Should The State Take Risks Private Capital Won't? - GB Energy

I'm your host, Ed Porter. Welcome back to transmission. A solar array next to a hospital near Hull. Saves it about £1 million a year. Enough to fund more than 50 nurses. That saving sat there for years. Unbuilt until today. GB energy calls itself an activist investor chasing down the frontiers. Private capital moves too slowly on deepwater wind. Long duration storage. Solar on hospitals and schools. So what happens when a state backed company starts making the bets that private money won't make first? Our guest today is Dan McGrail, CEO of GB energy. He's the one setting the strategy on how consumers see the biggest benefit from this newly formed entity. If you have any questions about the build out of batteries, solar or wind in GB or Europe. That's what Co is for. Head to Modo Energy. Com to try now for free. Let's jump in. Hello Dan welcome to transmission. Thank you for having me. It's lovely to be in an air conditioned studio on a day of this, uh, impossible heat. So, yeah. We're in the second. Heat wave of the British summer, and the power prices in this one aren't quite so exotic as what we had in the first one. So. Thankfully, thankfully. Um, okay, let's get straight into it. So what is one thing that everyone gets wrong about GB energy? I don't think it's wrong that everyone gets wrong, but it's one of the common themes is that, you know, GB energy is a is an energy company and our aspiration is to build an energy company in the model of other European state owned energy companies. So like an EDF. Like yeah, or Orsted or Vattenfall or so on and so forth, you know, and um, so those are our long term aspirations. And sometimes people approaches in the thought of, you know, can we that we're a government department and, you know, yes, we're owned by the government, we're owned by and DESNZ is our shareholder. So we're very closely engaged with the whole world of energy policy. Um, but we are a company and it's independently managed and operated in the interests of our shareholder, who is ultimately the British public. So, um, you know, I kind of want to make sure that people understand in the long run that we, you know, are the business we're building is in the mould in the vision of having a British energy champion in the way that the Danes, the Norwegians, the Swedes, the French have equivalent organisations so. And so, perhaps reading between the lines of that, is that more saying that as a company, there's that commercial focus on the projects that you would engage in rather than how, say, designers might look at a market, designers might look at a market and say, we need to sponsor this very early stage project because it's it needs development money and it needs sort of a high risk attitude. But you would say in the same way that an EDF or a Vattenfall might say, they'd say, well, look, does it does it make sense for our investment committee to do this? Yeah. And so we operate in exactly that way. We have an investment committee. But we you know, I do think there's the one thing that a publicly owned energy company has differently is a duty and a responsibility to identify the frontiers where you're trying to move the energy market towards. And, you know, the way I kind of tend to encapsulate this is, um, where do we have high levels of national ambition, whether that's in, you know, the deployment of energy projects or whether it's in the technologies that underpin them. But the private capital isn't moving as freely or as quickly as we'd like it to. And that takes you down certain avenues. And when the way we developed our strategy and the way we thought about it, it was very much along the lines of, okay, yes, being additional to the energy market matters, but in the long run, we hope that that additionality in certain fields of technology will lead you into a space of sort of leadership. So if you take all that as an example, you know, this started yes. There is an oil and gas company. There's this huge corporate transformation to offshore wind. And in doing so built like really deep competence and knowhow and became a leader in offshore wind to the extent that, yes, they are publicly owned, but they're publicly owned. And the market leader and that's sort of my hypothesis, is that you have to choose areas where you can build competence and ultimately differentiation in the long run in that aspiration of building an energy champion. So it's not just that you're sort of naturally drawn to the frontiers, but there is this if you if you commercially want to try and get ahead, you need to think not just to do the same thing that all the other companies are already doing. You're trying to find the niche in the edge where you think that there's not quite so much activity today, and you can build up that expertise, and then in the long run, that would allow you to then hold a much bigger position. Yeah. And also, you know, you've got to be careful not to crowd out private capital because, you know, there are areas where the energy market is doing, you know, superb work. And if you just look at what's been done in this country over the last, you know, decade or so in terms of like moving generation capacity, particular on the generation side, I think, you know, there's lots of areas where the, you know, there have been sort of slower progress. But on the generation side, you know, that transformation of the energy system towards a much more renewables heavy system, the exit of coal that has been driven by policy and it's been driven by