by Andrew Guilford | Nov 21, 2023 | Circular Economy, Development Investment, Opinion
We have a first class floating offshore wind industry ready to go in the region. It has seen the fastest growth in the Welsh marine energy sector, adding £11.6m to the economy last year, with the potential to generate £1bn over the next five years! It offers a once in a generation opportunity to build a new pioneering industry both for the region and the whole of the UK.
Blue Gem Wind is developing plans for Wales’ floating wind farm, called Erebus. It would be the third floating offshore wind farm in the UK, but the estimated 100MW generated is more than double the other projects. It will house seven 14MW turbines on floating platforms and provide enough low carbon energy to power ninety three thousand homes (Pic: Blue Gem)
While traditional offshore wind turbines are built into the seabed with fixed foundations, floating turbines sit on large floating steel structures which are then tethered to the seabed. This allows the turbines to be placed further out at sea in locations with higher winds, such as Pembrokeshire.
The Crown Estate has announced details of leasing opportunities that are expected to be the first round of developing floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea. They will work to catalyse and accelerate the UK’s energy transition, and de-risk developments to speed up their deployment. Three Project Development Areas (PDAs) of roughly equal size are being proposed, each with a potential capacity of 1.5GW. This means the overall capacity for the leasing round will be 4.5GW, an increase from a possible 4GW from the four PDAs of varying sizes originally proposed. Overall this will generate enough clean energy capacity to power over four million homes.
The Crown Estate says the leasing round will be used to drive broader social and economic value. This includes requiring developers to set out specific commitments to ports, as well as establishing binding commitments on wider issues such as enhancing skills, addressing environmental impacts, and delivering community benefits.
Ultimately the Crown Estate believes there is the potential to generate 20GW of energy from floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea.
Marine renewables are crucial in combatting climate change and achieving a diverse and reliable energy mix for current and future generations. And the Welsh Government has said floating offshore wind farms will create thousands of high quality, long-term jobs. It is quickly becoming a proven technology with the potential to deliver sustainable sources of energy and enable us to make the transition to net zero. It generates more power per megawatt than any other renewable source, and the UK’s unique wind resource and shallow seas mean it has been the central technology in plans to end our reliance on fossil fuels.
However plans for the first floating wind farm in the region stalled after no developers bid at a crucial government auction.
There were bids for onshore solar, wind and geothermal schemes as well as tidal however these generate on a lower scale to giant offshore wind farms.
Blue Gem Wind is developing plans for Wales’ floating wind farm, called Erebus, which they say would create ten thousand jobs. It did not bid for a contract because they said the government was not providing enough support through its “contracts for difference” scheme in which it steps in if the market price for electricity falls below the agreed level.
Erebus, due to be commissioned in 2026 and built twenty five miles off the coast of Pembrokeshire, would have seen the region kickstart the floating offshore wind industry. It would be the third floating offshore wind farm in the UK, but the estimated 100MW generated is more than double the other projects. It will house seven 14MW turbines on floating platforms and provide enough low carbon energy to power ninety three thousand homes. The project will provide jobs for biologists, ornithologists, ecologists, geologists, skippers, boat crew, port staff, crane operators, divers, engineers, welders, electricians, technicians, logisticians, administrators and project managers.
The UK Government has since said it will increase the contracts for difference from £44 per MWh to £73 in the next annual auction.
And of course, Erebus isn’t the only floating offshore wind projects planned for the region.
Floventis Energy’s Llŷr 1 and 2 developments will power about two hundred thousand homes with 200MW of clean energy once operational by 2027-28. With an operational life of twenty five years, each of the Llŷr projects will have six to eight turbines, all of which will produce over 12MW.
And Gwynt Glas (a joint venture between EDF Renewables UK and DP Energy), RWE, and a collaboration between Hiraeth Energy and Magnora are all aiming to secure at least 1GW of installed capacity, to be developed throughout the 2020s.
A key aspect of Hiraeth Energy and Magnora’s initial project, Môr Glas, is community ownership. The aim is to establish a wealth fund providing returns for Welsh communities. This is inspired by fossil fuel funds in oil rich countries, such as the £1tn fund from oil and gas revenues generating returns of nearly 6% a year for the people of Norway.
