Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): On behalf of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), I welcome the witnesses from the Department for the Economy: Mr Snowden, accounting officer; Richard Rodgers, head of the energy group; and Anne-Marie McConn, head of energy strategy and corporate services. Those joining us in the Public Gallery are also very welcome to today's evidence session. Also in attendance are the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), Dorinnia Carville, from the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO); and Stuart Stevenson, the Treasury Officer of Accounts (TOA), from the Department of Finance. You are all very welcome.

Mr Snowden, thanks very much for agreeing to attend the Committee. I hope that we are on track. Members have quite a list of questions that are relevant to the matter at hand. With that said, there are a number of pressing issues. Today's session follows the publication of the Comptroller and Auditor General's October 2025 report on the Northern Ireland energy strategy. The energy strategy for Northern Ireland, titled 'The Path to Net Zero Energy', is the Northern Ireland Executive's central policy to ensure that they meet their obligations in relation to net zero, energy efficiency and tackling climate change, while also delivering affordable, secure energy for citizens and business. The strategy, which was published in December 2021, provides the framework for Departments to meet their legal duty under the Climate Change Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 to exercise their functions in a manner consistent with achieving, as far as possible, net zero emissions by 2050. The Department for the Economy has been tasked with leading on the delivery of that strategy.

The Comptroller and Auditor General's report concluded that, while the energy strategy was well consulted on and developed, its implementation has been fundamentally flawed. The report highlights the fact that, although the energy strategy sets three clear headline targets, the annual energy strategy action plans (ESAPs) did not align actions with those targets and that many actions were vague, not time-bound or lacked measurable outcomes. That represented a fundamental design weakness. A total of 74 actions were identified across the ESAPs for 2022-25. Many actions were delayed, rescoped or abandoned, and incomplete actions were often not carried forward to subsequent plans. Some actions, such as domestic energy efficiency schemes, regressed. The report states that the Department did not demonstrate a clear line of progression from action planning to delivery, and it highlights a series of issues around monitoring, reporting and targets.

Today, the Committee needs to be assured that the Department for the Economy can address and is addressing the issues raised in the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. The Committee will need to see clear evidence that the Department is capable of leading on the implementation of the strategy to ensure that Northern Ireland meets its obligations on these important energy issues. Members will seek detail of progress made since the publication of the report. I am concerned that there appears to be little detail around expected outcomes and time frames in the May 2026 action plan that was presented to the Committee. We will deal with that today. As always, we would appreciate clear, direct and candid evidence from each of you. That said, you are very welcome to the Committee. I invite you, Mr Snowden, to brief members on anything that you would like to raise. Thank you.

Mr Ian Snowden (Department for the Economy): OK, Chair. I will make a short opening statement. As you alluded to, the long-term vision of the energy strategy, which was published in December 2021, is self-sufficiency and affordable net zero carbon energy that will support economic growth in Northern Ireland. To deliver that vision, we will need to reduce the amount of energy that we use, make sure that our energy comes from renewable sources and massively increase the size of our low-carbon and renewable energy economy. It will be the biggest and most far-reaching change in our energy system since rural electrification in the 1950s and 1960s, and it could deliver up to £10 billion of investment in Northern Ireland over the next decade.

Many of the things that we need to do will involve new technologies and approaches that have not been tried or tested. Many different people and organisations, including private businesses, the public sector and local communities, have strong interests in how that change should be delivered. That means that the change process will be a complex as well as a large-scale endeavour. Real and sustainable transformation of a complex system such as that takes time. We agree that we need to get our governance arrangements right. We need to build consensus on how those changes will be implemented and achieved. Above all, we need to ensure that the interests of consumers are not adversely affected while we make that transition. The Department has been and will continue to be very active in driving that transition forward.