private innovation and private capital. Um, so we clearly don't want to go into spaces that just crowd that out. You know, that's that's working. Well, we want to go into the spaces where we're actually trying to do the converse. We're trying to crowd it in. So an example of that is a no. That will come on to storage later. But if you, you know, maybe just to stay with generation for a second if you take off your wind, we've done a really good job in Britain of sort of building out the pipeline. But we're getting to the point where, you know, we need to build offshore wind in deeper and deeper water. And that frontier hasn't been crossed yet. And there are companies that are willing to take that, but they kind of need the patient activist investment of a GB energy to help, you know, build that pipeline into the future and sort of carry the confidence across that frontier. So, you know, that's why we kind of very early in our development and we sort of that's that's making investment in that space. And we continue to to explore it and other areas like long duration energy storage where, you know, I think nobody's really cracked deploying Aldi's at scale. So, you know, that's a clearly an area where we think, yes, there's a role for an activist, patient investor. Um, but at the same time, whilst we're doing that work, we can build knowledge and capability along the way. Yeah. I think, uh, the sort of activist investor is a nice way of describing it. When you, when you sort of originally said, you know, we're a government owned company, but we are sort of commercial in nature. And then you went to say, well, if all of these sort of commercial companies are already doing this thing, so we're going to go and do something else, I felt. Oh, that's. Like if I, if I look at the other sort of national energy companies, they don't really do that. Actually. Lots of them crowd around each other doing the same thing. They change, they chase sort of safe projects. But as you're saying, if you describe yourself as that activist investor, then you with with the sort of slightly longer term view, then that to me explains why you're not doing exactly the same thing as others. And you might be looking for things like floating wind. Yeah, maybe. Let's follow through. Floating wind. I know wind your background as well, which is a nice place to be. Where is floating wind today in terms of its development in GB and how did GB energy see it? How are you getting involved? Well, we're. The first thing we've tried to do is change the narrative from being just about floating wind to be about deep water. We talk about deep water a lot because there's a technology, um, maturity and convergence that needs to happen in that space. And what we've done in Britain, in this, in this world is obviously we've exploited very well the shallower sea. Yeah. We've even pushed the frontier of what we think shallow is into sort of working into deeper and deeper territories, but would probably push the, the boundary of what's possible with, with a conventional fixed bottom wind, you know, a monocle. Or a monocle. Or a jacket, as the industry calls it, you know, which is basically, as you say, like a kind of modular steel structure. So you get to a point where you have to find different ways to to do this. And, you know, we see, you know, what we've what we've done as a country is we've leased, um, in Scotland and in the Celtic Sea, Significant parts of the seabed for development of of these deeper water projects that was done to a certain extent with quite a lot of fanfare and optimism. I think at a time in history, 2021 was ScotWind, where economic conditions were quite benign. You know, in a post-pandemic world, you know, interest rates were low. Geopolitical situation was relatively, you know, maybe benign is the wrong word. But, you know, we were kind of coming out of the pandemic, maybe with a degree of, um, sort of optimism for, for growth. And then Ukraine happened and we saw inflation and supply chains kind of moved the economic dial on nascent technology of various different types, in fact, energy technology of all types, um, particularly because there's a big, you know, the cost of steel went up, the cost of aluminium, the cost of nickel, you know, all of these kind of key components that we need to build energy infrastructure. And critically, the cost of capital. And the cost of capital went up. You know, and that's really crucial. Now does the world does. Does our need for those technologies fall away? No. We need you know, we're energy transition is you know, is ongoing is going to continue for quite some time. And electrification of the economy, you know, the kind of calls for all sorts of new technologies to be brought about. But that's an area where I think of where Frank, you know, it's not made the progress that we want. And it's because of those externalities. So what we, you know, then kind of conclude is, you know, some injection of confidence that this is important in the long run. And I often say about deepwater wind and floating, what have you is that you you need to have real faith in the destination in order to set off on the journey. And the reason that is the case is because, you know, building these types of wind farms at scale requires big investment in port infrastructure, big fabrication facilities, a lot of investment in skills, and that's just to kind of get you on the runway. So, you know, you've got to have that kind of long term infrastructure thinking to be able to do it. And and that's why we felt it was a very clear