One in four Welsh households are in fuel poverty. Now Plaid has power, will it finally fix the problem?

Tegid Roberts

Wales produces more energy than it consumes, yet hundreds of thousands of households still struggle to heat their homes. Plaid Cymru now has the opportunity—and responsibility—to deliver the national energy company it has long championed.

Walk into any community in the Wales last winter and you will hear a version of the same story. Families choosing between heating and eating. Older people going to bed early because they cannot afford to run the radiators. A bill arriving that takes a fifth of what the household earns.

These are not anecdotes from the margins. They are statistics. Official Welsh Government figures published in August 2025 confirmed that 340,000 households — one in four across Wales — were living in fuel poverty in October 2024.

A further 215,000 were at risk of falling into it. Sixty-three thousand were in severe fuel poverty, defined as spending 20% or more of household income on energy.

The numbers have got worse, not better, since the energy crisis of 2021 and 2022. Before that spike, roughly one in seven Welsh households was in fuel poverty. Today it is one in four.

Energy prices may have fallen from their peak, but they remain far above pre-crisis levels — and for the majority of those 340,000 households, wages have not kept pace.

Here is the uncomfortable truth that Wales has been sitting with for years: this country produces more energy than it consumes. Wales has over 1,000 miles of coastline, five million acres of land, world-class offshore wind resource and a solar profile that regularly surprises those unfamiliar with it. The energy is here. The problem is who owns it, and who benefits from it.

The idea that won’t go away

In 2017, I was commissioned by Plaid Cymru to make the case for a national publicly owned energy company for Wales — to be called Ynni Cymru. The report argued that such a company could use bulk purchasing power to drive down bills, fund mass installation of solar panels and home batteries on Welsh housing stock, and make affordable clean energy the centrepiece of an industrial strategy to attract new investment to Wales.

The report was ahead of its time. Now, nearly a decade later, an updated version concludes that the arguments are stronger than ever — and that the political moment to act has finally arrived.

“The original analysis has held up well,” the report states. “The technology has matured, the costs have fallen dramatically, and fuel poverty in Wales has worsened. Everything about the case for a national energy company is more compelling in 2026 than it was in 2017.”

A start, but only a start

In 2023, the Welsh Government — under the Labour-Plaid Cymru Co-operation Agreement — did establish something called Ynni Cymru. Headquartered at M-SParc on Anglesey, the programme has funded 32 Smart Local Energy System projects across Wales, deploying £10 million in grants in its first full year and a further £10 million in 2025–26.

That is a genuine achievement. Community energy groups, social enterprises and public bodies have been supported to develop locally owned renewable assets. An energy health check service for existing generators has been created. The foundations are real.

But the Cadarn report is clear that the current programme is not the national energy company envisaged in 2017. It is a grant-making programme. It cannot purchase energy wholesale and pass the savings to Welsh consumers. It does not lease energy-efficient appliances to low-income households who cannot afford to upgrade. It holds no stakes in generating assets. It has no industrial energy proposition to attract inward investment.

“Ynni Cymru as currently constituted is a valuable start,” the report concludes. “It is not the destination.”

The technology case

The economics of the 2017 vision have transformed since it was written. Solar PV installation costs have continued their dramatic fall — the median UK installed cost for a residential system dropped by approximately 20% in 2024–25 alone, and a standard 4kW system now costs in the region of £6,000, compared to substantially more a decade ago.

Home battery storage has moved from an expensive early-adopter technology to a mainstream product. A 14kWh battery system — enough to make a three-bedroom house approximately 87% energy independent when paired with solar panels — is now widely available and falling in cost.

The bulk purchasing power of a national energy company procuring thousands of systems simultaneously could reduce those prices by a further 20–30%. The economics of a mass rollout programme for social housing and low-income households have rarely looked better.

Plaid’s moment

For the first time since the Senedd was established in 1999, Wales does not have a Labour government. Plaid Cymru, which originally commissioned the 2017 Ynni Cymru report, now leads the Welsh Government in their own right. Their 2026 manifesto committed to a new national energy company, a National Energy Strategy, a minimum community ownership stake of 15–25% in large energy projects, and a Renewables Wealth Fund to ensure the long-term economic benefits of Wales’ energy resources are retained for its people.

These commitments map directly onto the framework set out in 2017. For the first time, the party that conceived Ynni Cymru has the ministerial machinery to build it.

The Cadarn report’s message to the new administration is direct: the political moment exists, the policy framework is ready, and the technology and market conditions have never been more favourable. The task now is not further study or consultation. It is implementation.

Wales produces more energy than it consumes. Its people should not be going to bed cold.

Ynni Cymru: A National Energy Company for Wales — 2026 Update is published by Cadarn Research. The original 2017 report was commissioned by Plaid Cymru.