Chris Stark

What should we have? What should we remove? And I think that's emerged actually over time, even since for the last five years, I think people have progressed in their thinking on that.

Some of your previous guests, Chris Stark, for example, has talked about the value gas brings to our infrastructure.

I think it's thought about more at a power station level, which is right.

So that picks up as there's power generation all over our network as well.

If governments want public support, they need to explain what's in it for people.

So the committee heard from Chris Stark.

He, of course, leads the UK's Clean Power 2030 mission.

He told MPs they're not going to win the argument if the only reason given for change is meeting a statutory climate target.

I agree.

I think what I've sat in on focus groups, which are looking at people who are interested in the energy system, but maybe aren't their voters and who are interested in keeping the lights on but also in reducing bills and bills is clearly the only main signal that people respond to because it's very palpable and it lands on everyone's you know kind of like front door every month and net zero is a nebulous concept, which has been probably weaponized by governments who are keen or politicians who are keen to kind of get in on the political action.

But I think what this kind of signals, and it was interesting to see Chris Stark be on the front foot of a desire to change terminology and move away from net zero.

I hosted him on a panel in Glasgow this summer at All Energy, where he was talking about the need to also change the term for electrification, for example, because again, people don't understand that this requires that, you know, not only are they going to have to start driving electric vehicles, they're going to have to give up their gas boiler in order to kind of achieve net zero.

In today's episode, you'll hear highlights from a session at RBC's Energy Transition Conference in London from this past June.

Chris Stark, appointed Head of Mission Control for Clean Power 2030 by the UK government, gave a very candid account of what the country is doing to build out its power system and resolve its own energy trilemma.

Chris spoke to Dominic Hudson, our Head of Investment Banking for Europe and APAC.

Now, let's dive into the conversation.