Speaker 1
Instead of oil and gas licenses, how what are the concrete ways you want the Labour government to be investing in this green transition? Well,
Speaker 4
the most urgent thing that we need to do is rapidly scale up our renewable energy resources, and that's not just from a climate perspective. Renewable energy is also the only way that we're going to protect all of the families and households across the country who are incredibly worried about their household energy bills going into this winter. Our dependency on gas is what's driven up our energy bills. It is the only way that we can keep those bills down in the long term. So we want to see a massive rapid build out of renewable energy, but also just as crucially, we want to make sure that the investment in the renewable energy industry, the supply chains, the jobs, all of the benefits of that industry go to the communities that have historically been dependent on fossil fuel sectors like oil and gas, so that there is a fair transition. And we make sure that actually Scotland, which has some of the best renewable resources in the world, can really benefit from the prosperity that that should bring. Are
Speaker 1
these suggestions possible under the austerity budget that Labor has warned is coming in autumn?
Speaker 4
we're obviously like everyone waiting to see exactly what's in that budget. I mean, the government has so far, I think, made one very important step in that general direction, which is the establishment of GB energy. We obviously need to wait and see exactly what the mandate of GB energy is, where it's going to be based, what it's going to do. But, you know, the suggestion is that it will create tens of thousands of new jobs. And that those jobs could be used to support people out of high carbon sectors. But absolutely, I mean, when you think about the way that other countries have invested in this transition, attracted investment, scaled up energy, renewable energy at the scale that we need, It's required proper industrial strategy and it's required a fair bit of investment behind that. So we absolutely do need to see that scale of investment if there is any credible pathway towards those goals, which the Labor government has made its own goals by the way, including decarbonising the power sector by 2030.