Ports are expected to play a key role in the manufacture and storage of the numerous components needed for floating offshore wind farms, including foundation assembly, cabling and placing the turbines on top of the floating foundations. The ports must be relatively close to project sites so that the turbines can be floated out to their final locations.
The massive turbines float on a thirty metre high base the size of a football pitch. On top of that is a turbine over three hundred metres tall, that’s as tall as the Eiffel Tower! Because they’ll require a lot of materials, Port Talbot is seen as a perfect location because it’s next to the steelworks.
Milford Haven is likely to be a centre for early phase testing, fabricating anchors and anchor chains for floating wind platforms, high speed transfer vehicles and robotics.
Port Talbot and Milford Haven are part of the Celtic Freeport, which will help create tens of thousands of new, high quality jobs in the green industries of the future. The Welsh Government hopes freeports will focus on low carbon technologies, such as floating offshore wind, hydrogen, carbon capture, utilisation, and storage and biofuels.
Of course we don’t always know when the wind will be blowing, but the tides are always predictable!
Tidal stream generators draw energy from water currents in much the same way as wind turbines draw energy from air currents.
Four turbine developers linked to Morlais in Anglesey, were awarded contracts for difference. The Marine Energy Test Area in Pembrokeshire, the only pre-consented, pre-commercial test facility of its kind in Wales, recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Morlais to address common challenges, encourage business and research collaboration, and exchange knowledge and best practices.
Tidal lagoons are power stations that generates electricity from the natural rise and fall of the tides.
A large volume of water is captured behind a fabricated structure which is then released to drive turbines. Tidal lagoons are a more efficient way of producing energy than traditional offshore wind farms, and their operating life is estimated to be about four times longer.
Mark Drakeford has said he wants to “make Wales a world centre for emerging tidal technology”. At least three research projects, announced next spring, will be receiving £750,000 in funding to help address the barriers preventing the development of tidal lagoon technology.
A tidal lagoon could also form part of the £4bn Swansea Port Development Project, formerly Blue Eden, in SA1. The plans, which will encompass the best in sustainable technology, could also include floating and onshore solar facilities, a hyperscale data centre powered by renewable energy, an oceanic and climate change research centre, eco-homes anchored in the water, a district heating system, a green energy transport hub with a hydrogen manufacturing station, and a facility manufacturing batteries to store renewable energy for worldwide distribution. It would also act as a catalyst for further innovation in renewable technology.
Tomorrow we’re hosting a major regional conference and exhibition, bringing together projects, businesses, organisations and key stakeholders in South West Wales’ green economy, together with people of all ages and from all walks of life, for an unmissable day of connecting, showcasing and knowledge sharing, with the goal of getting everyone working together for a resilient, sustainable future for the region. Book your FREE tickets here.
by 4theManagement | Jun 7, 2022 | Opinion
Businesses from across Neath Port Talbot came together today to talk about their business growth ambitions and their requirements for property and facilities to expand into. The Neath Port Talbot Innovation Exchange is a new business forum co-hosted by 4theRegion and Neath Port Talbot Council, which provides an opportunity for local firms to share updates, challenges and opportunities, as well as hearing from speakers on a range of topics. In today’s roundtable on Property and Business Growth, Alison Orrells from Safety Letterbox Company, which employs more than 60 local people, said her business will be seeking to double its turnover in the next two years, and is absolutely committed to its local community and roots in Neath. But challenges in finding the right premises over the years have led to the business now being spread out over four different facilities across the county – with the marketing and sales function having recently relocated to the new high quality office building developed by the local authority, on the Metalbox site.
Conversely, Glamorgan Engineering is in the enviable position of having their own site and more space than they need, whilst AV Coatings in Cwmgors is seeking to develop additional floorplace over the next year, and is interested to hear from other local businesses who might want to move in with them. Rob Good from the Development Bank of Wales outlined some of the ways in which the public bank can assist, especially in relation to gap funding for developers – but Adil Pirmohamed from the Economic Development team in Neath Port Talbot Council expressed the view that there isn’t enough support for local businesses to develop property for themselves, with support instead focussed on speculative developers – who may or may not bring long term economic benefits into the region, and who often end up charging higher rents that price out smaller local firms.
