, as far as it goes, of course; but I don’t really understand why the report proposed replacing one arbitrary cut-off point by another equally arbitrary cut-off point.  Why not just devolve the whole area?  The justification given is basically that the evidence they were presented with called for devolution of renewable planning consents and not the rest; but regardless of what the evidence says I’m not convinced that the logic of such an arbitrary split actually stands up to detailed examination.

I can understand why the politicians might want to keep a cut-off point of course.  Apart from anything else, it means that they can let “London” answer for the final decision on Wylfa B.  That allows our AMs to continue to claim that they have a renewable energy policy in Wales whilst supporting a proposal which actually negates that policy.  And of course, it neatly avoids the embarrassing splits in at least one party if the assembly were ever to have to vote on that issue.

One reaction to the proposal on energy which disappointed me was that of Glyn Davies, who said that this change would happen “over my dead body”.  Glyn’s opposition to exploiting Wales’ wind energy resources is by now well-known of course; and he could be expected to oppose any and every proposal to build wind turbines in his constituency.  But his reaction confuses policy with process and structure – no one who was really convinced about devolution would want to base the decision about where something is decided on what the people in that place might decide.  There are plenty of issues on which I disagree with Welsh government policy – but my response to that is to argue for a change in policy, not strip the institution of the power to make that policy.

It’s also an odd approach to democracy; tantamount to saying “I don’t trust the elected representatives of the people of Wales to make the ‘right’ decision so we must leave the final decision in the hands of the elected representatives of the English people”.  It sounds more David Davies than Glyn Davies – perhaps the differences between the two are not as great as they sometimes appear.

Markets and unions

Tweet Last week, the UK Energy Minister described the new subsea electricity interconnector running from Scotland to the Wirral as “the perfect symbol of the UK’s single energy market”, accompanied with the now customary warnings to Scotland about how badly they’d lose out if they became independent.

Apparently, independence could mean that English consumers will simply take their electricity from Belgium and France instead.  Well, yes, of course they can get their electricity through other interconnectors, such as the one between the UK and France, the one to the Netherlands, or the ones to the different parts of Ireland.  Interconnectors between grids are rapidly becoming the European norm – and as should be obvious from the fact that the UK mainland already has four of them, three linking to other sovereign states, the existence of a single state is not a prerequisite by any means.

What’s driving the construction of these interconnectors has nothing to do with sovereignty; it has everything to do with increasing resilience of the supply network as more of our electricity comes from variable sources.  It’s an approach which reduces risk.

The trading of electricity across these cables isn’t driven by sovereignty issues either; it’s driven by a combination of market pricing and the obligation to reduce the carbon cost of electricity generation.

What the minister singularly failed to explain is how exactly independence for Scotland changes any of those factors.

The dam with a hole

Tweet Just when it was starting to look as if the whole scheme for a Severn Barrage was sinking rapidly – so much so that the MP for Hafren Power Central Neath was starting to foment trouble elsewhere (How could the Labour Party ever think it could win any elections without his advice?), up pops the Western Mail with a front-page banner headline claiming that the barrage scheme has been “boosted” by the engagement of a number of major companies. The paper thinks this is a big story apparently – although not quite big enough to depose rumours about managers of Welsh soccer teams being enticed away to Everton from the very top of the front page.

I wonder whether it’s really that big a story – is it saying much more than “companies sign contracts from which they expect to make a profit”? The paper merely tells us that the companies have “been engaged” to assess the project; it tells us nothing about the commercial terms of engagement. One assumes that they’re expecting to be paid for their work; and companies accepting paid work for profit tells us little about the viability of the scheme itself.

It’s possible of course that I’m being too cynical here, and that they’re doing work for nothing at this stage in the hope of a bigger payback later. It’d be a gamble if they were.

The Western Mail has become something of a cheerleader for this doomed project. Its editorial tells us that “the environmental advantages of building a barrage are demonstrable”, but gives us only that half of the story which fits that particular narrative.

To read both the story itself and the editorial comment, one might conclude that the only opposition to the scheme comes from the owner of Bristol Port; and that as he is a donor to the Conservative party his concerns can be dismissed with no further consideration.

Not only do the environmental arguments for the barrage not stack up, but neither do the economic ones. This barrage will only ever be built – regardless of what its proponents say – if there is a massive investment of taxpayer funding; even if it is disguised funding. It is no coincidence that all the drawings and artists’ impressions of the scheme show a bridge over the top of the barrage.

Hafren Power have been, in fairness, clear from the outset that they would not provide that bridge, nor build the higher and stronger barrage which it would require. That is something that we would have to pay for, but since no one seems able to conceive of a barrage without a road on top, public involvement would be inevitable.