Since the publication of the energy strategy, we have changed the policy on good connection charging to remove financial barriers to new developments and to ensure fairness in how costs are applied. We have published the detailed design for the roll-out of smart electricity meters in Northern Ireland. We have produced the offshore renewable electricity action plan. We have introduced legislation to the Assembly to ban onshore petroleum exploration and extraction. We have delivered £73 million of energy efficiency projects in the public sector, which are delivering annual savings of £10 million in energy costs and 12,000 tons a year in carbon dioxide, and we have introduced the energy and resource efficiency programme to support business decarbonisation.

The report comments on progress towards the three main targets of the energy strategy. The most recent statistics show that we are making progress on those targets. Overall greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector are down by 47% compared with 1990 levels, putting us well on the way to achieving the target of a 56% reduction by 2030. On energy efficiency, the most recent figures, which are from this month, show that we are now close to 15·6% towards the target, with further increases expected as additional data comes in for the past two years. On renewables, the most recent figures show that 48% of electricity consumed in Northern Ireland is from locally generated renewable sources. The green economy is now worth a little over £1·5 billion year, making the sector worth more to the Northern Ireland economy than tourism, which is worth £1·2 billion, or the life and health sciences sector, which is worth £1·3 billion. That places us well on track to achieve the target of £2 billion by 2030.

A lot of work has been delivered since the energy strategy was published, and we can take a degree of encouragement from those figures. However, we are still only part of the way through the process of transforming the energy system, and the Department is not at all complacent about the challenges that we face if we are to achieve the strategy's long-term vision and targets for 2030. That is why I welcome the Audit Office report at this midway point in the strategy's delivery. It has made an important contribution by focusing our attention on what we need to do in setting the action plans to ensure the successful delivery of the long-term vision. I look forward to discussing the findings with you. We have accepted and implemented the Audit Office recommendations. I am sure that you will want to discuss how that manifests itself in the 2026 action plan.
My colleagues and I are happy to answer any questions that Committee members have on the report and the Department's response to it.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): Thank you, Mr Snowden, for those opening remarks and for keeping them brief and succinct. The Audit Office report noted that the Department employs 134 staff in its energy group and that more than £107 million has been spent on energy-related activity since 2020. How much has been spent in total? How can you assure the Committee, given that so little has been achieved to date, that it represents value for money?

Mr Snowden: The £107 million was quoted towards the end of last year, which is when the Audit Office published its report. The figure is not substantially higher than that now. In the past financial year, we were not able to continue with the energy efficiency scheme, which was the largest single item of expenditure for public-sector properties, as the funding had not been allocated to the Department. Around half of the 130-plus staff in the energy group are dedicated to working on the energy strategy.

The most recent figures show that we are making substantial progress towards those targets, and, at the time of the Audit Office report, the information was not available to the same extent. Therefore, it is understandable that there was concern that, having spent money on that scale, there had been, for example, only 1% movement towards the energy savings target. As more data comes through, you will be able to see that we are making more significant progress.

There is a robust and detailed assessment of each of our schemes. Value for money is the key consideration in every programme that we deliver. If we take individual schemes — I mentioned in my opening remarks the energy efficiency programme for the public sector; that is, the energy management strategy — we see clear evidence of value for money there, with £70 million of expenditure delivering £10 million a year of savings on the public-sector energy bill. Those will be savings in perpetuity and will be repeated year-on-year. That means that there is a payback of seven years on that investment. Out of a public-sector expenditure bill of around £215 million year, that is a 5% reduction.

We can therefore demonstrate that there is value for money. We would like to do more, if the funding were available, but there is ample evidence of achieving value for money for that expenditure.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): You said that the current figure is not much more than £107 million. For the sake of clarity and putting it on the public record, will you tell me how much has been spent?

Mr Snowden: I will have to come back to you in writing with the precise number. I could venture a number, but it would not be entirely accurate. I do not want to mislead the Committee, but it is around £110 million, I think.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): OK. If you could verify the figure, that would be appreciated. Would it be fair to say that you are arguing strongly that there is value for money?

