 The National Utilities Regulatory Commission, NERC, is committed to renewable energy adoption in St. Lucia, particularly with the volatility of fossil fuel costs owing to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. On Thursday, 6 April, the NERC held a public consultation on renewable energy pricing and capacity limits, bringing stakeholders from the private and public sectors together, with NGOs and civil society organizations. President of the NERC, Lawrence Navey, stated that the NERC is a resolute in St. Lucia achieving its nationally determined commitment of 35% renewable energy penetration by 2025. We recognize that the transition to incorporating more renewable energy in the generation mix and the participation of non-traditional generators, including customer generators, and independent power producers will only be fully realized if important issues relating to the renewable energy pricing and capacity limits are addressed. For this reason, the NERC decided to undertake studies for capacity limits and establishing rates for renewable energy for St. Lucia. Mindful of our resource constraints, we approached several multilateral and external governmental institutions, including the Global Green Growth Institute GGGI and CARICOM for the Technical Assistance Program for Sustainable Energy in the Caribbean, TAPSEC for assistance. The NERC falls under the portfolio of Honourable Stevenson King, Senior Minister for Infrastructure, Ports Transport, Physical Development and Urban Renewal. The consultation, he said, is expected to pave the way for the creation of a framework where the prosumer and the utility can coexist in a form of symbiosis. The inclusion of indigenous renewable energy sources for the generation of electricity creates the opportunity to lessen its dependence and allow for an electricity mix that offers a measure of cost reduction while moving closer to the goal of energy independence. The National Energy Transition Strategy, NETS, presents the roadmap leading to electricity independence while achieving a service which is affordable to the lowest of income earners and a reliable electricity service through an energy mix of wind and solar with geothermal, wind-found viable as a foam base supplemented by diesel. Christine Deeson, the Caribbean representative for the Global Green Growth Institute, commanded St. Lucia for its ambitious goals related to climate change. In particular, the nationally determined goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the energy sector by 7% by 2030. I don't think anyone here will disagree with me on the importance of having the right policy and regulatory frameworks in place to facilitate this transition to renewable energy. This is what creates the structure that will incentivize utilities, private companies, governments and investors to invest in and install renewables by making it easy, low risk and financially attractive to do so and ensuring that adoption of renewable energy will happen in an orderly and economically and technically stable manner. Yes, I think the discussion we've had so far is rich and the comments have been very insightful. The consultation focused on determining the optimum capacity limit for solar PV generation which is currently set at 5 kilowatts for residential and 25 kilowatts for commercial customers. Chief Executive Officer at the NERC, Alison Germ, said the second element relates to price methodology for renewable energy as the current net metering method is unsustainable and does not take into account the maintenance cost of the grid. The comments from our stakeholders will be submitted to the Government of St. Lucia for possible incorporation into the impending electricity legislation. We're hoping that legislation can be enacted very, very soon so that we can see a greater injection of renewable energy onto our electric grid. Senior Energy Regulatory Analyst at GGGI Andrew Lewis facilitated the consultation. He has been working closely with the NERC for the past year and a half on capacity building and technical support on various aspects of renewable energy regulations. Glenn Simon reporting.