 I hope you can hear me and see me at the back. Maybe the curvature of the earth could possibly influence that. I must make sure I've got my sapper. I was saying at lunch, this is quite a good time to talk about energy and the cycle of those who look forward to how energy markets are working globally. This is the time when the Institute of the IEA in Paris comes at agency, comes at international agency, comes out with its annual outlook. It's just published it. You've probably, many of you, read it already. It paints a pretty gloomy picture as far as climate change is concerned. On present reckoning, we're not even going to be able to limit the increase in the earth's temperature to two degrees. It could be six degrees on the basis of present trends, or the trends now predicted on current policies. And the second message which comes out of it is quite clear, energy is going to get scarcer everywhere. It says one thing which is absolutely clear from the economic and financial turbulence we've been living in, there is now a relative disconnect between economic activity in Asia and in some emerging countries on the one hand and the US and Europe on the other. With the result, for example, that in Europe, there are certain countries which are very, very export-led and very dependent on Asia, and they're doing well. Despite zero growth predictions, Germany, Austria, parts of Scandinavia export-led, Italy, Spain, Greece, not Asian-led, internally European-led. And that explains to a certain extent some of the politics around what has been happening recently that public acceptance of solidarity and backing of the euro is also combined with the fact that there's a completely different perception of the commitments and the perspectives for economic activity and entrepreneurial activity in some of the countries of Europe. Germany 10 years ago, in the midst of a recession and before structural reform, may not have had exactly the same attitude to what is happening in Greece and Italy today. Just say that as a side point that we are living in turbulent times, but some of it has some degree of explanation. And we shouldn't underestimate the fact that there is, at the moment, a relative shift in economic activity to the emerging and Asian countries, which is reflected in, frankly, the work of every government and every company. If I list the places I go to every week for the last 18 months, there are almost always eastern destinations from Brussels. And our dialogue with Turkey, with Brazil, Turkey on transit of pipelines, with Brazil on biofuels, with China on all aspects of energy policy. On Russia, obviously, as our major partner, these dominate compared with our traditional partners in the US and elsewhere. That's a game changer in the way in which politics is actually, and economics is working in Europe. And that's probably the framework which is useful to start off looking at energy policy. If I point this into the right. I may have been director general three times, but I still can make mistakes with PowerPoint presentations. Now, I'd like just to start you from, I think, where you probably can recognize European energy policy and climate change policy over the last five years, which is 2020-2020. In the heat of that concern about climate change four or five years ago, there was the commitment to try to move in 2020 to a greener economy with lower emissions, 20% less emissions, 20% share of renewables in overall EU consumption. The target for Ireland even higher than that in terms of renewables. And also 20% saving in energy use compared with projections, energy efficiency. We're probably on the way to those three targets, two of those three targets, that is to say renewables share in energy consumption is going to meet 20% target, but not evenly across the European Union. We're going to have Denmark, Spain, Germany outperforming everyone, partly for industrial policy reasons, Ireland performing well on renewables, on onshore wind, Finland and Sweden heavily dependent on biomass, but it's going to be met. Emissions probably, without any political argument about it, we will have reduced emissions by 30% compared with 1990 levels in 2020, but because our economic activity is lower. The thing we're hopeless at is energy efficiency, because everyone likes to make speeches about it, but when it comes down to actually deciding anything effectively on it, nothing happens. For understandable reasons, because some of them involve persuading ordinary people to change their behavior, but equally in industry, too, it's essential to, in order to be competitive, to use energy most effectively. So one would be surprised if the industry itself, small and large, wouldn't want to go for that. But at the moment, we're only 50% of the way there. And we've made some proposals recently on energy efficiency to try to kick-start improvements, in particular as far as buildings renovation and savings obligations on suppliers and distributors. But if you say, well, maybe we can make 2020, we've still got a problem. That is, as Europe, as the economic and political Europe, we've said we want to reduce emissions by at least 80% by 2050. We know that we need to be competitive and we need to secure supplies. And we know that by 2030, if we have continued on