Looking ahead at upcoming investments in property and infrastructure by the public and private sectors, Adil said there is a huge demand from growing businesses for more industrial space in the county, and asked the Welsh Government to look seriously at how this demand could be addressed. One thing everyone agrees on: Neath Port Talbot is an excellent location in which to run an engineering, manufacturing, R&D or technology business, thanks to connections with academia, proactive support from the Council, and co-location with many complementary businesses – as well as great transport links by rail and road – but demand for space outstrips supply, and this is a challenge that will potentially inhibit the growth of businesses if steps are not taken to support local companies with their urgent requirements for space.
by Andrew Guilford | May 28, 2022 | Circular Economy, Development Investment, Features, Opinion
Rising energy prices have put a huge squeeze on household budgets and continue to drive inflation. But the energy we need is already all around us, it’s just a lot of it’s untapped!
The International Energy Agency estimates that floating wind turbines could help provide enough electricity to satisfy the world’s electricity needs eleven times over (Pic: Principle Power Dock 90)
Did you know renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels, which have soared in price during the war in Ukraine? Onshore and offshore wind and solar power cost about £40 per megawatt hour, but gas fired power generation costs about £140 per megawatt hour.
And some of the most exciting opportunities are around floating offshore wind farms, which the Celtic Sea seems purpose built for.
If you don’t like the look of wind turbines – don’t worry because floating wind farms are much further out to sea! Conventional offshore wind turbines are fixed to the seabed, which means they can only be used in waters up to sixty metres deep. That means around 80% of the exploitable energy resources of our oceans remain largely unharnessed. The International Energy Agency estimates that floating wind turbines could help provide enough electricity to satisfy the world’s electricity needs eleven times over!
The floating wind sector contributed nearly £2.2m to the Welsh economy in recent years. It’s expected to grow significantly over the next decade, with £682m in supply chain opportunities for Wales and Cornwall predicted by 2030!
So what kinds of projects are we going to see?
Blue Gem have proposed Erebus, a 96MW test and demonstration project, which will become one of the largest floating offshore wind projects in the world when constructed in 2026. Erebus will consist of six to ten turbines up to16MW in size. These turbines could be up to two hundred and sixty five metres from sea surface to blade tip, which is about twice the height of the London Eye! Just one rotation provides enough energy to power an entire household for over twenty four hours. Erebus will be followed by Valorous, a 300MW early commercial project, capable of providing green energy to 279,652 homes per year. Both projects are named after famous ships built in Pembroke Dock.
Pembroke Dock based Hiraeth Energy, working in collaboration with Magnora Offshore Wind, will develop two floating wind projects in the Celtic Sea, called Môr Glas and Môr Gwyrdd, with up to 700MW total installed capacity. It’s been reported that these wind farms could power half the homes in Wales! This partnership is particularly exciting as it’s committed to enabling a proportion of community ownership and has ring fenced 10% of the Môr Glas and Môr Gwyrdd projects for this purpose.
Floating wind farms also form part of the £60m Pembroke Dock Marine programme, which aims to place Pembrokeshire at the heart of global zero carbon marine energy innovation.
The Pembrokeshire Demonstration Zone, managed by WaveHub, is a 90km2 area of sea, being developed for the demonstration of wave and floating offshore wind technologies with a capacity of up to 180MW.
Pembroke Dock Marine will also include the Marine Energy Engineering Centre of Excellence, providing research, development and demonstration support, developments to Pembroke Port to create spaces that help industry fabricate, launch and maintain devices, and the Marine Energy Test Area, which provides eight low cost, low risk test areas for marine energy developers. The programme is expected to generate £73.5m a year for the regional economy.
But it’s not just Pembrokeshire.
There are also a big opportunities for Port Talbot, who RWE are working with to see whether their port facilities can support a number of gigawatt scale floating wind projects.
At a recent meeting of the Neath Port Talbot Innovation Exchange (which we host in partnership with Neath Port Talbot Council for businesses in the manufacturing and engineering sectors across the county), Andrew Clarke from ABP presented exciting plans for investment in the expansion of the port, specifically with a view to it being a key gateway to Wales’ floating offshore wind sites.
This would see Port Talbot becoming a globally significant production hub by the end of the decade, using the port’s unique combination of deep water access, brownfield land, rail connections, manufacturing capacity and skilled labour. Port Talbot will be where thousands of blades, mooring systems, substructures and cables are made, married up with tower sections and nacelles, and towed out to destination sites.
