Robert Best

It is so obviously the case that from basic economics, right, we should not be paying wind farms in Scotland to switch their power off because, you know, they can't get it through the interconnector down to London and the southeast where they need it.

That's obviously an unbelievable waste.

And it's also really bad for the climate as well.

And so what they really, I mean, you know, what a brave government would have done...

would have been to go to a system of zonal pricing.

And then, frankly, if there were investors in big infrastructure projects who said, we only invested on the basis of national pricing, then you have a conversation with them about how you compensate them for the change in the contract.

But what you don't do is basically have a situation where you're throwing away cheap, clean power, an enormous cost both to the environment and to British people.

And you don't have the incentives to basically create whether it's battery storage in London and the southeast or new, cheaper, renewable.

Well, let's put it a different way.

How is it, therefore, because this must be central to the kind of thing you've got to think about, right?

How is it that we are... that you can actually build...

you know, wind in Scotland and then not have in place the network that allows it to be shipped to the rest of the UK?

How does that mismatch?

I mean, that is like the stupidest mismatch of decision making.

So Greg Jackson, who is the chief executive of the energy giant Octopus Energy and is also a partner of this podcast, he says... Ludicrously gold-plated.

There's way too much being built.

OK, so let's then...

focus more on the climate side of things.

One of the things that people would say is we are now, you know, gold plating the journey to net zero in the way that no other economy in the world is doing.

We are the holiest of the holy for no benefit either to us or to the world because we're a tiny economy.