I’d lay odds that the risks and rewards will end up being shared in the usual fashion between the public sector and the private sector – the public sector (all of us, effectively) would get to share the risks amongst ourselves, and the sponsors of the scheme would get to share the rewards amongst themselves.

Gwynt y Môr

Tweet MH at Syniadau has already done a mathematical demolition job on the anti-wind campaigners referred to in this story.  I won’t repeat that analysis, with which I agree.  The reportage disappointed me somewhat, however.  Whilst it (I assume accurately) reported the claims and counter claims of the two sides, there was something of a lack of analysis as to whether either or both were right, and very little light generated as a result.

Truth can sometimes be an elusive concept, but in this case, it seems to me that it’s possible for both sides to be right.  However, they’re not talking about the same thing, and therefore one side being right about one thing does nothing to prove the other wrong about something quite different.

One of the arguments about wind is its predictability (or rather lack thereof).  But it isn’t quite as simple as that – wind is quite predictable in the very short term and in the long term; it’s in between that it becomes unpredictable.  Ask a meteorologist what the wind is going to do in the next hour or two, and (s)he will give you a pretty accurate prediction.  Ask how much wind we’ll get over a year, and you’ll get another pretty accurate prediction.  But ask what the wind speed and direction will be at 2.30 on the afternoon of Tuesday 4^th September, and you’ll be lucky to get any sort of prediction at all.

The overall predictability of the UK’s wind and weather means that it is perfectly possible to predict with a high degree of confidence how many kwh of electricity can be generated by any wind turbine over a year.  And whilst one may quibble with the detail of the mathematics (see MH’s post), converting that into a proportion of Wales’ total annual need, or even a number of homes whose needs can be met, is just simple arithmetic.  So the claim put forward by those behind Gwynt y Môr is entirely reasonable.

The counter claim by the opponents is based on the proposition that the energy produced may not be available at the time required by those households, and at other times electricity will be produced which those households cannot use.  It means that at times of surplus, the electricity produced will be used elsewhere, and at times of deficit, those households will be using electricity produced from other sources.  So, the argument goes, those households cannot rely on Gwynt y Môr to supply their needs.

That’s also true, but the proposition it demolishes isn’t the one being made; it’s something completely different.  And it certainly doesn’t support the conclusion that wind is therefore a useless source of energy.

Given the starting point of this post, I’ve only referred to wind, but we can actually generalise from that.  Any type of electricity generation based entirely on (free, unlimited) natural renewables (whether wind, tidal, solar, hydro or whatever) will never be able to match the certainty of availability when required which can be obtained from a power station fed by (expensive and depletable) fuels. 

That isn’t an argument for sticking with fossil fuels, nor for rejecting the use of renewables; it's just a feature of a different apporach to energy policy.  What it tells us is that, if we want to use emission-free renewables, we have to think in different ways about our electricity supply and distribution infrastructure.  Up to a certain percentage – as I recall, National Grid figures suggest that to be around 20% – the impact on security of supply is fairly minimal and can be coped with more or less within existing backup and contingency arrangements.  Beyond that, we will undoubtedly need to look at ‘storage’ facilities.  In addition to that, grid interlinks which spread the risk over a wider area are already being built.

We can’t – and no-one is suggesting that we can – rely on wind for all our electricity needs, but we can and should use it as part of the overall mix.

Where else should it go?

Tweet Last week's announcement by National Grid of the preferred location for the substation to serve wind farms in Wales brings a long-running dispute to the surface once again.  But like many Welsh political arguments, it is an argument which seems to generate more heat than light.

Many of those I saw interviewed by the BBC were refreshingly honest - they concentrated on issues such as the view from their homes and villages and the effect on property values as the basis of their opposition.  These are issues to which most of us can relate; but ultimately, electricity generation, and the infrastructure to support that, have to go somewhere, and local concerns have always to be balanced with wider needs.

We need electricity, and we need to generate it somehow.  We cannot all assume that the electricity we want and need will be generated ‘somewhere else’.  If we are going to build wind farms in Wales then the infrastructure to connect them to the grid has to go somewhere.  Not building substations is simply not an option.

That in turn brings us right back to two underlying questions.

The first is whether and to what extent onshore wind has a role in the energy mix, and the second is the subsequent question of where it should be sited. 

The second of those is the easier of the two to answer - the best location is always going to be the one where the presence and speed of wind is most consistent.  And whether we might choose it to be thus or not, Welsh uplands are ideal from that perspective.

The first question is rather harder.  It is an issue on which opinion is seriously divided, and raises a number of issues.