role for us because, you know, we can see that we believe we have faith in the destination. But also I think we as a, you know, as a sectoral, you know, base body who, in other words, people who understand the market and the technology that we would be bringing, um, a clarity on not only what needs to happen, but also how it should be done to, to to the landscape. Well, let's follow this kind of thread through because I think it's a it's a it's a good example, right, to get straight into with this, with the kind of sense of sort of deeper offshore, offshore wind. Um, how well is it your role. So you talked about this kind of on shoring or making sure the ports are fit for purpose, and you have the kind of capability that sits around those sites. And I agree with you. Like if you're going to develop those projects, you have to have the capability within the country to enable supply chain, enable construction of these, um, of, of these floating, uh, wind turbines. But is it your role to do that as in as a, as a sort of a, an energy company backed by government or a government owned energy company? Should you be thinking about an investment in infrastructure like the ports, or is your role not to say, well, somebody else should think about the port and we should be thinking about the project itself. That's the floating offshore. And I think, you know, look, big infrastructure investments like ports. So so let me let me take a step back. Okay. Um, if I may. So we've, you know, we've embarked on a strategy which has kind of got sort of three pillars. And one thing that's overarching. And I'll come back to your question in a moment. But the three pillars of offshore and deepwater onshore in particular, focus on, you know, a couple of aspects. One is sort of elders. One is utilising public land more effectively and then local and community energy, very different, very discrete parts of a business. And that is long duration energy storage. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. I forgive me for the first, uh, sort of, of course, jargon uh, utilisation today. Um, and then right away across that is the subject of supply chain. And um, and we think supply chain is important for a number of reasons. One is for a resilience reason. Um, you know, I think increasingly there are areas where, you know, we need to sort of to, to to de-risk our, our future of energy transition, uh, and reduce dependency on, on, on other, other sources or other countries, but also because, look, you know, this is fundamentally one of the most interesting economic opportunities of our era. Um, we live in a time when, you know, the big things that are happening in the world are, you know, AI is a demographic change, urbanisation and an energy transition or, you know, climate related stuff. And I feel quite strongly that there needs to be prosperity that arises locally out of that. If you think about, um, the way that the energy system used to look, you know, a big coal fired power station or a big nuclear powered station, a power station would have a massive local impact and a massive local benefit, mostly in terms of jobs and renewables. Uh, is different in that regard because it has a big local impact, but it has a distributed benefit, and that is arguably one of the brakes on the energy transition is people feeling that they're not benefiting from hosting infrastructure in their community or. And that's why I think, you know, what people really care about isn't necessarily where their electricity comes from. Or, you know, the people switch their electricity, their light on in the morning or their plug in their electric car or whatever it might be. And the, you know, we ought to take it for granted. But what they do care about is whether their children have got employment opportunities or an apprenticeship or, you know, aspiration in their local area. So bringing it back to to your question about, about this, about wind, it's like, you know, you're right, there are other actors who are much better positioned to invest in things like ports. But what we want to do is unlock the things that go on them. Okay. The the fact the factories, the service companies, the technology companies that drive employment, you know, innovation and long term footprint. Because when you finish building the wind farms and we've done the energy transition. The legacy that I would like there to be afterwards is that we have built deep international know how that when those other when other countries around the world are going through their transition that they rely on engineering and technology and jobs that are here in Britain now that can't be across everything. It's going to be in areas where you are, you know, excellent, and you decide that you're going to be excellent. Um, but you can do that within many aspects of the energy transition. So again, within floating wind, we in Britain are excellent at subsea engineering. You know, we have done this through the oil and gas industry. We kind of pioneered offshore wind sorry, offshore oil and gas. We pioneered working in really deep water. Um, to the extent that almost, you know, any offshore oil and gas project in the world was probably engineered at least partially from Britain. So and my aspiration simplistically is that we end up in the same place with the renewables transition. And in the case in this case with deeper water, offshore wind. Yeah. I think it's uh, I think it's fascinating because it's kind of the, the, the competition between a company wanting to be commercial and then also this kind of