Dr. Paul McGowan:

I agree with the Deputy that it has taken too long in the past to take projects from inception to completion. The timeline has to be greatly compressed and we have to get better at delivering a huge range of renewable energies if we are to achieve the targets we have mentioned by 2030 or 2050.

There are four key areas where we have a role to play and where we can make a direct impact. The first is to deliver smart meters as a national programme. We believe smart meters will facilitate a huge step change in participation in the energy market. The second is to facilitate connections. Until relatively recently, we had a large monolithic approach to connections in order to achieve the 2020 targets, called Gate 3. The connection office took thousands of megawatts but then the gate closed and very little happened after that. We have changed the process.