Earl Russell (LD)

My Lords, it was right to bring these amendments forward; they are important considerations on the future of AI and community energy. I thank all those who have spoken and broadly supported the amendments—the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and the Conservative Front Bench—and the Minister for the detailed response I have received to the issues I raised. I welcome the fact that a national policy statement will be forthcoming; it is needed, and I look forward to seeing that. The bit that is still slightly missing on AI is embedding the idea of energy efficiency in the planning system and making sure that we hold these big tech companies to account, because it is very easy for them to consume energy, and that causes a lot of problems for us as we transition to clean power. If the Government allow them to build data centres, they need a system to get access to those data centres to drive energy efficiency. I was trying to create a mechanism to do that with these amendments. My mechanism might not be the right one, but there is a conversation to be had about being able to use the power of AI to redesign the energy network according to how we best plug in renewables, for example, to drive energy efficiencies. I will leave that as a problem for all of us to think about going forward. I also welcome the commitment and work from the Government on community energy; they added it as one the objectives of the Great British Energy Act and are coming forward with further guidance on that. I very much welcome the efforts being made to ensure that communities can not only generate power but benefit from it. That is essential to ensure that the public’s support stays with all of us who support the transition and that the next wave of energy is not done “to people” but “for people”, so that they get to benefit from the transition in the longer term. I look forward to that. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.