longer term vision of jobs, which I'd say most other companies don't think about too much as a like top priority. Like, I probably they worry more about the sort of the bottom line before they worry about sort of the long term of, of jobs, uh, for the particular country they're based it. So that is different. I think there's also this, this concept that you're thinking about exporting skill sets. And when I look at the energy industry in GB, we have a lot of other national energy companies that have brought their expertise in to to GB. I mean, there's loads of examples. I mean maybe to leave physical stuff for a second. There are loads of examples of trading businesses where trading expertise from Europe also like plays in the GB market as well. Um, and so that clearly happens one way. I would be very excited to see GB exporting once again. Lots of its, um, infrastructure know how to other parts of the world. Uh, but I wonder and maybe this is kind of where we're going to get to on this. I wonder whether it's the role of a sort of a company that is trying to maximise profit to do that, or whether it's the role for like a government to try and do it. And you sit in this kind of like grey zone, which is why I think it's quite interesting. Yeah. I think the difference is when you use the word, you know, maximise profit. And I think there's the, you know, commercial and commercial instinct, um, doesn't necessarily need to lead you down the road of maximising stuff. It can lead you into the world of saying, okay. And I would argue, look, I used to I've spent most of my career in the private sector. I'm a very much a, you know, a private sector thinker. But I would say that the, the company that I started my career in. You know, I didn't join a company whose mission statement was all about maximising profit. So I joined a company whose mission statement was very much about, you know, um, impact and legacy. And, you know, I think that, you know, there were various different strap lines make real what matters or, you know, technology for every day and stuff like that. You know, you kind of have a purpose that goes beyond return. And that's what makes companies last a really long time. And the other thing I'd say is, look, and, you know, maybe the reason why things are get come in one way and not come the other is because there have been companies in, you know, in Sweden and Denmark and Norway who've had a purpose that goes beyond, you know, if it's just about return, then it's it. It leads you down certain roads. It's it leads you down the roads of maybe lower risk, or maybe it leads you down the road of, you know, taking more risk, but only doing so because you really want to maximise return. For us, we might take more risk because we want to maximise benefit, we want to maximise impact and the return matters. But it isn't. It isn't the. The reason, the reason is. Is something more. And that's what I think public ownership can deliver for people as opposed to just wholly private ownership. And I'm not saying it's either or. That's the thing. It's it's not either. Or it can be those two things can co-exist quite comfortably. I don't talk about public investment very much, but I do talk about public entrepreneurship. This is about us understanding how to share risk, how to work with the private sector together. Yeah. And and doing so with, with outcomes in mind and whether those outcomes are employment or they're about, you know, accelerating the transition or, you know, making sure that there's more specific regional outcomes. And we should talk about other areas of our strategy, but ultimately about making sure that, you know, there are transition opportunities for other industries. These are these can be these can all be comfortable missions that sit alongside each other and I'm. And I'm really. I'm next. I want to go to local energy and the role you're playing in local energy. Because I think that's really interesting. And it's kind of it's another part of that strategy. Leg. But before we go there, you mentioned just working alongside other private companies. So so how do you how do you get that right when you're working alongside other other private companies? Where is the um, are they sort of excited to see you on on projects together? Because it's like an equity injection type thing, or are they, um, are they sort of just trying to sound out exactly how GB Energy is going to function? What's the what's the right role that you play alongside private investment into these projects? So so look, I maybe again I'll take a step back to answer the question. When I was early in my career at Siemens, we spent some time developing a wind turbine factory, which I led in, in Hull now, um, and when I was developing that project, um, I took it to the board of the company, and the question from the board of company very reasonably was, well, what happens if the UK government changes its mind on offshore wind? What should we do? I think that's a question that any board responsibly would ask about building a business in a nation area. And the present. I one of the things that drew me to working for GB energy and leading this was the thought, the concept that actually if there had been a GB energy around when I was taking that project through approvals, I'd have been able to answer that question easier because I've been able to say, look, you know, the government is put in its or the, the, the British public are putting the stake in this and sharing the risk and the and the opportunity that comes from it. So I probably would have