The UK has just released its seventh carbon budget, recommitting to the aggressive climate targets suggested by its nonpartisan Climate Change Committee. Can the Labour government actually hit those targets while keeping energy prices for the British people under control, even amidst a newly hostile political landscape? In this episode, I talk with the UK’s new climate minister, Katie White, about those challenges and more.
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David Roberts
Hello everyone. This is Volts for June 17, 2026: “Can the UK stay the course with its climate plans?” I’m your host, David Roberts.
By many measures, the UK is a genuine global leader on decarbonization. It passed an extremely ambitious climate change law in 2008 and has largely stuck with it since. It shut its last coal plant in 2024, making it the first G7 nation to leave coal behind entirely. It has cut its greenhouse gas emissions by almost 50 percent from 1990 levels, well ahead of, ahem, some other countries one could mention.
But its decarbonization push has recently hit some turbulence. The cross-party consensus that held for 15 years seems to have come apart: with the Labour party running the government, the Conservatives now want to repeal the very climate law they once championed, and Reform UK, which is leading in many national polls, is promising to scrap “net stupid zero.”
To make matters worse, America’s ill-conceived Iran war has gas prices spiking and household bills heading back up — an awkward backdrop for a government elected partly on a pledge to cut household bills by £300 by 2030.
All of this agita will be on display later this month when Parliament votes on the UK’s seventh carbon budget, which will give the government guidance on how and how fast to continue cutting emissions. As proposed by the Labor government, it maintains course, but increasing concerns about industrial competitiveness and the costs of heat pumps and transport mandates will make this a spicier affair than past budgets.
Can the government produce a credible policy package that meets the targets laid out in that budget? Now that the easiest reductions in the electricity sector are behind it, can it make similarly ambitious cuts in heating, transportation, and aviation? Can it restitch its climate consensus and restore its global leadership?
Much of this effort will fall to Katie White. For two decades, she has been a leading climate campaigner, working at prominent NGOs to establish the UK’s climate law and its basic policy architecture. Then, in July 2024, she became a member of Parliament, and in September of last year, she was appointed the UK’s climate minister. It’s a rather dizzying ascent into the higher reaches of government. I can’t wait to talk to her about how the climate effort looks from the inside and how she intends to keep the country on track.
Katie White, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Katie White
Thank you for having me, David.
David Roberts
Let’s start here. The most striking thing about UK climate politics at the moment, from the outside perspective, is that you were instrumental — after working for years with NGOs — in passing the Climate Change Act way back in 2008, which passed on a cross-partisan basis and has had majority cross-partisan support ever since, up until it looks like right around 2023, when it looks like the consensus fractured. Reform obviously is now out promising to repeal the whole thing. Conservatives are now following up, saying they want to repeal the whole thing. It really looks like that consensus flew apart pretty abruptly starting in 2023. I’m just curious, why do you think that happened? What is your diagnosis for what happened?
Katie White
Thanks, David, that’s a great question. In terms of where we are and why do I think it’s happened, I don’t think it’s quite as broken as you might think or hear. Undoubtedly, there has been some fracturing and you’re right that in 2008 it was the Conservatives under David Cameron. David Cameron’s leadership campaign was to call for a climate change bill and then the Labour government introduced it and they continued to deliver. In the last few years, there’s been some questioning about that and I have been taking a step back and asking what is the questioning, what do we agree on, what do we disagree on, and what’s the problem with that?
I think we are at a place in terms of a few bits. One is our energy bills. That’s probably the main thing and it’s certainly the number one issue for voters in the UK and the number one priority for our department. Secondly is energy security. Thirdly is climate change, and it’s probably in that order that people care at the moment. It’s not to say they don’t care about these things because I think the British public, the numbers who support action on climate change, is incredibly high.
At the same time, most humans want to have low bills and energy security and tackle climate change. We’re trying to deal with that. I think the case was made around climate change years ago. I’m not sure we’ve made the case particularly well. But also, energy bills have continued to rise and people have made an equation there of “hold on a second, are these costs directly comparable?”
Now, David, you’re an expert on this. It’s a very complicated picture. In the UK, we’re moving from a system where we’ve almost been renting energy, but it’s been a commodity-based system. We’re buying off, we have a certain amount ourselves, but broadly we’re buying off other people, be it the US or Norway or other countries, we’re buying oil and gas. We’re now moving to an infrastructure model. We’re almost buying our own house and there is a down payment cost on that. We have invested in terms of having wind turbines and actually the last government, due credit to them, set a lot of this in train.
The challenge is they also didn’t do the grid infrastructure, which meant that we haven’t been able to take advantage of some of those costs. We are at that tricky point in the transition. We need to be honest about that. There’s also politics all involved in it and obviously this is even more so in the States. It’s very much a binary, has been left and right. I’ve never really agreed with that and I’m happy to call things out on the left, on the right. People want to have an argument about whether things have got a label or whatever. I don’t really care about the labels, frankly. I just want to make sure that we’ve got clean energy that is cheap, good for the UK, and good for the planet.
The other point, and you might have some reflections in terms of why you think it is from where you’re sitting, but I was with a group of leaders yesterday and some business leaders and some of them have been working on this for a while as well, and they were saying a lot of this is cyclical and there are generally cycles of support and lack of support and we are for sure at a lower ebb. They were reassuring me that it was going to go up. We’ll see. They did say that the troughs of those peaks, the trough is getting higher as the trend is going up.
