Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

We need all of that. We need more renewables, more storage, more interconnection and, particularly, more on the demand side. We need to get rid of the older fossil fuel generators such as oil and coal and definitely peat and we need all of that to happen in a very short period. The scale of change we will facilitate, underpin, drive and deliver over the coming years will be massive. These are not choices between things; it is a matter of all of it at the same time and at pace. I completely agree with everything the Deputy outlined as being really important in the delivery of a high-renewables, low-carbon system. At the same time, we want to get rid of the coal-fired generation. We do not want people talking about reopening peat because that is even more carbon-intensive. We want to get rid of oil-fired generation. In order to still provide security of supply on a day like today, when we have all this wonderful renewable infrastructure but very little delivery from it, the role of gas-fired generation is really important. The key to understanding why we consider that it is worth investing in additional gas generation and gas infrastructure is understanding that that can then be decarbonised.

I hear the concerns that others have raised about how long it might take to do that and the technical challenges associated with it. It sounds to me very much like the debates we had many years ago when we were talking about decarbonising our electricity system. Yes, it is complicated, it is hard, it is expensive and the engineering solutions in some cases need to be developed. We went through all of that to get to 40% renewables in the electricity system. We will go through all of that again, believe me, to get to 80% and beyond. The challenge of decarbonising the gas infrastructure and system is, therefore, not beyond us. Yes, we must ensure security in the transition, but we must ensure and do so in such a way that we are not locking in fossil fuel infrastructure that cannot be further used. We must ensure that we are considering how we would then decarbonise that. We must ensure that any LNG or storage infrastructure can also be used for hydrogen and green hydrogen as we get to the points of the technology and the commercial delivery of those opportunities. I hope that helps.