been able to deliver that project sooner because I'd have been able to answer that question quicker. And So. So I came into this job with a hypothesis that the market would like the idea of this to work alongside. And to my pleasant surprise, when I joined, when I started, I mean that GBG had received inbound inquiries of like north of 50GW, which for the energy, you know, sort of layperson, that's about the same amount of energy as the whole British energy system. At. The moment. Like I'll pick up. Their cons on. Yeah, exactly. So this was without cultivating the market. This was just unsolicited enquiries. And when you say inbound, that's people who were saying pitching a project to you and saying exactly, Dan, would you like to come along and invest in. And invest in it? So, you know, we had to unpick that and and work out okay. Where do we think the best places are for us to act? But as a, as a sort of and to your question, as a, um, confirmation of the interest of the market in having no GB energy participation. That's that was really strong sort of confirmation to me. So so yeah, so going back to that question that there was my question was how do you work alongside private capital, private investment. And you're saying it doesn't really matter. They just wanted to come and work with us straight away because they can see. It's not that I'm saying it doesn't really matter because there are things that matter to us now. That was when I started. Now I'm like, you know, a year in, we started to build it. We built a strategy. And the strategy is, you know, is a built around the three pillars that I mentioned. And, um, but but also, look, you know, there are times we are open minded to coming into projects at the development phase, for example, to work alongside and share the risk in development capital, because development capital is probably the riskiest part of it, of, of of projects. We're open minded to coming into projects at the investment decision point, um, during construction risk. Um, and we are open minded to taking ownership in assets in the long run. Now that is different depending on the various different technologies. Clearly an investment in a big offshore wind farm, for example, at uh, you know, into enduring operation is a much bigger ticket than than, you know, owning a, you know, a solar farm or a battery storage project or so on and so forth. Um, you know, so we have to be selective about how we use our capital in that regard. But but we are working with people at various different points of the value chain, where we think it really helps to, to to increase that confidence of the private sector. Okay. Thank you. That's, uh, and I did promise I was gonna get on to local energy, and I. And I do definitely still want to get there. I want to ask one more question first, which is you're very interested in supply chain, and you're very interested in enabling and the sort of activist and investment side, when I look at the energy market in GB. Um, I think one of the things that worries me the most is probably the sort of electrically qualified or EPC. So the companies that would construct some of these projects, I worry that we don't have enough people to do the work that we need to do. And I think it's really high risk. And my brain is kind of like as simple as it is. It's just saying, hey, look, could this is this something that GB energy could be involved in? Um, but I think from your from your question, your answer so far, I would say no because that's more of a sort of almost more of a government type initiative rather than a sort of. And this is always the first question. It's like when we're not we're a company, we're not a government department. And I think but but but to your point on skills and skills development, you know, there we are probably. So there are things that we should be exemplar in, in the skills landscape. We should make sure that we are driving, you know, apprenticeships, we should be supporting local development of skills and we should be where we are investing in supply chain. We should be using our influence to ensure employment standards are excellent, that, you know, if there's an opportunity for the role of trade unions, if that makes sense, you know. So there are, um, spaces where we can use our influence, um, as a publicly owned investor for, for good. Okay. Um, what I would say about the wider skills transition is I think I agree with you, at least conceptually, but I think when you get to start to break it down, and in my old role at renewable, the UK, we did a lot of work looking at the skills required to deliver just the offshore wind industry's needs. And when you, you know, you look at the big numbers and you go, oh crikey, there's a lot of people needed in offshore wind. The industry employs about 55,000 people today. About 100,000 are needed to deliver the sort of upper limits of the government's aspirations. Now, a lot of those numbers are not constrained skills. Um, and it should be framed more as opportunity. There's loads of opportunities for all sorts of different types of people from all sorts of different backgrounds. But there are some scarce skills and, you know, so electric, electrically qualified people, I think is a real national issue that goes beyond any one sector. But I think industries have a huge responsibility in solving that because they know better than anyone what they need. And so you should be exemplar in terms of how you're finding those people to join your projects. But it's not your responsibility. I think it's GB and skills