Finally, I would just say there’s quite a lot we do agree on. There’s been a lot of debate in the UK recently politically and energy has been a part of that debate. But electrification, you’d be hard pressed to find anybody across the whole political spectrum who doesn’t agree that electrification is the way forward for the UK. I’m like, if we agree on that basis, let’s build on that, let’s keep going, because that is great for our prices, for energy security, and for the planet.
David Roberts
The one thing I wanted to say, as I was looking at these charts, is political support has split rather abruptly, but that’s not reflected in public support. If you poll the public, they’re not as intense in their support as they used to be, but still majorities are in support. It’s really an elite political phenomenon that’s happening. But you raised the main issue. Let’s talk about the main issue. You believe, I believe, I’m sure most people listening to this podcast believe that if you make these big investments in renewable energy, infrastructure and resilience, Britons will be better off in the long term, maybe even in the medium term.
But politics lives in the short term and people are facing high prices in the short term. Originally, I think Labour was promising “we’re going to lower your household bills,” I think specifically by 300 pounds by 2030. That, for a variety of reasons, is looking quite implausible, not all of which are in your control, of course. Some of that is the Iran war, pushing gas prices up, etc. But the question I would just put to you is what are you going to do in the short term? How do you propose to restrain costs between now and 2030?
Katie White
You’re absolutely right. We’ve committed to bring bills down and the bills were lower in 2025 than they were in 2024, so we were heading in the right direction. But you’re absolutely right, I think everybody can see the international crisis we face and the challenges. We’ve done a couple of things. One is we have done targeted Warm Homes Discount for people who need energy support most. We did that over the winter and we increased the distribution of that so there were more people getting access to Warm Homes Discount.
We also took some of the costs of the renewables obligation we had on bills and we’ve taken those in house to the Treasury. Yes, the taxpayer is paying, but for families and businesses that is having a reduction in cost and that’s why the price cap was lower in April. It has gone up because of the Iran war, but it hasn’t gone up as much. We were working from a lower base. We’ve already made a couple of interventions.
I’ll also give you a story. I was out knocking on doors because that’s what we as politicians do out in the northwest the other day and came across a guy in a very modest house in a not hugely affluent area who was explaining how he’d been in energy debt and he was in a thousand pounds worth of energy debt. He’d got a couple of solar panels and within a year to 18 months he got that debt down to 170 pounds.
The more we can do, as you say, to meet that short term need, because I totally agree with you. In the long term we’re going to be in a better place and that’s what we should be doing as politicians and leaders, setting up the country for the long term. But we also need to meet that short term need and we’re acutely aware of that. We’re looking at all options now, particularly because of the Middle East crisis, of how we can accelerate any of that. Getting solar panels on roofs. We’re trying to get the, we said we’re going to introduce these plug-in solar that you get in Germany, that you can get in the middle aisle of our discount supermarkets.
We’ve just got to get the regulation through. We’re trying to do that as quickly as possible because it is a way that people can insulate themselves from bills. That’s the number one thing I’m concerned about, how do we support consumers and use this time that we have wisely. It’s pretty hot here at the moment. Energy demand is lower, demand in terms of heating etc. is lower. But we will head into a winter where prices look like they’re going to rise. How do we do everything now to be protecting consumers for that next winter?
David Roberts
A slightly nerdy question related to that, and this is something Ed Miliband has referenced frequently. One of the reasons that household bills are going up is that gas prices are going up. In the UK, the way the energy market is structured, gas is still the price maker. The price of energy is still pegged to gas. In a sense, you’re very stuck on this roller coaster with everybody else.
I’m curious, in terms of energy markets, how are you going to break that link? How are you going to stop allowing gas to establish the price of electricity in the UK? I know there are market reforms in the works. How do you want to break that link and when might it be broken?
Katie White
There’s two things to say here. You’re absolutely right. We’ve announced we’re looking at how to break that link and how structurally we can do that. There’s a review going on at the moment in terms of breaking that link. We’ll be able to tell you more in hopefully not too long a time because we’re operating within the framework where energy costs are causing a lot of challenges.
The other thing is the more we move everybody onto that electrification piece, every single solar farm, offshore wind turbine that we are pulling onto the grid as quickly as we can, and we might come on to Clean Power 2030, the mission that the Secretary of State brought in, allows us to be less exposed to those fossil fuel prices. We looked already, and again I give credit to the last government because their investment, the fact that we have got so much wind on our system, means that the prices are less than they were. We were protecting and insulating. We want to do more of that, which again is a bit baffling as to why people don’t support what A) they did and B) when it’s coming to fruition. But humans can be a little baffling at times, can’t they, David?
David Roberts
We don’t get any of that in the US. I’m not sure what you’re talking about, we’re approaching things rationally over here. The seventh carbon budget was just released yesterday. We’re talking on June 3rd. It was released on June 2nd. It’s about the period from 2038 to 2042. It would represent an 87% cut from 1990 levels. This is what the Climate Change Committee recommended. It is a statement of ambition, it is a statement that you are staying on course.
But the same Climate Change Committee also says that around 39% of the cuts needed to hit the 2030 target, which is much closer, are at risk because the grid connection queues are clogged, supply chains are backed up, and most of all you don’t have the transmission you need. There’s lots of on-the-ground local public opposition to building new transmission. It seems like if you want investors and others to put credibility in that long-term target, what are you going to do to make sure you hit the short-term target, the 2030 target, especially since you’re so far behind on transmission and transmission just takes a long time to build? How are you getting back on track for 2030?