current policies, the average dependency on fossil fuels of the European Union's countries will be more than 80%, more than 80%. That could give you a good reason to diversify supplies. And the whole idea of an open and competitive and internal market in Europe is actually to open the markets up so that everyone can come in and compete in this huge market and then we'll have some choice. But nevertheless, it's very dangerous without thinking about how we reach a low-carbon economy with some attention to security of supply, which makes sense. And of course, investors will say to you, well, 2020 is all very well. But if you, policymakers in Brussels or in Dublin, want to provide companies and investors with some degree of dimensioning of the risk, you've got to look further than that. You've got to look 20 years, 30 years, 40 years ahead. And so this is why we have been convinced ourselves that we actually had to come out with a roadmap for 2050. Now, I wouldn't say that 2050 is in itself the major question because if you think about it, any forecast 40 years ahead is not likely to be particularly accurate. But what we're about here is actually trying to create a framework in which certain trends are predictable enough for investors to go ahead, even if there are technology uncertainties, market uncertainties, which will come later. And so we've said we modeled what would be necessary to get to 2050. Now, the first stage of that is to say, well, it's a bit slow actually, it seems slower than I speak. What's necessary for the economy as a whole? And then what's necessary for the energy sector? If you look at the energy sector, I'm obviously just pointing at the wrong thing. Ah, oh, come back. Sorry, there you are, there you are. This chart was prepared by us together with Connie Hedegard, who is our climate change commissioner. She's basically saying if you want to reduce by 80% your emissions by 2050, that's what's going to happen on basis of current policies. You're only going to get halfway there. And then it shows here what would be necessary to reach 80% reduction. And what's the share between the various parts of the economy? And obviously, the one part of the economy if she's going to take the hardest hit from the point of view of moving to low carbon is the power sector. And that is the basis for why we believe that now we've got to go further in looking at the scenarios for reaching a low carbon economy, low carbon power sector. You can see here that the rates of reduction have to be much higher in the power sector than in other sectors. And even the 20% renewables figure for 2020 translated into renewables for electricity means 35%. Now in the beginning of this exercise, everyone said, well, this is all so new. It should be national support schemes for national renewables. One of the things we'll have to look at in this in that later on as far as renewables is concerned is, well, if you've got 50 or 60% renewables in the system, how can you say it's entirely a national question because if there's one market, you're going to have different support schemes in 27 countries for different forms of renewables all competing against each other. I just say that as an aside, but overall on this part of the background, I don't think one could stand back from these figures and say I would be hesitant about climate change legislation. I say that in an Irish context as well as in the European context. And with six degrees rather than two degrees, we have to take these figures very seriously. And what we've tried to do is not to prescribe one route to 2050, but to say what are the likely main scenarios which will come out of energy mix decisions at national level. For example, how many countries after Fukushima will go for nuclear? Probably 10. By the way, the effect of Fukushima on German public opinion should not be exaggerated. The German decision, the first German decision on nuclear withdrawal from nuclear was taken two years before. Then it was revised to allow a lengthening of the life of certain nuclear plants and now we've come back to the original decision. And Belgium was in any case committed to withdraw. Italy was only thinking about going back into it. And Switzerland isn't in the European Union. But just to show that there are a lot of press reports which say Fukushima had a dramatic impact on the view about nuclear. It hasn't. The countries which were for nuclear beforehand, France, UK, for other reasons, but particularly the countries in Eastern Europe are hugely in favor of maintaining nuclear in the balance. So, but nevertheless, nuclear could be more or less because there are huge problems about construction costs. There are safety issues and there could be a lot of delays. So that could be major source of uncertainty. The second source of uncertainty which is why we've modeled it is on carbon capture and storage. Because if you can read the IEA's forecasts again on what is the likely trend in different markets and the words golden age for gas keep ringing in everyone's ears. Well, it looks as if there will be a golden age for gas until around 2030 or 2035. But if you take emissions and climate change policies seriously, then somewhere around 2035, you've got to find a serious way of dealing with gas in the