Ms Polly Billington

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will speak specifically to the amendments on community energy, and I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Back in 2016, I founded UK100, a network of local government leaders who are ambitious about shifting their communities and their economies to net zero. It is because of that experience, working with local leaders of all political persuasions across the country, that I would like to highlight the importance of a local-led approach to reaching our net zero targets. GB Energy will be able to play a crucial role in doing so by facilitating and encouraging local authorities to meet the ambitious net zero targets that have been set across the country. People will be familiar with the ambitions of big cities such as Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol and Brighton—to name but a few—but towns and villages in rural and coastal communities have also made those commitments. That is why community energy is so vital, and why it is so much a part of this Government’s overall project and of this Bill. Through the local power plan, GB Energy will be able to work with local and combined authorities to deliver hundreds of millions of pounds of funding to small and medium-scale clean energy projects, helping to turn those ambitious targets into reality. GB Energy will also be able to work with communities across the country to help deliver that local-led approach. I have seen some great real-world examples of community-led climate projects. For example, Green Meadows is a community climate action project in Nottingham, funded by the National Lottery’s climate action fund, that aims to deliver home insulation, clean energy generation for local homes, planting projects and workshops to give residents the tools and skills they need to install their own energy upgrades. With no disrespect to the National Lottery’s fund, we need a more strategic approach to the local delivery of clean, home-grown, secure energy. That is the role of the GB Energy company. By working with communities and local people, GB Energy will be able to play a crucial role in building consent and support for clean energy projects, in order to reach our ambitious targets and avoid a backlash to net zero—we have already seen that backlash, particularly driven by some of the attitudes of the Conservative party. We have to bring people along with us and show them how they can tangibly benefit from the transition. Net zero must not be something we do to people; it must be something we do with people. If we do not work with communities, we will face resistance across the country, but not because people are against tackling climate change. By involving people and showing them how they can tangibly benefit, we will face less resistance and deliver much quicker deployment of the energy projects we need to build. Swaffham Prior, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings), is indeed a valuable project, but we cannot leave the transition to projects of that scale. To support community projects at scale, we need a transformative approach that is about transforming the rules of the market as much as it is about establishing GB Energy. Lastly, de-risking those projects—both at scale and community assets—will be a vital role of GB Energy. Reaching net zero will be a partnership between the state, the private sector and the community. Government investment to help “crowd in” that private sector and community investment will be crucial. In that context, we often talk about new and developing technologies, but it is crucial not to forget existing, proven technologies.