Swansea based Marine Power Systems have developed the only solution of its type that can be configured to harness both wind and wave energy in deep water. Notably they consider the whole lifecycle of their platforms. With the earliest offshore wind farms already reaching the end of their lives, Marine Power Systems have worked with Swansea University to look at how they can eventually be recovered and recycled back into their component parts.
We don’t always know when the wind will be blowing. But marine renewables are always predictable!
A groundbreaking project proposed for Swansea’s waterfront will see a newly designed tidal lagoon, featuring state of the art underwater turbines generating three hundred and twenty megawatts of renewable energy from the 9.5km structure.
The lagoon is part of the larger Blue Eden project led by DST Innovations which will also include a manufacturing plant to make high tech batteries for renewable energy storage, a battery facility that will store the renewable energy produced (If constructed now, it would be the world’s largest facility of its kind), a floating solar array (This would be the UK’s largest facility of its kind), a data centre (This would be the UK’s first centre of its kind), residential waterfront homes for five thousand people, and approximately a hundred and fifty floating, highly energy efficient eco-homes. All of this will be powered by the renewable energy produced on site!
Blue Eden will create over two thousand five hundred permanent jobs, support a further sixteen thousand jobs across the UK, and create additional jobs during its construction. Subject to planning consent, work could start early next year.
And what about on dry land? If you’re a business, solar energy offers plenty of opportunities.
Egni Co-op has already installed over 4.5MWp of capacity on ninety sites, including schools, community buildings and businesses (Pic: Egni Co-op)
Could the sun power a hospital? It was hoped a solar farm would supply Morriston Hospital in Swansea with a fifth of its energy consumption every year. But at times it was able to provide all the electricity needed to run the site, even during the winter months, and even sell energy back to the National Grid! It was thought, when fully operational, the scheme would cut carbon emissions by a thousand tonnes and save £500,000 a year, but with energy prices rising, the health board now believes savings could be almost double that figure.
Could the sun power a university? RDM Electrical & Mechanical Services and EFT Consult are working on a highly innovative project to install rooftop and carport solar photovoltaics schemes, as well as a battery energy storage system and electric vehicle chargers at Swansea University. The project will demonstrate how a large site can control its impact on the grid by storing energy generated from renewable sources, drawing down from the grid only when power is cheapest or least carbon intensive.
Could the sun power your business?
Egni Co-op has already installed over 4.5MWp of capacity on ninety sites, including schools, community buildings and businesses.
Swansea BID wants to go even further than that, and is currently crowdfunding for Solar Swansea, a project to create an urban solar farm on the flat roofs of Swansea city centre. This, combined with the Blue Eden project, would potentially make Swansea city centre self-sustaining!
But you don’t always need to think big with solar energy. When Ashley Collins, sole trader of Flynn’s Coffee, wanted to convert her mobile café to run entirely on solar power she was told it couldn’t be done. She taught herself electronics by researching online and watching YouTube videos and now runs her mobile barista venture on solar power while selling her coffee at festivals and events across South Wales, in between basing the business in Swansea Marina.
Energy prices are rising. But renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels. It’s all around us, it’s just a lot of it’s untapped!
4theRegion has been given the opportunity to host a business conference for Swansea that will give local companies a meaningful voice and part to play in the county’s green transition. Energy will be a big part of that! The Swansea Green Recovery Business Conference takes place in Brangwyn Hall on June 27th. You can register your free place here, and if you’d like to be involved, please contact zoe@4theRegion.org.uk
by Andrew Guilford | Apr 29, 2022 | Buy Regional, Circular Economy, Features, Opinion
The food and farming sector is different from every other sector because it’s vital for our survival. We need food for our health, continued life, and continued participation in our communities.
How can we take action to transform food and farming in South West Wales, making healthy local food accessible to all and good for the planet? (Pic: Pixabay)
Food can be a powerful force for good, reconnecting us with our natural world, with our local places, and with each other, and making us more resilient, as people and communities.
Food resilience has become ever more critical in the face of multiple threats, from the increasing cost of food and energy to growing global instability.
How can we take action to transform food and farming in South West Wales, making healthy local food accessible to all and good for the planet?