is a you know, it's also a devolved issue. It's a very local issue. Um, and, and therefore it's more about being an active part of an ecosystem that solve this. And to your point on electrically qualified people, you know, there are a huge range of variations on that. We'll need people to install EV chargers, heat pumps, solar panels on roofs. Yeah. People understand how to install batteries. Electrification is just this huge national change. People who are used to working with internal combustion engines but need to work with batteries. People used to working with gas boilers need to work with heat pumps, you know. So you've got this kind of mechanical to electrical switch. And I think that that transcends energy automotive construction. And therefore that's an education issue, a skills issue which sits at a level, you know, beyond any one sector. But we all need to come together to work. So as a, as a fun question and maybe taking off a gaming hat for a second, if I was to ask you at age 16, if you can dial back the clock to when you were 16 or 22 coming out of university, and if you were in those shoes that people are today, like, where would you go in the energy sector? Where do you think your first job would be? Have you got the chance to choose again? Well, when I was 16, everyone was going off to work in oil and gas. So it was like, you know, but, um, but the world changed. And, um, so if I, if I was, you know, now it's a really good question. Look, I say to my children, maybe that's the better thing. You know, I say, I really try to encourage my children to think about engineering as a profession and technical skills and enjoy maths. Enjoy science. If I was a look back at myself at 16 and probably said, why didn't you listen in physics a little bit more, you know, but, um, I think if you build up that base level of understanding of mechanical, electrical and software and probably AI, you know, that opens up. And I and my dad said this to me when I was 16 and I say to my kids, now, the best thing you can have is options. And one thing about having those, if you have those sort of four areas, is you've got loads of options because you can go into high voltage, you can go into working in automotive, you can go into work in infrastructure. But if you can give yourself those sort of core base sort of understanding in the technical world, then that gives you the most options whatsoever. So I know that is an answer to your question. I was going. To say I don't think it's fair for me to say I think one thing is better than the other, but energy transition is going to go on for a really long time, and therefore there is a generational career in this. And I think that that, you know, that's a I think is a really exciting thing for people. There's a fascinating like 10 to 20 years of transition going on. And if you're thinking about where to go, like I hope you're excited about that. Yeah, we certainly are. Let's move on to local energy, because I promised it earlier. And we should we should get there. Um, I, I don't know, maybe maybe I'm a bit of a sceptic on it. Um, uh, but let's let's get into it. So. So how does it how does it fit into your overall strategy? And maybe to my sceptic side. Why why why do we need it. So I think I would be the first to admit that I come from big infrastructure. So when I came into this, this role, um, it was important to learn. And I think I think scepticism is fine if you're willing to learn about it and if you're sceptical because you just don't believe. Then then that's probably just, you know, ignoring it and what? I think what is the most powerful thing. Is to go and see it in action. And it's not about, um, it's not about it's not about the wind turbine or the solar farm. It's about the impact. And so I go to to a place called Shapinsay, in the far in Orkney, it's an island off Orkney, um, where I went to, um, I spent a few days in Orkney, and it was fascinating because, um, embedded local energy is really normal. Orkney has got about 22,000 people who live there. There are 800 wind turbines, I mean, you know, distributed across a number of islands, which is in terms of a concentration is really high. Um, levels of EV uptake, levels of heat pump uptake, levels of solar uptake are way above national average. Um and one of the reasons why. And this isn't without a world, without its challenges, but one of the reasons why is the huge benefits and it's sharp and say they've put up a 900 kilowatt turbine, um, and they've done it at a time during, um, say, following the financial crisis in which funding had been cut by the local authority. Um, and they were sort of out of necessity thinking, what are we? You know, what do we do here to fund our essential services? So they built this turbine, um, and it's, um, owned by Development Trust, by the island, which has then gone on to become the biggest employer on the island, because the the profits that are generated from that scheme are then reinvested in the community. Now, I know you will probably be asking your question and sceptical the sceptical question from an energy system perspective, but I kind of wanted to start it from the kind of human end, because that that development trust now is building social housing. It's improving insulation for for people who have got fuel poverty issues. They're funding bus services so people can get around the island. They've put it on extra ferries so that they can people can get to work on time and stuff like that. So it's having a social impact that far outweighs a wind turbine. And I think