Developing our own Energy

Plaid Cymru has long made the case for the establishment of our own national energy company, Ynni Cymru, which we succeeded in establishing through working with the Welsh Government.

This will expand community owned renewable energy generation across Wales, and we foresee a greater role for Ynni Cymru, as it develops in line with our aims for a Welsh-based energy company to serve the needs of the people of Wales - helping us to take control of our own natural resources and lowering energy bills. Community energy is important in Wales. Plaid Cymru would push for changes to how the National Grid is structured, so that communities can benefit directly from local energy projects.

Wales is currently paying the price for a legacy of decades of underinvestment in the grid, resulting in large bottlenecks for connection to distribution and transmission networks and will not achieve its carbon reduction targets if this issue isn’t resolved.

We would push for changes to planning policies to give local communities a greater voice in determining what developments happen in their locality, and ensure that local voices are involved earlier in the planning stages of projects, so that local people have more say and ownership of these projects.