In 1984, Britain produced enough food to feed itself for 306 days of the year. By 2021, the country only produced enough to feed itself for 233 days.
In terms of meat, Wales produces mostly beef and lamb but eats mostly pork and chicken. Only 0.1% of our land is used to grow fruit and vegetables, producing 19,551 tonnes a year. That’s enough to give 3.5% of the population their five a day!
The war in Ukraine has made us even more aware of our reliance on imports for up to 40% of our food. Before the war, Ukraine was producing 12% of the world’s wheat and 46% of its sunflower oil. Russia is also a major producer of wheat and seed oils.
So what can we do?
In Wales about 400,000 tonnes of food are wasted each year. If only 1% of that is edible it would be enough to contribute to over nine million meals! Thankfully there are groups ensuring some of this food goes where it’s needed. FairShare Cymru distributes surplus food to organisations working to address poverty. Swansea Community Fridge provides surplus food to all on a take what you need pay what you can basis.
Sometimes farmers and growers have no choice but to leave some crops unharvested. The food gets left in the fields or is ploughed back in the soil. This can happen for a variety of reasons, such as unpredictable weather reducing demand, overproduction, and because crops don’t meet the cosmetic specifications required by retailers.
FairShare Cymru are looking at working with growers on a gleaning project. This would involve teams of volunteers salvaging fresh, nutritious food from farms and directing it to organisations such as homeless hostels and charities. Similar schemes in England have already salvaged tonnes of excellent but unharvested produce, including apples, cabbages, cauliflowers, spring greens and kale.
But we can also grow a lot more food!
Agroecology is the application of ecological concepts and principals in farming. We should be driving increased production of, and demand for, sustainably and regionally produced, nutritious, culturally appropriate foods as part of a green economic recovery.
In a world of increasing urbanisation, producing food in and around cities has the potential to improve nutritional and health outcomes, alleviate poverty, provide habitat for wildlife, create sustainable cities, and reduce food miles and transportation costs.
Not that long ago, market gardens were providing most towns and cities with a flow of fresh produce, so it makes sense to revive and improve upon this model. There are exciting opportunities to use the peri-urban fringe (land adjacent to urban settlements) to provide more agroecologically produced food and to connect urban and rural economies through food growing.
Research has found converting just 1.4% of land growing cereals and grassland around London to vegetables could produce an additional 1.3 million kilos of food for communities.
And peri-urban farming would provide a lot of additional social, economic and ecological benefits. It would generate goods and services that support community wealth building, provide jobs and training, give people access to green space and outdoor learning at the edge of built up cities, and support community development through community owned resources, events and volunteering.
Carbon capture and storage, above and below ground, through farming approaches that work with natural cycles would in effect create ‘carbon sinks’ surrounding urban space and would benefit natural capital assets such as flood risk adaptation.
We’ve said before that trees are great and we want to see more of them. However, there is a danger that corporations are ‘pricing out’ farmers by buying up land for tree planting. So how can we address this?
Agroforestry is a great example of agroecology. It means combining trees and farming and demonstrates how food production and nature can co-exist. Grazing farm animals under trees gives them shelter and food, while their manure enriches the soil. And planting trees on land normally used to grow cereal crops means you can provide another crop, such as fruit, nuts or timber. This provides another income stream for farmers and also protects soils from erosion, because the trees’ deep roots help create a healthy soil structure.
And what about within our towns and cities themselves?
Currently only 1% of urban green space is used for allotments, but research shows urban and under utilised green spaces could produce nearly 40% of the UK’s fresh fruit and vegetables!
A recent study found ‘citizen scientists’ in Brighton and Hove, who were growing fruit and vegetables on their allotments, gardens and balconies, were able to harvest a kilo of fruit and vegetables per square metre in a season. This puts their yields within the range of conventional farms! And some people were harvesting up to 10 kilos per square metre. This is just from insect pollinated crops, so it’s probably an underestimate.
The urban growers were each able to grow an average of £550 worth of produce between March and October. £380 worth of this was from insect pollinated produce, such as squash, courgettes, blackberries, tomatoes, apples and beans, weighing an average of 70 kilos. Berries were the most attractive crop to pollinators. Growers used less pesticides than conventional farming techniques, using them in under 10% of pest cases. If you’re wondering, the most common pests were slugs, snails and aphids, and the worst affected produce was soft fruit and beans.