Katie White
The Climate Change Act, which we brought in in 2008, is for those five-yearly budgets. We are currently in carbon budget four and we set yesterday for carbon budget seven. We can have that long-term trajectory for a couple of reasons. One, because it meets the climate change challenge, which is what we’re suffering today is what happened from our grandparents and their grandparents. What we’re laying down today is affecting our grandchildren. It meets that, we used to call it the “not in my term of office” challenge, which is “why would I care as a politician if it’s not going to affect my term of office?” You need to create an incentive structure to do that.
That was the point of the Climate Change Act. It was also stating legal ambition, but without a straitjacket. The 2030 target is actually beyond. We met carbon budget 1, 2, 3. We’re in carbon budget 4. The Clean Power 2030 mission is not a legally binding target. That is part of a way to accelerate our mission, which will help meet those budgets. It was something that came in with the Labour government and the Secretary of State wanted to have ambition and be really clear because he cares about the things we talk about: energy security, bills, and climate change at the same time.
It was a case of how do you manage each of those? We’ve done a few things. Day two of us being in office, he scrapped the onshore wind ban. That was gone. There was a backlog of things on his desk in terms of planning decisions, which he’s just gone through. Yay or nay, let’s move them on. He set up a control mission with a brilliant guy called Chris Stark, who has mission control of this and he looks up everything that is going on. As you say, we had this problem with the grid queue and with the connections where property speculators were putting projects online which were just speculation, which were actually zombie projects, never going to work.
You could see how that had happened. It was just a fault in the system. Government had to intervene because the citizens need to make sure we’re getting that queue sorted. We’ve reordered the whole queue, took everybody out, which you can imagine not everybody was thrilled about. But we need to get the system working. That is our job. We’ve reordered the queue. Things are moving a lot faster. We can take advantage of that. We’ve got a planning bill that has gone through the House of Commons and we’re looking at whether we should do anything on top of that in terms of national infrastructure projects.
I don’t think anybody, whether they’re a supporter or not a supporter, would say that the Energy Secretary didn’t hit the ground running with, excuse the pun, a huge amount of energy for this agenda. We have been going at it to make sure that we are moving forward and getting things done on this. The Committee on Climate Change brilliantly, rightly comes back and marks our homework and says on different areas which bits we’re doing. In terms of the grid, you’re right. It’s a big challenge. We’re looking at big investments and also how we can manage that more effectively, whether it’s through AI or whether if there’s more battery-based systems, will that take some of the peak load and some of the demand off.
We’re open to all that, looking at all our options and Chris Stark, who’s been doing the 2030, is now looking at that, how we make sure that is delivered most effectively. Supply chains have been a challenge across the world. We know that since pre-Covid and at each level we’re moving this whole transition and people are always going, “there’s not enough this and there’s not enough that.” I do more visits than any other minister because I love going out and hearing from real people what they’re doing and what’s happening and also what’s their story, where’s the gaps?
I go to heat pump manufacturers and they’re saying, “I’ve got more capacity if demand goes up here, these are my extra lines.” I go to apprenticeships and they’re absolutely stacked out because they’ve got people who are wanting those jobs, the future. There are challenges. It’s great for them to point that out. That’s inevitable when we’ve got such a big systems change. I feel we’re totally on it and I’m really grateful for anybody pointing out any gaps in our plan because we want to fill them.
David Roberts
Let me briefly hit an issue that’s very hot in the US right now. Tony Blair recently came out with a big op-ed and a couple of interviews saying that Labour should scrap the net zero goal, etc. I think he was roundly mocked for that.
One of the reasons he was saying that is he’s now very big into AI and he’s part of a group of companies and corporations and a lot of big investors who want to build a lot of data centers in the UK. Of course, those data centers are massively power intensive. To the extent they’re sucking up power, that’s less power for everyone else. The more of those you put online, the more difficult it is going to be to hit that 2030 target. A lot of people just read that as “we should prefer data centers and AI over our 2030 target.” I wonder if you see any conflict between data centers and your short-term goals.
Katie White
There’s been a lot of commentary going on in the UK and in broad terms, I welcome the opportunity to have a great conversation about energy, the target, and there’s two targets. There’s a 2030 clean power and then we’ve got a 2050 net zero. I’ve been in this for a long time. Up until 10 years ago, I’d never even heard of net zero. It wasn’t even a term we were talking about. Where the real excitement is, is where’s the electrification, where’s the grid, what’s the demand, how do we manage this? Therefore, what’s the job and the investment opportunities?
The clean power transition, call it what you want. I think we’re getting caught up on something that is almost in Act 7 of our story when we’ve got all of these other bits to go at. I’m happy to have the conversation, it’s not really where the action is and it doesn’t mean to say that we don’t need investment in our energy system, be it you are climate skeptical or not, you want energy. I think they’re missing the point of having that argument.
I listened and Tony Blair is a great thinker, he’s a great strategic thinker and I enjoyed reading the article. I listened to one of his podcasts and he said, “we do need to meet net zero. I’m just not sure about the level of transition.” Is it 2048 or 2052? I’m going to crack on with what I’m doing today and it’s not going to make that much difference to me in terms of the transition.
On your wider point around the data centers. We want to be in the game on AI, 100%. The UK wants to be in the game on AI. We see it as a big opportunity in terms of productivity and you’re right, it’s a big energy demand. We’re lucky enough to have great scientists here and in the department we have Patrick Valance, who you might not know, but certainly in Covid here was one of our national rock star heroes because he led the science. I sat down with him and asked him about it and said, “AI, are you excited? Are you worried in the context of climate and energy?”
