Emma Pinchbeck

Plus these technologies are also efficient at a household level.

A heat pump is three to four times more efficient than a gas boiler.

You use less primary energy to have the same output in your economy.

There is no economist in their right mind that will tell you that's not a better world to end up in.

Of course.

And as a consequence, you also save yourself from the kind of volatility of fossil.

So that, to me, looks like we should be focusing a lot more on the conversation.

How do we reduce our demand for this commodity, which is volatile and unpredictable?

And the fact that you can do that whilst also delivering on the carbon budgets is a nice thing for my job, but I would have been saying the same thing in my previous job and did at the time of the 2020 crisis.

All right.

Energy is really misunderstood.

I don't think people realise how fundamental it is to the cost of absolutely everything.

In 2022, our tomatoes were 40% higher in cost because of the cost of fertilisers and the cost of heating greenhouses.

I think the Food and Drink Federation is saying food price inflation will go up 9% this year, and a lot of that will be the energy inputs.

It's the cost of red diesel in tractors.

It's the cost of your family holiday because of the price of jet fuel.

It's the cost of making the things that we use in the economy because our industrial electricity prices are higher.

And it's the cost of your energy bill.

So I think you have to have a conversation with people about this, yes, being about doing our bit to prevent really damaging climate change impacts, which are real and tangible and happening now.

And also about powering the economy of the future, that in order to get there, we have to build some stuff.