Urban and peri-urban farming can further be supported by removing the current 5 hectare eligibility criteria for farming support. This would make it easier for small growers to produce sustainably grown nutritious local food.
We need to take action to transform food and farming in South West Wales, so that healthy local food is accessible to all and good for the planet. We believe food can be a powerful force for good. It can reconnect us with our natural world, our local places, and with each other, and make us more resilient, as people and communities.
On behalf of Swansea Council, 4theRegion is convening a Green Recovery Conference & Exhibition on June 16th to showcase the businesses, projects and organisations who are leading the city’s green recovery. Food will be a big part of that! You can register for free here, and if you’d like to be involved, please contact zoe@4theRegion.org.uk
by admin | Jul 8, 2021 | Features, News, Opinion, Our Events, Past, Well-being Region
Wellbeing Economy Wales is embarking on a volunteer-led project to create the Wales Wellbeing Economy Index – a visualisation of relevant and meaningful data that frames the wellbeing economy in a way that everyone can understand. It’s part of a wider mission to broaden the understanding of (and engagement in) the idea of wellbeing economics in Wales.
The intention is to create a set of indicators that measure and track the progress of the wellbeing economy at a local, constituency or regional level; and which is updated regularly, eg quarterly, so that it is useful and relatable for people.
At tonight’s monthly discussion forum, Stephen Priestnall from Wellbeing Economy Wales provided an introductory overview to the project, which is in its very early stages. The team is inviting input, insight and involvement from the wider community across Wales – anyone who shares an interest in measuring, tracking and visualising “wellbeing economics” at a local or regional level, or who might have datasets or expertise to contribute. Opening the project up for early feedback and reflection is part of WEW’s commitment to co-production and partnership working, and the team was incredibly grateful to all those who took an interest in the work and contributed their thoughts.
The current proposal is to seek data that measures five components of a wellbeing economy:
# Sustainable Private GDP
# Economic Cooperation
# Social & cultural wellbeing
# Environmental Wellbeing
# Value of public services provided
Participants queried who the measurements were intended for, and whether they would be useful, meaningful or engaging at a local or oganisational level, to inform decision-making or the focusing of changemaking work at the level of local communities. The discussion also explored the difference between measuring “wellbeing” (like, for example, mental and physical wellbeing, which is perhaps subjective, qualitative, and hard to measure) versus measuring “wellbeing economics” – which is something we are all seeking to define and understand more clearly here in Wales!
Watch the recording – click here to view the full discussion via Zoom
Stephanie Howarth, Chief Statistician at the Welsh Government, also spoke at the meeting, and provided an overview of how Wellbeing is already being measured and tracked in Wales, through Wales’ Wellbeing Indicator Framework – a set of 46 indicators mapped to the seven wellbeing goals of the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act. Steph explained that the indicators in Wales were intended to “measure progress towards the Wales we want”, and to be:
# Short & Manageable;
# Coherent and fit well with other indicators;
# A measure for the whole of Wales;
# Resonant with the public
Making data meaningful for the public is agreed as the key challenge, and one of the ways Wales has sought to achieve this is through naming it’s indicators in ways that make sense to people – for example statistics relating simply to “healthy babies” rather than more technical definitions. Stephanie’s team are currently inviting feedback and insight as part of an ongoing consultation about the Wellbeing Indicator Framework, asking what possible gaps there might be, and how the data could be made more useful. Take a look at the blog to submit your comments:
https://shapingwalesfuture.blog.gov.wales/2021/06/29/national-indicators-what-has-the-pandemic-taught-us-about-how-we-measure-wellbeing/
One key reflection from tonight’s discussion was the importance of localised data, and the ability for communities and local decision-makers to be able to access and “drill down” on data for their local places. There was a strong consensus in favour of interactive, filterable datasets that are accessible for ordinary people, and Steph agreed that this is an area worth investigating. Stephen affirmed that the WEW project will seek to use and distribute its data on an open data platform, so that anyone can engage with it. The aspiration is that the data be useable at a local level, so that we can interact and drill down, bringing communities together to discuss what the data means to them; what its implications are, and what it tells about needs, strengths and challenges.