future. Either it's got to be replaced by renewables or it's got to have carbon capture and storage linked into it. And the majority of carbon capture and storage projects in Europe at the moment are linked to coal and not to gas. But we know that gas is a safe option for various points of view. It's investment cycle is shorter. It also reduces emissions by at least a half compared with coal. And the only question is at what price can I buy it? And a lot of people will say to you, well, don't worry about it, we've got unconventional gas. We've got twice as much unconventional gas as we have conventional gas now. So all we have to do is to get it out of the ground in Poland, in Ukraine, in Lithuania and the problem will be solved. Well, it's a bit more complicated than it is in the US for environmental reasons and for geological reasons. And there's still question marks about exploration. But again, will we have more CCS or less CCS? Even if we have a lot of gas in the meantime. And the third question is, are we going to achieve our objectives on energy efficiency or not? Or at what level should they be? So we've basically modeled a series of scenarios, more nuclear, less nuclear, more carbon storage, less capture and storage, less carbon capture and storage and looked at what would happen if we had more energy efficiency, better use of energy or not. Some of these graphs which you've got in the slides tell you what's already happening in the industry. I'm not going to go into those. I just want to just make sure that you know what the whole process of debate which we're launching is about. First of all, we take as a reference the business as usual scenario and the effects of current policy proposals. We assume that they will be implemented in some way. Then we look at energy efficiency ambitions, we look at different energy mixes, we look at the possibility of high or low nuclear, high or low CCS and we actually model to a very, very high level of renewables. Now, this is of course an exercise which is actually modeling and not predicting. It's saying, assuming we want to get to the result we want to, what are the various pathways to get there? What mixes could be looked at, mix of energies could be looked at. What is the path of progression to the 2050 goal? Is it like that or is it? We do nothing about climate change until the last decade and what we want to be able to bring into the public domain in three weeks time is both a qualitative and quantitative assessment of different pathways to get there, looking at the cost effectiveness of each of them, the feasibility of each of them and I think that there's going to be a lot of debate at national level and at European level on it. It's going to be an iterative process where we're going back to the course of 2012. But I just want to bring out some of the things which we already can say are the results of this analysis which are important in any scenario. First of all, don't even think about stopping at 20% increase in energy efficiency. To meet the objectives of 2050, the European Union needs at least 30 or 40% savings in energy efficiency compared with projections even with revised demand growth, GDP growth involved. Secondly, obviously there's a lot of electricity in the system in all scenarios. Thirdly, there's a very, very high level of renewables in all scenarios. So we've got to think about how the systems of electricity are run in Europe to cope with variable amounts of flows of electricity which means modernized intelligent infrastructure and interconnection and an efficient internal market to allow people to bring, to have access to the nets. And obviously there's a very major investment challenge. So energy demand needs to be reduced. I don't think we debate this in the public eye with sufficient care on the vocabulary we're using. We're not talking simply about turning off the lights. It is quite a good idea when you're not in the room to turn off the lights. It is quite a good idea, by the way, to use energy-efficient light bulbs. It's often blamed in Brussels that we have these sort of dead worm-looking things which you need two of them to read a book. I've said on many occasions, and no one's denied me in the private industry, the electric light bulbs which we have now, the energy-efficient ones, are not a political or policy disaster. They're a huge success from an energy efficiency point of view. They save a lot of energy. What is the big disaster with electric light bulbs in this new second generation is a marketing disaster and a design disaster. Who on earth told the engineers to produce this funny little dead worm? Which looks as if it... Why don't we have nice things which look like pears and apples? Anyway, that's just to indicate that it's just an illustration of this issue's energy savings. What's it all about? Using energy better. Using energy better is an issue of competitiveness as well as of tidiness. If European industry is to be effective, it needs to use energy better. And we need to market services for people using electricity and energy to do it in a way which is good for them, keeps down their bills. Now, plenty of people in the industry have said to me, ah, yes, but how can we as suppliers argue in favour of less... using less