Speeches by Shanks.

“I have wrestled with this; we have wrestled with this. In theory, I could say yes, because it seems like absolutely the right thing to achieve the outcome that we want. When we get into the reality of how we then do that with a queue that is already complex, the competing priorities—of course, this is really important …”

“There are jobs already being created right now from projects the National Wealth Fund has funded. Today’s new strategy for the NWF was about doubling down on what its commitment is. I am really delighted that right at the heart of that is clean power projects across the country, and with a commitment to looking at the …”

“They have had some direction. They will get more direction on the principles, and the local power plan will outline more of what we want to do. I say genuinely that Ofgem has a very difficult balancing act. Although I and other Ministers will challenge it on many things, of all the regulators, it is aware of the fact t…”

“We have not given a view, because there have not been any proposals brought forward. By 2030, we are trying to phase out the role of unabated gas in our power system.”

“First of all, on the 1,000 projects, I would emphasise that it says “at least 1,000 projects”. I say that genuinely because that is not a ceiling on our ambition. What we want to see within that is a real mix of projects. We know that there are some really good local energy projects. We have tried to fund, for example,…”

“A number of investors want to come and build and invest in the UK. Every single one of those is subject to a national security assessment and the proposal from Ming Yang is being actively considered on that basis. I cannot be drawn on the decision on that, which has not been made.”

“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…”

“There are two separate things to that. You and I will both have constituents who come to our surgeries every week who talk about their pay packet not reaching to the end of the month. When people feel a little less pressure on that and do not fear a letter coming through the door because it might be a bill that they ca…”

“That is a fair question. I will follow up on the individual example. We did a widespread piece of consultation, indeed called Barriers to Community Energy Projects. We had a significant number of contributions to that and we also did workshops across the country to really get into detail on some of those issues. It is …”

“The schools and hospitals solar project is a combination of funding. Great British Energy invested into it, but so did the Department of Health and the Department for Education. Going forward, those projects will remain important because it is one of the fastest things we can deploy and we want to see more on rooftops …”

“Just to give you an example, a few months ago, I was at a conference in Glasgow, where Community Energy Scotland was referencing some of the data in Scotland where community energy is not defined in a clear enough way. The number of projects that are, in fact, owned by landowners, not by communities, is really quite si…”

“That is the vision we really have. Solar panels on the rooftop of the school are great. I have visited a number of them. They reduce the bills of the school. The money goes straight back into schools and they spend it on all the things we want schools spending money on, but you can see a school as a real hub for commun…”

“No, we are not prescribing and not setting a target, but I have been very clear that that does not mean that we do the projects that might be more straightforward to get over the line at the cost of others. There has to be a balance, and the local power plan really outlines the fact that there has to be both of those e…”

“Emma might want to come in on some of those points, but let me take it head on. I am accountable for this to Parliament. On the question of who is responsible for it, we have set up Great British Energy as a publicly owned energy company to be our energy champion and for the public to own a share in it. It will drive f…”

“Yes, and not just the Department. Right across Government, the absolute priority from the Prime Minister to everyone is what we are doing to address the cost of living and particularly electricity prices. That is important for individual consumers, but it is also important for business and industry that we tackle that.…”

“Inevitably, it is largely from our European neighbours, which have been doing this for a very long time. I had a fantastic visit to Denmark to visit, I think, one of the first community-owned offshore wind farms, Middelgrunden, which was excellent. We learned from that that ambition should not be micro-scale generation…”

“We will look at the funding schemes that we put in place for local energy, which will include an element of support for local councils. That will not be on an “every council has an allocation” basis but by allocating to projects that we think are valuable to take forward. In truth, there have been some fantastic exampl…”

“It is a really good question. It will play a part in helping the system overall and helping deal with constraints as well. Quantifying that is difficult, because the scale we have at the moment is so low that, over the whole system, it has very little overall impact. There are two things we are determined to do as a co…”

“Ambition or target—I do not know. You can call me back if I am fortunate enough to be here in 2030 and ask me that question again.”

“It is an aspiration and a goal.”