Hello and welcome to Spectator Radio. I'm Kate Andrews. As the UK shifts from focusing on its public health crisis to its economic one, there are growing calls for the UK to adopt a green recovery. But what does that really mean? Britain has experienced its worst economic contraction in 300 years, and a fast recovery is key.

But will a green agenda really enhance that process or slow it down?

Renewable energy may be getting cheaper, but can it really meet our energy demands?

Has the COVID crisis set back the government on its path to reaching its target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. To discuss all this

and more, I'm joined by Kemi Beda-Nock MP, Minister for Equalitys, Chris Stark, Chief

Executive of the Committee on Climate Change, and Keith Anderson, Chief Executive of Scottish

Power. And this podcast is kindly sponsored by Scottish Power. Welcome all. So Chris,

I'm going to start with you. Can you tell our listeners what's actually meant when we talk about a

green recovery? Well, this is a topic we have discussed before. So we have entered into this

latest recession with some experience of a green recovery from the financial crisis. But I think

with this time round, we're talking about something fundamentally different. We're talking about

using the investments that we know are necessary to cut emissions in the economy as a means to get

not only to the goal of net zero emissions, which is the scientific goal we need to reach

to meet the Paris Agreement that was signed five years ago, but also crucially to get the

economy going. So when we talk about a green recovery, what we mean is the various investments

in every sector of the economy that we can use as a means to kickstart the economy after the

recession, but also as a means to get

employment going and to cut emissions. And the difference this time round is that we have a much

stronger sense of what the set of investments looks like across every sector of the economy

than we did in the financial crisis coming out of that. So there's a much stronger chance, I think, that we can

genuinely use the fiscal stimulus, the steps to recover the economy as a means to also address

climate change this time round. Kemi, Chris has given us a nice detail there, but let's be honest,

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