Speeches by Shanks.

“I am not going to give advice to them. What we have said is that we want to strategically plan where our AI growth zones are, so that we are making use of constraints, wherever possible, and benefiting from things that we are currently spending money on. Secondly, we want to try to connect as many demand projects to th…”

“We will put a definition on a statutory footing, so that it is very clear to everyone what the Government define community energy as. That is a very good definition, but community-owned energy will be slightly narrower than some of those points. It picks up on the key elements that it is about the ownership structure, …”

“That is great, whoever said that in Parliament. It is brilliant.”

“Yes, investors were a part of the summit and they are part of the discussions that I have had, for example, at the North Sea Energy Forum. I was in Belgium recently meeting European Ministers and industry. The truth is that the summit represents our ambition as Europe to work together to tackle, in an uncertain world, …”

“Is it me? I agree with that. I agree with myself. There are multiple ways of looking at this. There is a straightforward way of communities benefiting directly, and you heard earlier on about the reforms that will allow communities to net off supply versus demand so that they do benefit from that. There are also ways—a…”

“It certainly is not. We want to phase out the use of gas. Gas will continue to play a strategic role in the capacity market, where we absolutely need it, but it will be less than 5% of our need.”

“It was a wonderful trip.”

“I am not close enough to the individual offers. NESO is running that side of the process. The timeline has taken longer than any of us would have liked. Partly that is to do with the complexity of the individual offers. NESO has now completed its steps and it is with the transmission owners and, in turn, the DNOs to ma…”

“We certainly want to explore it. We want to be much more innovative than we have been in the past about thinking about how the grid work, but it is not without risks. If individual projects can be absolutely certain that their private wire will meet all the demand that they might ever need, that is one thing. Where we …”

“Our clean power action plan is to decarbonise the power system, so it is not going to be our position that, post 2030, we should see unabated gas. That is very clear from us, but there is a need for us to provide capacity for the data centres that we want to bring to this country, for hugely important economic growth r…”

“I do not know quite how to take that.”

“I did not see all of the previous panel, but if I understand the point, it comes down to defining community energy, which is something that we will do. That is not quite the same, and so we do need to come up with a definition of community energy. Many people think, “Why is that complex?” The reason it is complex is th…”

“It is for the NWF to speak about individual projects. Until those investment decisions are made, I am not going to put a figure on jobs, but they are in the tens of thousands. We have said that, for the amount of money—£100 billion—that the NWF is seeking to bring in through the private capital allied to the public cap…”

“What I said previously is that we are not going to fix a number on it, but there has to be a mix. The reason that I am saying that is that I want to avoid putting a number on it and that then being seen as a ceiling on our ambition on either local or on community. I do not make any judgment about one being better than …”

“The thread that runs through everything we are seeking to do as the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is making sure we are also an industrial policy Department. Our energy policy does not exist in a vacuum. We are determined to rebuild the industrial heritage this country has. For too long, the previous Gove…”

“I have not seen any proposals for individual projects, but we have been very clear that, post 2030, this country should have decarbonised its power system, and we are doing everything to make that happen.”

“First of all, you should not compare different periods of the price cap.”

“I am happy to take away the point and consider it. I understand the rationale for raising it. It is a fair consideration. Even for nationally significant infrastructure projects that make it to my Department for decision, although we have an overall national goal of meeting certain targets, those individual application…”

“Seasons make a difference in the price cap. If you take—”

“I am the Minister for Energy, which covers most of the energy system, so from transmission and network to renewables, to oil and gas in our transition in the North sea, to Great British Energy, as well as looking at the cross-cutting issues of energy security and resilience.”