Some opponents of on-shore wind don't accept the need to reduce emissions, and reject the idea that anthropogenic climate change is a real phenomenon.  This is, at least, an honest position to adopt.  It may fly in the face of majority scientific opinion, but majority scientific opinion hasn't always been proved right.  If emissions are not a problem, we can simply go on using gas, oil, and even coal.

However, the consequences of rejecting the majority view if it's right are much worse than the consequences of accepting the majority view if it’s wrong.  That balancing of risks and consequences would be enough to convince me that we should act, even if I wasn't convinced that the scientific majority was right.  And once we decide to act to reduce emissions, the fact that, as of today, on-shore wind is the most proven and readily available source of renewable energy is an inescapable fact.

"The benefits will flow elsewhere", we are told.  It’s true of course.  But it's also true of many other things that happen in Wales, whether relating to energy generation or not.  It's an argument (and one I’d entirely accept) for changing the economic model under which we exploit a resource, but it's not an argument for non-exploitation as such.  I want Wales to have control over its own infrastructure, and to be able to make a decent profit from those things of which we can produce a surplus.  But I also want there to be some infrastructure and surpluses for us to bring under our own control.

“It's exploiting Welsh resources for the benefit of England."  Again, possibly true, but over-simplistic.  Exploitation doesn't recognise, or stop at, borders.  If turbines were built on some of the more suitable locations in England (whether as well as, or instead of, is irrelevant in this context), that exploitative (if it is indeed such) relationship between users of electricity and those living close to the points at which it is generated would still be the same; it would merely have become internalised within a different set of human-defined borders.  (In any event, is either the wind or the landscape really 'owned' by those who happen to live nearby, or is it more widely 'owned' by us all?)

"They wouldn't be built without the subsidies."  Again, it's true that the subsidy regime encourages renewable rather than fossil fuel electricity generation.  That's exactly what it is intended to do, in order to reduce emissions from energy generation.  But it's also true that other forms of generation are effectively "subsidised" by being able to externalise some of their costs.  Not all subsidies appear in our electricity bills, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.

But perhaps the favourite counter argument is the one about "wind farms are useless".  It is an issue which I have posted on before a number of times.  If it were true, then it would indeed be something of a killer argument against both turbines and the supporting infrastructure.

It is, though, a claim which is often based on selective use of facts, some interesting ‘interpretations’ of facts, and sometimes even simplistic axiomatic assertion.  Whilst a sensible policy wouldn’t go above around 15% - 20% wind in the overall generation mix, the argument that it is completely useless doesn’t stand up to examination.

The argument about whether the sub-station should go on the proposed location will no doubt continue – but it has to go somewhere, and the best form of opposition would be to come up with a more acceptable location rather than simply oppose its construction.

Look what the wind's blown in

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Yesterday’s publication of a report on the comparative cost of different electricity generation scenarios by AF Consult (available by following the link from here) was well-trailed in advance.  It was also well-knocked in advance, as the government and renewables industries got in their pre-emptive first strike. 

The headline from the report is a suggestion that the UK’s binding carbon reduction targets can be met more cheaply by building gas and nuclear power stations rather than wind turbines.  It will be like manna for those opposed to wind turbines, of course.  But then, if it really is possible to meet the UK’s targets by a cheaper means than governments are currently pursuing, why wouldn’t we want to do that?

As ever, it isn’t quite that simple, and although ‘if’ is a small word, in this case it represents a large caveat – or rather, series of caveats.

The first, and most obvious, is that it assumes that the targets set for the proportion of electricity which must come from renewable sources can simply be ignored.  Breaking an international obligation – the target is a binding one – is not exactly a minor issue.  For sure, if the target is the wrong one, then one can argue that it should be renegotiated; but simply to assume that it can be ignored is not a safe assumption to make.

And it is assumptions which go to the heart of the problem with this report.  It’s based on a complex mathematical model.  There’s nothing wrong with that; lots of things are based on mathematical models.  But models are only ever going to be as good as the assumptions with which they start; and in this case, my main argument with the conclusions isn’t the methodology or the calculations performed, it’s the assumptions which act as the starting point.  And if the assumptions are wrong, it's hardly likely that the conclusions will be very robust.

Not all the assumptions are explicitly stated; nor would I expect them to be.  But four in particular are worth more attention.

The first is the question of future fuel prices, and the comparison between fuel prices.  They have used the central estimates from a DECC study.  That’s an entirely reasonable thing for the report authors to do; they have to start somewhere.  The question, though, is whether the DECC have got it right, and on that point, I’m sceptical. 

