Speeches by Shanks.

“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.”

“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.”

“Yes.”

“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…”

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

“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 …”

“I have not prioritised them. They are all important, and they are all critical. If we fix the regulation, but we do not sort out the financial aspects or the capacity, there still are not going to be the projects coming forward. They all play a part, and we need them all to work in tandem. They are all the responsibili…”

“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 …”

“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…”

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

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

“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…”

“They are local energy projects.”

“The way that we have sought to deliver the clean power mission is partly how my Department is driving everything, which is to say that, in the past, Government have set out an objective, then gone away and let others just deliver it in the background, and hoped that the outcome would be achieved at some point. The clea…”

“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…”

“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.”

“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 will answer it in a second. Emma was just going to come in on the last question, if that is okay.”

“Respectfully, I disagree. I think £250 off a bill will have a massive impact on communities. The point of it is to give a recognition that, if you are hosting infrastructure, you should benefit from it directly. That is our commitment on transmission infrastructure. We will say more about the wider community benefits, …”

“I understand that, but, if you take an average of the past two years, energy bills are lower in real terms than they were the year before. There is more to do. That is why £150 is coming off the cost of bills in April to make a real commitment to people. The job is not done. The cost of living is our absolute north sta…”