There were a number of valuable contributions from colleagues across Wales, shining a light of different aspects of the question of measuring wellbeing. Jonathan Richards, with colleagues, has done a lot of work around measuring the value of public services, and also reflected on some very useful work happening elsewhere, including in Birmingham.
At Bronllys Well Being Park, colleagues have designed a comprehensive wellbeing survey, for which they are keen to partner and seek funding – looking at wellbeing through a psychometric lens. And Barry Farrell noted that their survey work has identified 97 important indicators of well-being in 8 dimensions: Employment & Income, Housing & Environment, Food & Nutrition, Transport, Energy, Leisure, Community, and Physical & Mental Health.
Ellie Harwood, from the Child Poverty Action Group and the Anti-Poverty Coalition said that they have collected a lot of data on child poverty, but that is has been a challenge to get people to use the data they produce. Her insight was that data becomes most meaningful and actionable when it is provided at a local level, for example by ward – where it feels real and tangible.
Meanwhile, David Llewellyn from the NHS in Wales advised that they are creating a local wellbeing index intended to stimulate and provoke enhanced community discussions, “such that we can support and co-produce with communities to support wellbeing. It’s still in development but we would be very happy to learn from others”.
The meeting also reflected on WHY measuring and tracking wellbeing data feels IMPORTANT, and what our ultimate purpose should be as we seek to create and distribute new KPIs. We heard powerful insights about the importance of good data for determining what is required for change and how to improve things, as well as the power of data to inform community conversations and drive innovation.
All too often, data is used retrospectively to prove that something has worked and secure future funding – but perhaps our core focus should be on finding and distributing data that inspires us to action – that motivates and empowers us on an individual level, to play our part in making change. As Vicki Moller commented, “Data has to mean something to locals and lead to action… or so what!?”
What we measure, as a society, also reflects what we value – and perhaps in seeking to find effective measures for the wellbeing of people and the planet we will be able to more strongly advocate for those shared values, and change the culture of society in that direction. Seeking alternatives to narrow economic evaluations like GVA and GDP is important work if we are to change what we really value, and what we invest in, as a society. And “wellbeing economics” perhaps provides a new way for Wales to define our own agenda, distinct from those in Westminster, and to build on the achievement of Wellbeing of Future Generations Act and take it forward to better implementation and delivery.
Wellbeing Economy Wales is a volunteer-led organisation, part of the global Wellbeing Economy Alliance, working to make the vision of a “wellbeing economy” more visible, more credible and more meaningful, here in Wales. As a founding member, 4theRegion helps to host the monthly Wellbeing Economy Discussion Forum on the second Thursday of each month.
Register via Eventbrite for upcoming events or contact dawn@4theregion.org.uk for info.
by admin | Jul 5, 2021 | Development Investment, Impact Areas, News, Opinion
A Greener Local Supply Chain – Learning Journey
Wales has set ambitious targets to decarbonise housing over the next decades, but there are enormous challenges. Not least is the need to development the skills and competence of the wider SME market in Wales, in terms of retrofit green skills. Huge opportunities existing for small businesses in the construction sector, if they can get a grip of what’s needed to transform the way homes use energy, heat and materials. Great career opportunities also exist for all those who are looking for an exciting growth sector in which to contribute.
In partnership with Wyn Pritchard from the Optimised Retrofit Programme, and with our members, Coastal Housing, Family Housing and Pobl Housing Group, 4theRegion has designed a project to begin to unlock some of these opportunities for the benefit of our region. We have envisioned a collective learning journey that engages “the whole system” in thinking about the challenges and opportunities that exist and are emerging. We are ideally placed, between us, to connect businesses, developments, residents and training providers, together with the major housing associations as key buyers/clients in that supply chain. With a trifecta focus on Partnership Working, Community Engagement and Business Engagement, we need to:
- Raise awareness among businesses and SMEs of new bizdev opportunities
- Promote opportunities for training, career development
- Involve people and bring them with us in understanding new technologies and what they would like to see
- Break down silos between all pieces of the puzzle
- Share best practice, learning from those who are already doing great work in this sector
As in everything we do, 4theRegion believes fundamentally that we need to involve everyone in the process of transformation, expecting wisdom, leadership, ideas and talent to emerge from any/every part of the whole system. We have yet to identify the project funding to take this proposal forward, but encourage interested partners to get in touch to further the discussion.
Contact dawn@4theregion.org.uk