He said, “there’s as many opportunities in terms of AI using and helping us with the grid in terms of reduction as there is in terms of demand.” I’m definitely an optimist, but I do think we want to go in and see how can we support this industry. We now have much more capacity and capacity challenges because we’ve got a lot of overcapacity in some areas of the country. Is there a way of working those two things together to have a holistic energy system which allows us to stay on track for that clean energy?
Climate change is real, is happening and there are implications happening in the UK and overseas. We want to play our full role in that. At the same time, we want our economy to grow. I do think there is a way of managing that effectively. That’s the thing about the carbon budget, why it’s so great, is choices. It’s the same with a fiscal budget.
A politician or any person could find any which way of things they want to spend money on. Of course they can. It’s about choices, isn’t it? You make those choices and if you’re going to go big on one thing, then you’ve got to squeeze back on the other. It just allows you to have a sensible, practical way to do that.
David Roberts
Let’s turn to another subject that a lot of people were pushing me to ask about. Labour’s plan has this sort of a national fund now which is going to invest a lot and put a lot of money and energy into nuclear power and hydrogen and carbon capture and sequestration. There are a lot of people in my world who view all of those as very expensive, very slow distractions.
There’s some recent experience in the UK that would give them some evidence. The Sizewell C nuclear reactor ended up costing double what you thought it would. The SMRs that you’re ordering are, best case scenario, coming in mid-2030s. The hydrogen for heating thing has kind of fallen apart. Those pilots kind of fell apart. I don’t think anybody’s still pursuing that. CCS, there’s not really any up and running. If you’re behind and if you need short-term fast reductions in cost and in emissions, why not reorient toward the things that move quickly, which is mostly electrification and batteries? Why are you still chasing these white whales, I guess is the non-flattering way to put it?
Katie White
Let’s take each one because they’re very different, aren’t they? They’re very different entities. I am genuinely excited about our nuclear program. We have a problem in this country in terms of building things on time and on budget. We have a problem with that.
David Roberts
I can’t relate. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Katie White
That is something that our countries need to get a lot better at because there are places that can build things much more effectively and for various different reasons. We could do a whole other podcast on this. We’re not great at building things on time and on budget and making choices that are fiscally driven for the best return on our investment. That is a separate thing and we definitely need to be concerned about that and I am concerned about that.
However, I think our nuclear industry is something I am excited that we are investing in because we need baseload and it does capacity in a way that our renewables doesn’t do capacity and we want to have that diversification of our energy system, but it gives us that baseload. We have some technology and capability that nobody else has, which is why we’re working with the US. I’m very keen to take the competitive advantage angle here. I’m not ashamed to say I want Britain to do well out of this. I want us to look at where we can do best and invest in that capability and double down on it. That’s good for our country, for our economy.
Nuclear is an area where we do have capacity and capability that I think we should be investing in. The SMR project is one of those. You’re right, David, but it’s not that far in terms of we’re just talking about a budget 2042, 2038–2042. If that budget allows us that long-term framework. The only frustration in nuclear is that we haven’t cracked on with this sooner. The excitement around SMRs particularly and that baseload and having that is right.
Your wider point on should we be doing things quicker and on budget, 100%, and that should be trialed through the SMR. We’re excited to work with Rolls Royce as our chosen company for the first one, but we’re working with other countries across Europe on how we can work together on this in terms of supply chains and how we make that as effective as possible for everybody. I think the nuclear story is absolutely the right one and we need to make sure we do that safely, almost for economic reasons as well as for energy reasons and for our capability.
David Roberts
What about hydrogen? There’s a lot of people, and I’m sure you’ve heard from them, who think that the whole hydrogen thing is a dead end. There’s still lots of money in the budget for it. Do you still have hopes for hydrogen?
Katie White
We’re about to publish a hydrogen strategy, so I shouldn’t really talk. There is more to come on hydrogen from the UK and where we see the best role for hydrogen, in terms of making sure we are investing wisely. We’ve got a Treasury that is very keen to make sure, understandably, that every one of our pounds is invested wisely. I think there are some opportunities and particularly we’ve also invested in communities, as it will come on CCS, where could hydrogen fill the gap that other technologies couldn’t do? We will keep each of this and that’s why we also have the long-term plan, which allows us to see how each of these things are performing and how much we invest and where the support is needed, etc.
CCS again is, the Committee on Climate Change would say to us each scenario requires CCS, but also we do have a geological capacity because we’ve used a lot of our North Sea oil and gas. We have that geological capacity that if we can crack it and make it work at commercial scale, it does look like we are going to have to look for options like that in the longer term. We will always keep things under review, but at the moment we think those are the right choices.
David Roberts
Let’s talk about what is arguably one of the most difficult. This is very much in your brief and one of the most difficult nuts to crack in the whole decarbonization thing. I’ve done a million pods on people’s various frustrations and difficulties, which is the retrofitting existing homes. That just turns out to be quite a riddle for everyone, especially in the UK, because I think heat pumps at this point have like 1% penetration. It’s almost all gas boilers.
Right now it’s cheaper, just straight up cheaper to heat your home in the UK with gas than it is a heat pump. It’s like a 4 to 1 ratio. You have the difficulty of just the fact that all these residences and homes, it’s just a high touch, home by home. It’s very difficult. You have to deal with every homeowner, every homeowner has very strong feelings about their home, and then you have this cost imbalance. This is just a difficult thing. I’m curious how you’re thinking about that part of your brief?