that you've kind of got to start with that potential to come to your energy system. I think angle, um, I think there's a huge role for, in the long run for sort of smart local energy systems to sort of act as, as sort of spongy nodes on the system where we can sort of manage supply and demand. I don't think it's all about energy generation. I think it's about how you optimise generation, demand storage in concert with the wider energy system. And I don't think that's about any one solution. I think it's about how you work out the right role that energy can play in a local environment, in a local setting. So one last point on this is that the impact that this can have in in the public sector, right. And and outcomes. I went to a um, a hospital in near Hull, um, where they had a field next to their, their hospital, and they built a solar array, which was saving them about £1 million a year as a hospital, saving them £1 million a year. Now, I don't know how they're spending that money, but if they wanted to, that million pounds a year could fund north of 50 nurses. And GP has done a lot of work, right. Putting solar onto hospitals, onto schools. Absolutely. Where that opportunity has been sat there all this time. But until GBG came along and said, hey, look, we're pushing this it it didn't come through. And and you know, if you are running a public sector organisation, a capital is scarce. You're going to prioritise the things that are the closest to your core mission. So if you need, if you have capital and. Hospitals training new nurses, not building PV, that's that's unnecessary. I don't need it. It's just and it's of course, one of the things I was interested in. I'll give you another example. Um, I went I went to a school where it was a multi-academy trust that's like 28028 schools in this trust. And during the energy crisis, their cost of electricity across that state had gone up by half £1 million. So it's not core energy is not core for a school. But as soon as the cost goes up by half £1 million across, across a number of schools, then it becomes pretty important. And they had put in solar not on all 28 they'd done it, managed to do it. You know, not every building was appropriate for it, but they had significantly deployed it. It was, I'll probably say, 20 to 2023, something like that of the of their school estate, and more than offset that to the point that the their payback period was under five years for that investment. Well that's phenomenal. It's phenomenal. But they had done it and they've been able to do it because they had the way they were, the unique way they were financed, and also because ultimately this cost had become core. Our point on this is, look, this can be not only transformational for the education and the healthcare outcomes. And, you know, we can think about all the settings where this can be done, but also in settings like social housing, where you can kind of give a direct benefit to, to households. Um, especially if you start to combine that with battery storage because, you know, things like charging our EVs in the future is going to be an important matter. And making sure people have access to low cost energy to do that is going to be really important. It is. It is so important to get the battery storage alongside the solar. If you just have the solar on all of these demand centres, effectively you create a demand that gets really spiky around the peak. And so. And we saw what happened in Germany when that, you know, the feed in tariff was sort of massively oversubscribed. You know, a long time ago. And what that did is it meant there was 35GW of energy coming onto the network every morning and coming off every night. And then the result was there, you know, balancing that with brown coal and, you know, stress saving stuff. So so it's the strategy. You do need to avoid that. And I think you're absolutely right making sure that you balance that. And and again that that makes the challenge even bigger for, you know, social housing providers or for schools or hospitals is they, you know, um, but, you know, batteries just increase the capital cost of doing this really well. And if we come at it from an energy sector perspective, understanding that those outcomes that I referred to earlier in terms of the communities, but also in terms of the public sector, when we think about them and we bring an energy lens to it, we can maybe do it better than if it's done in a kind of disorganised way at a lower cost. So that disorganised thing, that's that's the bit that I'm a little bit worried about. So I have a solar panel and I have more than one solar panel. I've got ten. It's exciting and a battery together. But I love it, I love it, I'm, I'm a so I'm this is a bit of double think I'm a I'm a huge advocate of having that on your home. But at the same time, the bit that worries me, it's a little bit like, um, Germany's distribution network operators. There's, there's kind of one grid in Germany, effectively there's four transmission network operators, and then there's 800 plus distribution network operators, that kind of thing. Christ. Running a system with like 800 individual network operators, isn't that just the most chaotic thing possible? And that to me is a little bit of the worry about local energy, is that if you had to run 800 or 10,000 local energy companies, it could be a real nightmare. But if you have governance, that means it's all sort of run efficiently from one sort of mother company. Perhaps then perhaps it could be done very nicely. I'm not sure where I land on this, but