Speeches by Gibson.

“That is quite interesting. Going back to the energy issue, Mr Eaton, do you feel that corporate power purchase agreements mitigate or shift some of the impact on energy systems?”

“Mr Eaton, do your data centres all have on-site gas generation and suchlike in order to compensate?”

“That brings me on to my question about costs and where we position it. In the US, electricity prices near data centres have increased up to around 260% in the last five years. What do the three of you think about the implications of data centre growth in the UK for its energy systems? Do you expect households to see si…”

“Yes, we heard that argument in our last session. We talked about the fact that, as they become more efficient, we just expect them to do more; we assume that the drop-off would not be quite as good because we just keep asking for more data.”

“That is interesting; thank you. Mr Chanda, the Centre for Economic Transition Expertise modelling said that data centres could account for 8% of the UK’s emissions in 2035. How do you think that might be mitigated?”

“Will the Minister join me in thanking and paying tribute to Carole Gould and Julie Devey from the action group Killed Women? They are constituents of mine and of my hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine), who unfortunately cannot be here due to ill health. Will the Minister pay tribute to the …”

“Julia’s question feeds into what I was hoping to ask you. It is something that we have all touched on. Do you believe the Treasury’s understanding of climate and nature risks is now adequately reflected in its choice of spending, investment and fiscal decisions? Do you have any evidence that the climate and nature cons…”

“Other than the Climate Change Act, which is one of the few things that go beyond the cycle of changes of Parliament, which is quite impressive, is there anything more on a day-to-day basis that you notice where the Treasury’s policies and spending are now clearly moving in that direction of supporting our natural capit…”

“In the warm homes plan, can we make sure that the advisory service is properly funded, so that we have the technical support required and the heat pump engineer going in is not having to make decisions without support. It is unfair on them to have to say things like, “Well, actually, this house is not going to work, be…”

“I am going to go from the macro back to the micro. Picking up on our Chair’s concerns about heat pumps and suchlike, bad news always travels faster and further than good news. We only need one or two bad news stories for even people such as our esteemed Chair to have their doubts. However, a lot of the time, those doub…”

“Yes. The Climate Change Committee was talking about reducing the electricity-to-gas price ratio. It needs to fall further, from about 4 to about 2.2 to 2.6 by 2040, to meet CB7. Do you accept that analysis? If so, what further plans are there to bring electricity prices down?”

“Thank you for being here, Minister. While your response to our report cites that actions have already been taken by the Government to lower electricity prices, such as on the renewables obligation and the energy company obligation, it does not really address our specific recommendation, which was to move the appropriat…”

“Going back to Chris’s point about bringing the public with us, my biggest concern at the moment is that the costs are high so there is a large segment of the population who are not only not able to benefit from this, but are at some point going to become antagonistic towards it. We are in the very difficult position of…”

“In that case, I am pleased to hear that. We have all been talking about decoupling for such a long time. At every emergency briefing that I go to in the constituency, that is the one thing that people come up to ask me about afterwards. This is a difficult question, but is there any timeline for being able to do that? …”

“I presume they were not actually offering to build the polytunnels for the cucumbers. It was not actually a serious scheme, I take it.”

“I would like to ask you, Matt or Dame Dawn, because you are involved in the sort of schemes that have co-benefits and have been more successful than some of the ones Mr Hayes mentioned, what further things would help to make it a level playing field, so that everybody is doing the kind of things you have discussed.”

“People are always very keen on infrastructure, as long as it is not next to their own home.”

“I want to pick up the point Mr Hayes made about local communities feeling that these applications—especially now that they can be referred up very quickly because they are strategic infrastructure—are happening to them rather than with them. That is a general problem with development and the lack of transparency over o…”

“They are doing something; are they doing their best?”

“I have a very quick question off the back of what you have all said about being able to use some of the waste heat, and the difficulties that Dame Dawn mentioned with district heating. Is there a possibility that the Government’s initiative on expanding the mayoral authorities would allow, if they were given the author…”