Katie White
I was in Sweden a few months ago and the Swedes, a much colder country than Britain, and I think they’ve got 70% of their homes have got heat pumps. I said to the minister, “how on earth did you do it? How did you switch everyone?” This guy, very straightforward, direct, said, “it was in the 1973 oil crisis and my grandmother came home and said, ‘that’s it. We will never use another drop of oil on heating again.’” As if the whole country just switched. I love that level of rationality.
David Roberts
That level of rationality we can all envy.
Katie White
I know. I was like, flipping it, as you say. People are like, “hold on a second, it’s going to be a bit of a mess.” We definitely haven’t had that level of rationality to shift towards it. We are looking at a lot. We’ve done lots of things in terms of heat pumps and there is more to do.
As it stands at the moment, given we are in the Middle East crisis, there are a lot of people looking and you’ll see our EV sales have gone up, solar panel sales have gone up. People are starting to ask about batteries and in terms of heat pumps as well, slightly less sexy than an EV probably, but still people are starting to go, “hold on a second, how do I do this?” Once you’ve started on that, you can move forward. We’ve got a boiler upgrade scheme so we’re trying to incentivize people to do that.
A lot of this is around misinformation and then also hitting some kind of tipping point. In terms of the misinformation, there was lots of things going around. “Does it really work? Will I get a hot bath?” Every time I was like, “I assure you, you get a very hot bath.” It’s things like that that people care about. At the end of the day, it’s their home, as you say, it’s their personal space and they want to make sure that they’re going to feel comfortable. A lot of what we’re moving towards should be an upgraded experience.
That’s what consumers want on a day-to-day basis. We can’t deny as humans that is what we want. We want an upgraded experience. If you think your house is going to feel, yes, cheaper is great but if it’s going to feel better as well, that’s even better. It’s got to be that twin thing and then, a bit like solar panels and EVs, the more people have them and the more your neighbors have got them, the more you have this cascade effect.
We were reflecting as we’ve done carbon budget seven that when we introduced the act in 2008 we had 156 electric vehicles on UK roads, like 1, 5, 6. Now we’ve got over 2 million. We’ve got figures like that on offshore wind and on solar. The shift that happens over that time. We want to do everything we can to try and get it to be easier for people to do it, encouraging people to do it. Some of this is going to be a case of other actors within society and neighbors doing it.
I was talking to someone today from the industry and they’re in touch with their customers all the time. I said, “where are your blockages?” They said, “at the moment, unless every single room can be heated to a perfect temperature, then people are saying, ‘oh, my heat pump’s not for you.’” Whereas actually the status quo is there’s not that expectation for gas.
The other thing, and David, you might have more of this, I was talking to someone the other day, people saying in the States there’s been a lot of shift because people don’t want methane within their homes. There’s that shift as well, that people are moving for other reasons because they don’t want methane in their homes. We’ve done our future home standards, so we’re looking as well. I think that’s a big opportunity for us of how to make sure that new homes are built in the right place. Because we’ve, when we lowered our future homes on.
David Roberts
Labour did have in place a mandate that no new boilers could be installed even in existing homes and they dialed back on that mandate. Clearly there’s some political pressure around all this. There’s some adjustments being made.
Katie White
We’ve got to make sure we’re meeting people where we’re at. We’re trying to encourage everybody because it’s an upgraded experience and it’s good for the UK for all the reasons I’ve said: price, energy security, and climate. At the same time, Brits, probably the same way as Americans, do not want to be forced to do anything. We’re trying to take a carrot approach as opposed to a stick.
David Roberts
Another big part of your brief is what’s called local net zero, which is a lot of these decarbonization dynamics and things that need to happen play out at the local level, at the local council level and housing and transportation waste. But it requires money to do this kind of thing. Local councils are legendarily at the moment quite broke. If they’re going to be prioritizing things, they’re going to prioritize the basic necessities above these more long-term things.
One question is where does the money for these local councils to do local action come from? The second question is a bunch of these local councils have been taken over by Reform and Reform people are just like, “we don’t care about the mandates, we don’t care. We’re dismantling our targets, we’re rescinding these climate emergency declarations.” Trying to deliver big decarbonization through a local level that is one, broke, and two, in many areas occupied by your opponents. How does that work? How are you navigating these local struggles? What are you telling local people who are just telling you, “we don’t have the money to do this”?
Katie White
I don’t think it’s quite as bleak as that. You’re absolutely right that local authorities had a 90% reduction in places under the last government. A lot of them were hollowed out and services. My council, where I’m from, was running a deficit and it’s the first time ever they’ve not had to make cuts this year because we have done the biggest settlement they’ve had in 15 years. We’re starting to build that back up. We are starting to reinvest because we see the local councils are hugely important at the front line and actually the places where we can get a lot of this done are in responsible social housing, some of the poorest people within our communities.
We’ve already started to replenish that money. There’s no magic wand, it will take time and there is a lot of investment needs to happen: roads, houses, schools, hospitals, etc. We are also working a lot more with mayors and we’ll come on to the mayors of different colors. We’re working with mayors who are looking at that much more strategically. It’s really interesting because some of them have managed to go a lot further because they’re working on bigger areas, but still managed to have that accessibility. They’ve managed and they are managing and we’re looking at actually they’ve got bigger low carbon funds.
