Robert Best

Clean energy is a very attractive...

Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Money with me, Robert Best, and Steph's away doing exciting stuff, but I'm delighted to be joined by Emma Pinchbeck, who is the Chief Executive of the Government's Climate Change Committee.

That's the body that advises it on whether it's meeting its climate targets, whether the government is protecting us enough from heatwaves and floods and even droughts in some circumstances.

that are the result of climate change.

Before that, she actually represented the energy industry.

She was on the other side of the fence running a body, a trade body called Energy UK.

And what I really want to talk to her about are really two big questions.

One is, how do you get the cost of energy down now without knocking us off course when it comes to meeting climate targets?

If indeed, you know, some of you may not think climate targets are important.

And again, let's let's let's one of the things I'm going to talk about with her is whether in a Trump world.

We should be so fixated on hitting those climate targets.

But then there's another big thing, which is actually the big prize if we make this climate transition to a UK that no longer has to import oil and gas, is we're going to be self-sufficient.

And actually the marginal cost of renewables is pretty low.

So why this route that we're on to self-sufficiency is...

in low-cost energy, seemingly so politically unpopular.

A lot to chew over with Emma Pinchbeck, and here's our conversation.

Emma, very good to see you.

I suppose what I wanted to start by asking you is a very big question, which is, you know, at a time when we've now seen these two major conflicts...

Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine, Trump's war against Iran, which have led to these energy shocks.

There are quite a lot of politicians, and not just at the fringes, who say this is not the moment when we should be spending money on climate transition.