electricity? Well, I think as an economist, you can probably say that could be a correct argument if you're a monopolist. But if you're living in a society where you're competing to offer someone what they need and want, normally in every other sector of the economy you actually differentiate your offer according to what your consumer wants or his consumption pattern. There's a lot to be done there and it goes right across the range of the sectors of the economy, whether we're talking about households, transport or industry. I've referred to the place of electricity in scenarios that's vitally important. Now, I think here too, one thing which is even as relevant for Ireland as a potential exporter of energy as well as a potential consumer of energy is its capacity to interconnect and interlink. Assessing nevertheless the advantages and disadvantages of that because there are some. After all, if you interconnect with anything else, you share the good things. You may also share the critical moments in the process. But generally speaking, a larger energy network delivers you more security of supply, lower costs, more capacity for stable delivery of energy from several sources at any one time. And the renewable potential of energy in Europe is quite significant. The orange bits are referred to solar. You might actually say that North Africa, in the longer term, is a red area. I had a group of professors in to see me yesterday morning who are very much into solar, solar thermal technologies and gave fantastic figures about if we were able to capture solar energy in Northern Africa, we could cover twice over energy usage within the European Union. There are some other political obstacles to that for a moment, but we'll see about that. Just this map certainly indicates to you where there are potential and there is potential. And of course, this has to be tempered by public acceptability. In Ireland, thankfully, people don't mind too much wind farms onshore. In my own country, they detest them. This is why the UK mix is a combination of probably the two highest costs form of energy at the moment, nuclear and offshore wind. Hopefully, they'll both come down in cost terms, but for the moment, it looks pretty expensive. Onshore wind has a major role here. Solar power has a major role in the south of Europe. And if we have such a high level of renewables in the system, it's virtually inevitable that we have to, coming back to what I was saying before about national support schemes, we have to think about what kind of European-wide framework you have for people to compete for supply of renewable energy in the future with or without subsidy. This adds in marine and bioenergy. I think that it's fairly clear here that Ireland has a potential there, which in the longer term will be exploited. And of course, linking these various areas in a wider system has significant advantages. You can imagine the storage capacity of Norwegian hydro schemes balanced by, or I would say German offshore wind, balanced by Scandinavian storage capacity is a powerful combination, also with pump storage in Austria. But separate, they don't make much sense. Now, I don't want to refer in detail to the figures on the investment needs in the energy sector. I think they tend to frighten everyone, but the fact is they're very big. And the reality is that no one is going to imagine that this is going to be covered through public investments. Only a proportion of it will be covered, both in generation and in transmission and distribution. What we're going to end up with is the need for tariffs to reflect the costs of the investments needed to support the kind of modern intelligent energy systems which we need. And here we come to the issue of trying to create an environment for investment, private and public investment in infrastructure, which makes sense, and it makes sense cross-border and not just national. And here, this is an indication of some of the strategic areas and corridors that we have proposed for identification to give some stability to priorities for infrastructure development in Europe. Obviously, there are plenty of obstacles to energy infrastructure development, permitting regulatory obstacles, which we want to get rid of as well, but actually giving people greater certainty about the really important links which need to be built and why they are being built and why they make so much sense for ordinary people is essential. We're going to adopt this roadmap on the 13th of December. As I say, we expect it to provide some framework for discussion about the infrastructure challenge. It'll have to involve a very deep debate nationally and at the European level, but I think that by the summer of next year we'll be able to create some degree of consensus on a number of the points I've made. Now, I'm not going... I think you're a better place than I am to talk about Ireland, but there are obviously not just potential there in terms of development of export markets, but also implications of integration of Ireland into wider networks. I think this will require a lot of work, all Ireland, regional, to look at the regulatory implications as well as the system operation implications, but I think that this is enough for the next 10 years for us to get right. Thank you.