Energy & Environment
Wales has one of the UK’s best-established sustainable technologies sectors, worth £3.2 billion and employing over 40,000 people, covering areas as diverse as sustainable building, renewable energy, recovery and recycling, and environmental services.
Global players are already taking advantage of the abounding natural and intellectual resources in Wales, such as npower renewables, E.On, EDF, Prenergy, Western Energy, UPM and AMEC.
Welsh coal powered the industrial revolution, but today we’re taking a leading role in low carbon and sustainable energy such as wind, tide, hydro-electric and biomass. Our groundbreaking research into hydrogen technologies has won South Wales designation as the UK’s Low Carbon Economic Area (LCEA) for alternative transport fuels.
As a country we’re committed to becoming a low carbon economy and we’ve set ourselves targets, well beyond the UK and EU’s, to get there. We’re also making substantial investments to help deliver and implement technology such as £30 million in retrofitting energy efficiency measures in buildings.
We’re also equipping more of our people to work in sustainable technologies: the new British Gas Training Centre in Tredegar will train over a thousand people in green skills every year, and our universities produce graduates in disciplines such as low carbon technologies, renewable energy, marine sciences, environmental science and the built environment.
In Wales, policy strategy, investment, research and business go hand-in-hand. With more investment and commercial opportunities (potentially £50 billion for large renewables and other low-carbon electricity projects over the next 10-15 years), there’s good reason to be in Wales.
