Speeches by Shanks.

“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 consulted on how we would use that power. It is a very helpful power that the previous Government legislated for. I am not quite sure that they knew what they were doing when they did that. It is a really important power, but it has not been used, and so we have consulted on how we would enact that power. At the hea…”

“There are many options that we consulted on, and we will give a response to that consultation in due course, but the ambition has been very clear from us that shared ownership is a really good opportunity to get big-scale involvement of communities in the ownership of energy.”

“Yes.”

“I do not think that that is unqualified, though, Chair. Yes, we want to see a supply chain in the UK. We want to see factories built and we have investment from countries around the world in building that supply chain here in the UK. That is good, but our national security comes first. That trumps any other considerati…”

“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…”

“I do not have the figures to hand. We can write to you on the questions.”

“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 …”

“I do not think that that is unqualified, though, Chair. Yes, we want to see a supply chain in the UK. We want to see factories built and we have investment from countries around the world in building that supply chain here in the UK. That is good, but our national security comes first. That trumps any other considerati…”

“It is a really fair question. There is a tension there. The clean power action plan did not designate individual projects or scale of projects. It designated the targets we want for each type of technology. It is then left to the individual projects that come forward, because Government do not direct the projects. It i…”

“There are two examples that stick in my mind. One of my first visits was to the Isle of Eigg, which is a remarkable example because it is not connected to the grid at all. As a community, they have been able to have hydro, wind, solar and batteries working together to power the whole island, not just helping the househ…”

“It was a wonderful trip.”

“I cannot give you examples of what is in a plan that has not been published yet.”

“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.”

“This is absolutely fundamental, Chair, to what we need to do going forward. The local power plan will be published soon, in weeks rather than months. At the heart of it, it makes that argument, which is that, as a Government, we care about the question of ownership for much more than just the megawatts going on the sys…”

“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…”

“I am responsible and the Secretary of State is responsible, but it is a shared endeavour between Government, Great British Energy and communities. I want to emphasise that. When we publish the local power plan, yes, it details what Government will do and the offer from Great British Energy, but it is designed and frame…”

“We committed to that target and it was in the clean power action plan. It is an ambition that we have. The local power plan will not break down exactly that 8 GW target, because we do not want to focus purely on gigawatts. We want to focus on the individual projects. Our ambition is that we will meet that through a com…”