How can they work together to get economies of scale? Is it that they can be doing local heat networks, those elements that are happening across Northern England? We’ve got Great British Energy, which we’ve introduced and that is doing investments in schools and hospitals. The other thing it’s doing is people can apply for local community energy and you can come together as a cricket club or whatever and say, “we want to have a wind turbine and we’re all going to invest and we get the money back” That is open now. People are applying.
In terms of people owning their own energy, it is a real game changer. You then asked about, “if you’re going to climate skeptics, you might get this vibe.” I am a pretty positive person and I look for where we have things in common. I’m not really bothered about statements, things that people are signing up to, it’s sort of helpful, but it’s sort of virtue signaling in some way. It’s not going to change what actually happens on the ground.
What I’ve seen is, it’s interesting in Hull, in East Yorkshire, we’ve got a Reform mayor and they’re very much like, “I don’t want this climate emergency statement and I don’t want that net zero thing, but I do want all these wind turbines and jobs that are behind me because that’s massive investment.” By the way, I was at a factory this week, a wind turbine factory. I was at Siemens Gamesa and Orsted and they had, I think, 75% of their jobs within 45 minutes of the factory. They’re local people.It’s not just people coming in, it’s local people’s jobs. All of a sudden you’re not going to rip that out.
I actually think, and as I say, we go back to, most people agree on electrification, most people agree on that. We have to be clear about why this is the right choice. We’re not doing this because we want to make some statement. We’re doing this because it’s the right thing for our country. It’s the right thing for the world as well, but it’s the right thing for our country in terms of our consumer bills, in terms of energy security, and in terms of the planet in the longer term.
David Roberts
You talk about people owning their own energy, local energy. You have this public participation program called Energizing Britain. You’ve said we’re only going to succeed in this larger effort if we bring people along. We need people to be involved and engaged and people to play a role. This usually takes the form of what’s called distributed energy, rooftop solar panels, batteries, etc. This is a real bright light in Australia, for instance, they get a huge amount of their energy from that now and it is bringing, people are participating, it’s bringing people along.
As I was looking at your larger plans, it looks like most of the flexibility, the grid flexibility you’re looking into is coming from these big grid-scale batteries. I don’t see any household batteries or targets or anything like that. It seems like the distributed energy piece is a little bit of an add-on and not a center of focus. It kind of looks like you’re mostly leaving that up to Octopus, which is doing amazing things. I’m just, I wonder about that. Why is there not a greater focus on trying to get batteries and solar panels and microgrids, all these things that are bottom up, local first, in part as a solution for the previous problem?
Katie White
It’s great and there’s so much to that and you’re getting me excited, David, because there’s so many different bits to this and this is a bit where you’re like, this is such a great area, isn’t it? There’s so many different elements and so many different ways and also so many different actors involved in this transition. There is a role for everybody if they want it. The public participation plan was actually a recommendation of the Climate Change Committee who said, “if you want people to come with you, you need to work with them.”
When I came into this job I was like, “what are we doing? What are we actually doing? Just talking to people?” I don’t want to sit in a room and just talk. I like to talk but I want to get something done. People don’t really want to listen to politicians all the time. There might be some engaged, but sadly we’re not the most trusted voices. I think we come after estate agents in the UK.
It was a case of we ended up meeting all over the country, these incredible people who were doing amazing things. A lot of it is shining a light on those people. I’m really interested in actually practically what people can be doing and what is the best way of doing that and what is the way of making people feel involved but also their practical outcome of reducing their bills and then hopefully the same thing but might be different.
It’s almost like — what’s the gateway drug for people to get involved into this? I’ve had one side, people say to me that batteries are the gateway drug for people to get involved. I was like, I don’t know whether if you look at the different demographics it’s different sorts of, is this a dad thing, are they into the batteries?
Then I’ve also been told that it’s EVs is the way in to have that gateway drug. We are looking at all of that because in a way the complexity and the beauty of this system with all different areas is exciting to me but it can also be confusing and overwhelming for individuals. Where do I start here? It’s how to make sure it’s really clear that people can get involved either as an individual getting an EV and ultimately we’ve got a vehicle-to-grid infrastructure that will help in taking off some of those pieces or we’re doing this plug-in solar panel. That would be another thing people can do for themselves. They also might want to get involved in a community project as we just said, through this power plan which is backed up by Great British Energy. They will be able to do that.
We’re not opposed, we’re trying to go as a government with all this array of opportunity, where do we need to focus our time and do that? We’re trying to make sure we make those right choices. We’ve not got as much space as Australia, but we’re certainly not opposed to any of that. I’m really lucky to work with a great team and they are intellectually curious about how any of this can work and how in different areas and where there might be microgrids.
At the moment we do have a big challenge with our grid and that is not least because we’ve got a lot of offshore wind up in Scotland and we want to be able to use that in different places. We do need to think, and the context when it changes, like you say about AI, how do we use that most effectively, how do we make sure it’s getting to the place, how do we make sure we’re remunerating that and if there’s opportunities, like with a lot more EVs on the road that makes different opportunities, with AI, that makes different opportunities. Again, how do you bring people with you? Yes, great, if we’ve got some big players in the market who are doing fantastic things, but how are we bringing communities on and giving them space to thrive?
One of my first meetings here was with an MP in the Scottish Isles who was saying, “look, they’ve got a massive big wind farm project, but they’ve got a really tiny community wind farm that can’t get onto the grid. If you don’t let us have this little bit, they’re not going to support this.” Sometimes you’ve got to make sure that you’re listening because that tiny connection might not make a massive impact in terms of prices and the planet, but it might make in terms of how people feel and their pride and that’s important.