that's that's the bit that worries me a little bit. I think maybe it's in the language. Um, so I agree, I think you have lots of network operators. Um, then it would become complex. But if you've got more, lots more, lots of system operators and it's smart and it's smart from the get go and it's integrated, then it can work in a different way. Um, so I don't think it's necessarily about how it's, I mean, and we live in an era where, you know, the sheer potential for, for autonomous thinking and stuff to, to happen here is, is, you know, massively interesting. Um, but you've got to get there, you know, in a way where you create rules of the game and do it in an integrated way, I think. Okay. I want to ask two more questions. There was a headline around 8.3 billion. I think that's the right number for GB energy originally. How are you getting on with spending that? Uh how much is left? How much has been committed? Oh look, we're just getting like, being realistic. We're just getting started and and whilst the I mean the not only the numbers in detail, they're in the public domain if people want to research them, but clearly no one expected us to do all that in week one, right? So we're in we're at the end of a year one. So we had an Act of Parliament on the 15th of May, 2025. We're sitting here today in July 26th. And thankfully the planning allowed us some time to, you know, get much fit, build our business, build our team. Um, we have started we've, you know, we've made investments in the Pentland Offshore wind farm. We've made investments in ITM power, the hydrogen electrolyser manufacturer. We've got a number of more, uh, a number of investments throughout, you know, obviously commercially sensitive I can't talk about, but that we are working on this year. We've launched a, uh, our first fund on the, uh, supply chain investments and grants. Um, so we are making progress. Um, and, um, yeah. And we'll publish an annual report and everyone can read the details in that. Okay? Okay. No, no, no firm answer. But I did enjoy the World Cup reference sneaking in and saying about match fit, which is which is great to see. Okay. Which leads me to my final question, which is around a contrarian view. So what is something that you believe in energy markets that not everyone believes? Probably a few, but I maybe stick with the kind of industrial bit. Um, so I think recent history has shown us that people believe the best way to deliver energy markets is to, is to or to deliver energy outcomes, is to build markets and let and let the air and buy the cheapest get work out how to get the cheapest thing. And I believe that for a very, very, you know, small change in behaviour, we can build real industrial legacy in Britain. And it's not because it's all about us having local content. It's because we value industry and we should value industry more than perhaps we have. But we also have something to offer. And I give you the exact example. Maybe somewhere close to where I started, which is in if you take wind turbine blades. Um, you know, we in Britain are fantastic aerodynamic engineers. There's a reason why we make wings for aircraft here. Um, we are a brilliant. Um, there's also a reason why we have all the Formula one teams here. Because we're great aerodynamic engineers. We're also brilliant with composite materials. Composite materials? Again, aircraft wings. We've got some world class composite capability. They are in adjacent sectors. And the more that we draw them in to wind turbine blades, we can become world class at not only the making them, but how you make them, how you engineer the future of them, how you make them more efficiently, how you do it with higher quality. So you become like a world centre in that particular thing? Yeah. And again, like my, you know, my if I come back to air aerospace, you know, aerospace has a strategy that says we do for things really well in Britain. We do wings, we do landing systems, we do propulsion systems and we do avionics. Those are the four things. Britain is world class at. And I think we should be developing an industrial approach to energy that says, and these are our four things or five things or whatever it is, and that we really invest in that with our whole innovation ecosystem, all our public finance ecosystem, and become a real centre of excellence. And that isn't about having 50, 60, 70% local content. It's about having 50, 67, 70% global market share in those areas. And I think that's where we should become. Because the narrative would be, this all exists in China, and China does it so well at such low cost that you just can't even compete with it. And you're saying, I'm not trying to make a manufacturing supply chain that is a replica of China's tomorrow. I'm saying we should try and find parts of this where we are genuinely excellent, and we can contribute to a global supply chain of this rather than try and sort of stand up our own version of a replica industry 100%. That's what I'm saying, is that what is our value proposition as Britain to the world in energy transition? And I mentioned like wind turbine blades is a great example. I could talk about, you know, subsea technologies, subsea cables, all of these kind of things where we could become real global champions and build industries that out, survive the energy transition in this country and our export into the world for many years to come. That's my aspiration and hope. Dan, thank you very much for coming in transition. You've been a wonderful guest. Thank you very much indeed. It's been a pleasure.