Power to the people

Bringing power back to the people. The exploitation of the natural resources of cymru has been in the hands of rich individuals often absent from the locality, either wealthy foreign investors or local landlords whose primary residence was far from the resources that they exploited. As a consequence the exploitation of that resource was conducted with little or no regard to the effect it would have on the workforce, the locals, the landscape or the ecology of an area. With the rise of renewables we are risking falling into the same trap once again, with multinational owned wind farms etc building with no regard to the locality but merely trying to exploit the resource as efficiently as possible. Community run power resources are what will give us the greatest level of energy security and ensure that the profits go to those effected by the energy generation. From turbines on rivers, to windmills, to solar panels, to tidal barrages the opportunities are enormous but the power and the wealth they generate must go to the people. Anglesey used to be an island of windmills, creating a new local and specialised vernacular in house building on the island could create a wonderful local style that would be aesthetically pleasing as well as practical. There are hundreds of rivers and streams in Cymru. Each one providing the opportunity for community schemes and micro turbines producing electricity for individual homes and contributing any excess back to the grid. The valleys of South Wales give ample scope for energy generation schemes to produce electricity on a grand scale, this is how and where the industrial revolution began, by harnessing that power. Solar panels and insulation on all old housing stock could bring us up to date. Reducing the cost of heating and powering our homes and putting any excess back into the grid. This would free up extra capacity to green technologies that Wales has been famous for, like steel production. The tidal barrages should be built and managed without private investment. If cymru could borrow money at a low rate and build the barrages then then the ongoing profit from them will be a great fillip to the national purse going forward. It would act as a clean green resource generating wealth for the country in much the same way, only greener, as the oil resources of Norway that created their sovereign wealth fund.