David Roberts
Just before we leave this, I’m curious, you said that there’s some public skepticism about heat pumps, in part fueled by some misinformation. The UK is not the sunniest place in Europe. I’m curious what people think about rooftop solar and if that is catching on and whether it works, whether it’s a good investment in the UK and what the public thinks about that. As you say, these things tend to be viral, they tend to be peer to peer. You tend to see your neighbor doing it and then you do it. There have been studies about this, particularly about rooftop solar, about it being viral in that way. I’m curious if that’s happening with rooftop solar in particular. What is the public mood around rooftop solar, I would say?
Katie White
David, the public mood around rooftop solar is really positive, really positive and it is catching on. Absolutely, you get it at all times. Of course when it’s super sunny, but you can pretty much, it’s only a percentage off when it’s cloudy, you’re still getting a lot of the energy. I was at a school the other week, we were on their rooftop and all of the kids were up and it was in Oldham on the west coast, which is a pretty rainy place.
The weather kept changing and they were looking at, monitoring the impact of that inside, which was a great educational thing as well. They’d taken primarily a lot off their bills, which was great. There’s definitely a lot of support. We’ve moved as well with Great British Energy. We’re doing investments in hospital car parks. I’ve got one in my hospital car park in my constituency. It’s great because everyone’s like, it’s just a no-brainer. A roof, everybody’s happy if there’s a roof on their car park and then you just plaster it with solar panels.At factories that we’ve got, plaster them with solar panels.
As the price of solar has fallen so much, it definitely makes sense and people are a lot more on board. We also had a policy, before I was in office, where it did have a start of investment when it was more expensive and you ended up having a lot of people get on board with it. We definitely had chunks and there is a lot more support for rooftop solar. I’m excited for when we get the plug-in solar for how many people get on board with that and how we can move that on. When you look at the companies who are involved, they’re giving great statistics that increase sales over the last few months and that’s great. I’m really on board with that.
David Roberts
Just to clarify, there’s a law now being discussed to legalize plug-in solar because you can’t currently do it. That’s under works because there’s like, I think there’s like 40 US states now where something like that is under discussion. We can expect that soon.
Katie White
Very soon, David. We are breathing down the necks of our officials because it’s such a great thing. I was in Germany and you’re literally walking off the street and you just buy a thing. I was like, “can I carry this out?” It’s a bit like carrying out a mirror, you don’t want to, you want to go steady. It’s not like you’ve got to arrange a delivery or anything. You could literally go pick it up, take it in the back of your van or your car or whatever and plug it in. It’s obviously been happening in loads of other countries. We have health and safety regulation like everybody and we want to make sure that’s right. We are very keen that we get that green light so that people can start investing. My number one concern is making sure that we’re protecting consumers in the run up to next winter.
David Roberts
Another part of your brief is climate diplomacy. The current Labour government is saying, “we’re back as an international climate leader, as a good partner.” You’ve got these pledges, these climate budgets going far out now. You’re playing a productive role in the COPs again. One question is how are, and this is the irony of someone from the US asking this question, believe me, I’m intensely aware of it. How are your international partners supposed to be able to trust that you are in it for the long term when you’ve got the other party saying, “if we get power, we’re going to scrap all this”?
All of international climate diplomacy depends on these long-term commitments and they all depend on staying steady in the long term, being able to trust one another, that we’re in it for the long term. When you’ve got this political division at home and when, if the wrong party gets in power, they might scrap the whole thing. As we’ve seen here at home, no one trusts the US anymore. On the international stage, no one trusts that the US is in it for the long term anymore because we’ve got this massive swing back and forth in politics that makes long-term commitments almost impossible here.It looks worryingly like the UK is entering a similar situation. How do you think about that aspect of international leadership and engagement?
Katie White
There is a certain amount of volatility within the world, within political parties, within societies, across the whole world. That presents a number of challenges for everybody. That’s not to say that’s you or I or this particular. We have a lot of volatility going on and social media, there are multiple layers to what that is, our attention, our frustration, there are multiple as to what’s going on with that. I hold that, and I’m not going to deny the challenge of volatility.
However, I started this off and I’ve been back to this theme again, that a lot of the basis of this, the grounding, the core of this makes long-term economic sense. If someone calls it a different label, I don’t really care. The long-term trend on electrification and on the shift to clean energy is pretty unstoppable and I’m really keen to rebuild that consensus. The Internet allows people to say something outrageous and get loads of attention and that is not representative of the vast majority. Public support for this agenda is huge. When we introduced the Climate Change Act in 2008, we had the support of the Confederation of British Industry, all of the church, and the Conservative Party.
We’ve still got the support of the Confederation of British Industry, the church, and actually I think the faith leaders, by the way, have and will play a really important role. A lot of the Conservatives, I speak to a lot of them, some of them don’t want to come out as much, which I understand, but behind the scenes, Theresa May, ex-Prime Minister, Lord Deben who is head of the Climate Change Committee, there’s a lot of esteemed Conservative ex-ministers, ex-Prime Ministers who are saying, “this is really important and this is part of our legacy,” and they would make a different argument, a different political argument that small-c Conservative is around conserving the planet.
In fact, there are amazing quotes from Margaret Thatcher, who talks about climate change being, she was actually really progressive on this. If you believe in science, if you believe in growth, if you believe in the economy, these aren’t left-wing ideology things, they’re just sensible common sense. I don’t want to be blind to the fact that volatility isn’t helpful. I think the system that we have created and the geology in the UK means that the transition to a clean economy is pretty inevitable. I’d love that to go as fast as possible because I think it’s the best thing for bills, security, and the planet.