One of the big advantages of renewables is precisely that they are not vulnerable to fuel price shocks during their operational life (although, obviously, variations in fuel price can affect construction costs, this is a small factor in the overall cost comparison).  Gas prices, on the other hand, can be much more volatile.  The volatility is generally upward as world demand increases, although I’d accept that shale gas – if we decide to exploit it – could change that equation.  But to what extent do we want to gamble on the price – or, potentially worse, put ourselves in a position where we are dependent on fracking?

The second big assumption concerns the cost of decommissioning nuclear plant and nuclear waste management.  Again, the report’s authors have, entirely reasonably, used the assumptions to which the UK Government is working, and which were detailed in a DECC report from Parsons Brinckerhoff in 2011.  They had to start somewhere; my problem with that, however, is that since no-one is yet entirely certain how waste will be managed for the long term, there is a high degree of uncertainty about the costs involved.  Experience suggests that they are more likely to increase than to decrease.

The third big assumption is that at least some of the new gas plants can be fitted with CCS technology.  This assumption is key to achieving the required reduction in carbon emissions, but as the report itself conceded, the technology is to date unproven on the large scale required.

And the fourth is that we do not expand the production on electricity to increase its use in heating and transportation.  If we do make such an increase, then the carbon reduction targets cannot be achieved with the fuel split used in their scenarios.  We would have to use renewables.

I agree with the UK Government assessment that this paper is badly flawed.  The tragedy is that it will, nevertheless, be recycled regularly in the local and national press by anti-wind campaigners who will claim that it ‘proves’ that we shouldn’t be building new wind turbines.  It actually proves no such thing (and didn’t even set out to prove that, merely to compare the costs of alternative approaches of meeting a target).

Dependent on nuclear?

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Plaid Cymru’s leadership contest has exposed once again the difficulties the party faces over the question of nuclear energy, a subject on which I’ve often commented on this blog.  Syniadau has posted a  number of times on the issue in recent weeks, concentrating on the divergence between the views of the party as decided by the membership, and those of the current, and one potential future, leader on the other.

The debate which follows is often confused because there are two separate issues involved.  The first is the question of whether or not nuclear power is the right way to go; the second is about the problems of a party leader / potential leader unable to accept the party’s views on the issue; and they are two very different issues.  I’m sticking to the former of those today.

What is clear is that Wales has no direct need of nuclear energy.  We can produce all the electricity we need – and more – from entirely renewable sources.  It’s not just me saying that; the One Wales Government produced an excellent strategy confirming that, and all of Labour’s and Plaid’s AMs signed up to that.   And, as far as I’m aware, it isn’t really in dispute.

What we can’t do, though, (and this is likely to be true of any small country) is to produce all that electricity at the time that we need it.  Producing the total number of Mwh over a year as a whole is not the same as producing all the Mw we need at any given time.

Some have used that fact in an attempt to argue that we cannot therefore depend solely on renewables, and also need either nuclear energy or fossil-fuel energy as a backup.  However, that isn’t the only answer.  The alternative solution is that a renewables-based country like Wales needs to be able to export surpluses at some times and import at other times to replace the deficit (and that is the proposal put forward by Leanne Wood in her paper on energy).

The problem, for a country which wishes to be entirely renewables-based, is in controlling what the source of that imported electricity is.  I’m convinced that, by linking grids together across Europe and using a variety of renewable sources rather than wind alone, Europe can free itself of any need for conventional / nuclear power stations over a period if it plans so to do.  In that context, inputting into the grid at least as much electricity as we withdraw means that Wales could legitimately claim to be entirely renewables-based, the position which our Government has said it wants to be in.

There is a complication though.  What happens if one or more countries in Europe decide that they will continue with a conventional/ nuclear programme?  This is the argument that some have used about the German decision to move away from nuclear power – since their grid is linked to that of France, and since France has decided to continue with its nuclear programme, isn’t Germany effectively still depending on nuclear power, but on outsourcing its production to France? 

By the same token, if England decides on a new nuclear programme, even if no stations are built in Wales, can we claim that we are not dependent on that nuclear energy?  I think that we can.  What we would be dependent on is electricity from somewhere else; how that electricity is produced is beyond our control.  We might be using nuclear-produced electricity (we can’t easily pick and choose which bits of electricity we’re using), but it is the existence of that electricity on which we would be dependent, not on how it’s produced.

This is more than mere semantics.  England, like Wales, could (if it wishes) choose an entirely renewables-based future.  As long as that is true, and as long as Wales produces at least as much electricity in a year as we consume, I don’t believe that the decisions of another country as to how they produce their electricity can legitimately be said to undermine our claim of renewable self-sufficiency.

What would undermine that claim would be permitting, let alone welcoming, the construction of further nuclear or other non-renewable plant in Wales.