Bills, jobs, and security: the real cost of climate inaction |
Wales cannot afford climate inaction.
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The Tax payers alliance writing in LBC 22nd of February argues that a dose of realism is needed around net-zero targets in Wales, calling them an expensive distraction from voters’ real concerns and arguing Wales should slow down, lower its ambition, and put climate action on the back burner.
Across Wales this year, we have already seen the price of climate inaction: flooded homes, damaged roads, rising insurance premiums, and stretched council budgets. These aren’t distant warnings. They are costs being paid right now by Welsh families and taxpayers.
We need to tackle climate change to prevent extreme weather events such as floods from harming our communities. Dealing with the impacts of climate change is already placing a major financial burden on Wales. More than £214 million was spent between 2022 and 2025 on managing flood and coastal erosion risks. The agricultural sector is also facing growing costs. Extreme weather events, including heavy rainfall and drought, have already cost Welsh farmers tens of millions of pounds. Additional livestock feed costs alone reached an estimated £151 million in 2018 and £265 million in 2022–23, highlighting how climate impacts are driving up costs for food producers and threatening rural livelihoods.
When global gas prices spiked in 2022, driven by post-pandemic demand, supply shortages, and severe geopolitical instability following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, European gas prices rose to over ten times their early 2021 levels. Resulting in massive government interventions, triggering high inflation, and causing a global energy crisis that pushed many households into fuel poverty. Governments worldwide spent over £1 trillion subsidising fossil fuels just to stop prices spiralling further. At the same time, oil and gas companies doubled their profits.
That is not a functioning market. It is a system designed to transfer risk to the public. And although Wales is a significant exporter of electricity, particularly from renewable sources, its energy system is integrated into the wider great British grid, meaning Welsh consumers still pay prices influenced by global market volatility.
Research by Renewables UK Cymru shows that an ambitious renewables strategy could transform Wales’s economy and communities, and generate close to £2 billion in tax revenue for public services, provide £183 million in community benefit funding, and cut the equivalent of removing almost 10 million cars from the road.
Not transitioning away from fossil fuels means locking Wales into an energy system dependent on volatile, vulnerable fossil fuels that mean higher bills for the householder.
We need to take back control from the energy companies. Why let big fossil fuel giants rip us off when we can generate our own power here in Wales? The wind, sun, and water are free. Once infrastructure is built, costs are stable for decades. There are no tanker wars, no cartel politics, no sudden price explosions. Wales is rich in renewable resources. Our coastline, hills, and communities have the potential to power the country and cut our dependence on expensive imports. That is not ideology. It is basic economic sense.
It is right to ask how we deliver climate action affordably, fairly and practically. But questioning delivery is not the same as abandoning ambition. Walking away from targets would leave Wales weaker, poorer, and more exposed.
Critics often argue that climate policy hurts people on low incomes... Policies that insulate homes to cut bills permanently, expand affordable public transport, support community-owned renewables, and create skilled local jobs are cost-of-living policies; they just happen to work for the climate too.
Every year of delay locks in more damage and higher bills. It means more public money spent repairing flood damage, more families choosing between heating and eating, and more councils struggling to maintain roads and services. One in seven homes in Wales is at risk of flooding and analysts show that owners of properties with a history of flooding will pay around £227 more for their insurance on average.
Realism today means recognising that the old energy model is failing. It means understanding that delay is the most expensive option of all. And it means investing now in people-powered solutions that keep wealth in communities instead of sending it overseas.
The Climate Cymru Network is made up of hundreds of organisations across Wales, including community groups, charities, environmental organisations, faith groups, businesses, trade unions, and social justice networks. We are rooted in people’s everyday lives and experiences.
But we also know where the answers lie. They lie in investing in clean, affordable energy, warm homes, reliable public transport, and strong local economies. They lie in putting people at the heart of the transition, so that climate action delivers lower bills, better jobs, healthier communities, and a fairer future for everyone.
That is the realism our future depends on.
Bethan Sayed is Head of Politics at Climate Cymru.
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The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.
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