I hope that anybody who comes after me at any point will follow on that path because when you get into the nuts and bolts of it, it’s the best decision for our country. It’s great to be back on the international stage and having those conversations and working with people who want to practically make progress. We are in a different era but it’s great to be working and we’re working closely with Spain and you look at their deployment of renewables and their growth rates. For all the people who were in the treasuries —
David Roberts
10 years ago, I heard so much skepticism about Spain’s direction. Five years, 10 years ago, and wow, look at their bets, their bets are paying off. It’s a real illustration.
Katie White
Exactly. I don’t want to be blinded to the challenges. There are challenges. But in terms of a win-win, in terms of an exciting transition, in terms of regenerating our countries, our economies, our communities, this is a brilliant way to do it.
David Roberts
I’ll tee up a final question and I know you’re a positive person so I suspect I know how you’re going to answer this. One thing that’s galvanizing all this, making everybody at least think about this, putting this on the front burner in political news is the Iran war. This misbegotten, ill-considered war that our country has started that is sending the price of gas and oil up. It is forcing a lot of decisions.
You could see the UK going two different ways. One way is, “we need to double down on the transition, transition faster, do all the things we were saying we want to do even faster and more.” The other side is saying, “this shows that we need to drill in the North Sea more, we need to dig up more of our own oil, we need to import more gas, we need to secure more fossil fuels.” Which way do you think that’s going to fall, which way do you think that’s going to play out in the public mind and in politicians’ minds?
Katie White
It’s been a big discussion. Oil and gas has played an important role. It will continue because at the moment we don’t have replacement for some things in terms of oil and gas. It will continue to play an important role going forward. What we actually did was we issued these tie-backs, so we’ve got these tie-back licenses. It allows further exploration within the existing well. You’re really making the most of it.
People want to make it a binary thing of “you’re against oil and gas or you’re for electricity.” We want it all in that, we want a tie-back, we’ve said we want to do that, but at the same time there is a declining basin in the North Sea. I can’t say specifically around those planning decisions that got quashed because it’s a live thing and we have specific legal requirements. I can’t talk about those requirements, but what I’ll say is we’ve always said it will play a role, but electrification is where the big opportunity is because that’s going to take over so much more of our energy economy. The fossil fuel price is not going to change the fossil fuel price.
My number one issue is making sure that this winter we’re protecting consumers. That’s our number one issue and that’s not going to make any difference because we’re on the international market.
David Roberts
Can I stop you there? This is to me as someone who is immersed in energy world just an obvious glaring fact that seems peculiarly to not penetrate the public dialogue, which is no matter how much you drill in the North Sea, it doesn’t matter how much oil you do. You’re not going to affect the global price. It’s a global market. The global price of oil is going to be what it’s going to be. You’re not going to bring down your own oil prices by drilling in your own country. That’s just physics. Yet you cannot get that information out. People seem weirdly resistant to acknowledging that.
Katie White
You’re right. If you find a way. I had a really good conversation. They were like, “but hold on a second. Wouldn’t it be,” with somebody the other day. Then it was like, 20 minutes in they’re like, “all right, I see.” I was like, “but they’re not going to sell it to us at a cheaper price. Why would they? They could sell it to somebody else. Why would they sell it for cheaper?”
It’s not that we have a state-owned energy company. We don’t. We are working on a great potential, but we don’t own that. If that would have been, we would have been in a different position, but we’re not in that position. The geology is, in the long term, the most important thing is electrification. It will form part of our mix. They’re a really important community and where we’re really lucky is if you go around any wind turbine, wind farm in the UK, you pretty much always hear a Scottish accent, which is because they have come from Aberdeen and from our oil and gas.
We’re working really hard on that transition in terms of jobs and skills. That is a lot of a similar. We are grateful that we have that expertise and we need to make sure we support it over to the new industries, which in large part is, as I say, we are hearing it and happening, but we need to make sure we do that.
David Roberts
If you want to just go out on — I forgot this. Also, alongside the new carbon budget, this report came out about the effect of net zero on jobs and the economy and everything. Was that also the Climate Change Committee that produced that report? I’m not sure who produced that report, but it’s a big report. This gets into the jobs and training stuff. Maybe if you just want to take us out with a little touch on that report.
Katie White
The Confederation of British Industry, which I talked about, which represents lots of business in the UK, commissioned a report on what jobs were attached to the net zero economy. Call it green, call it whatever you want. They were saying in the UK that’s around a million jobs now. In the US those numbers are higher, but given our population that’s a pretty significant amount of jobs and they say about a third directly and two thirds through supply chain. Those are a significant number of jobs as well as, and these jobs are also really well paid, they’re way above the competition for getting into these industries now is great.
Each company I’ve been to, the enthusiasm you get and also the fact that people are just not leaving, you can see that it’s their great job, well-paid jobs, and often in communities like the one I was in this week in Hull in East Yorkshire, where they haven’t had as many economic opportunities over the last few decades. On that, have a read, it’s great.
David Roberts
All right, I will leave you there. I’ll let you go catch your train. Thank you so much for doing this. It’s been really fascinating.
Katie White
It’s great to talk to you. I really enjoyed it. Thank you, David.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes me and my guests sound smart every week. It is all supported entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf, leaving a nice review, telling a friend about Volts, or all three. Thanks so much and I’ll see you next time.