Mr Snowden: When you look at the figures and the progress made towards the targets, you see that the expenditure is delivering results. For example, greenhouse gas reductions in our energy supply sector are the largest of any sector in the climate action plan for Northern Ireland, and the climate change budget is set at 60%. That demonstrates how our interventions are driving down greenhouse gas emissions, and we are making significant progress.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): Thank you for the clarification. Mr Snowden, your Department has a history of failed energy projects, notably the renewable heat incentive scheme (RHI). We all know the impact of the RHI scheme. The report raises concerns about whether the Department has learned any lessons from the handling of RHI. What assurances can you give the Committee that your Department is capable of successfully delivering an effective energy strategy for Northern Ireland and that a credible pathway remains to achieving the 2030 targets in the remaining time frame?

Mr Snowden: One of the principal criticisms of the RHI scheme was the lack of proper expertise in the Department to address the issues. We have brought in additional staff with particular expertise to the energy group. We have secondees from private sector energy companies, and we have brought in people to specifically deal with certain aspects of the energy strategy. For example, we have set up a project to deliver 80% renewables by 2030, and a new senior official has been brought into the Department specifically to deal with those issues. We have learned that lesson about expertise.

Another lesson drawn from that — albeit, paradoxically, the Audit Office identified this as a potential flaw in our delivery so far — is that we need to spend sufficient time ensuring that we understand what it is that we are proposing to deliver, and that requires us to undertake detailed analysis of and consultation on some of the things that we propose to do. Quite a few of the schemes that we wish to deliver, particularly in renewable electricity, biomethane and hydrogen, could involve substantial sums of money. To be sure that we do not fall into a trap similar to the one in the RHI scheme, we need to understand precisely what the costs would be, who would bear the costs and how it would be funded. That is why we go through the process of calling for evidence, doing the detailed analysis work and producing the consultation documents.
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The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): Thank you.

Mr Rodgers, will you outline your role in the energy section of the Department? As someone who heads up that section, do you believe that the Department is capable of successfully delivering the strategy?

Mr Richard Rodgers (Department for the Economy): I came into the Department in 2017 to head up the RHI task force. I had been working for the Strategic Investment Board (SIB), and, ironically, I had been working on an energy efficiency programme for the Executive Office, which was then the Office of the First Minister and the deputy First Minister (OFMDFM). On the eve of the strategic outline case being signed by the then Minister, the RHI story broke on 'Spotlight', and the outline business case (OBC) was not signed by the Minister at the time. I understand the implications of not getting things right: that hit the energy efficiency programme, which had been clearly identified as important, really hard. I joined the RHI task force that was set up to fix the problem, and I was asked to do that because I had the expertise from working for 30 years in the utility industry. I was employed in the public sector at the time, and I came in to head up the task force.

Within a few hours of my reading the background, it was obvious to me that the simple flaw in RHI was that we were paying people more on the tariff than it cost to produce the heat. Like a butterfly flapping its wings, the implication of that was a massive hurricane elsewhere. It has taken us from July 2017 to the summer of 2026 to get to a position of equilibrium again.

As you will be aware, members, we are now close to getting the primary legislation across the line, and regulations for closure payments will follow. For the first time since I came into post — it is hard to overestimate the importance of this — we have a constructive and positive relationship with the Ulster Farmers' Union and the trade industry. When I came into post, that had completely broken down. The fact that it has taken a long time and so much expenditure exemplifies why it is really important to get things right in the first place.

My role is to lead on the removal of fossil fuels from this country. We have relied on importing fossil fuels for hundreds of years. This is an energy revolution. It is easier said than done, because the majority of what we do is import petrol, diesel, heating oil and natural gas. We have to do it right. If we do not, as I have just explained in relation to RHI, we could hurt society. We have taken our time. People sometimes say that we do not move quickly enough, but it is like a swan: an awful lot of activity is going on below the surface. Anne-Marie and I, as well as other senior members of the energy team, recognise that we need to communicate better. We need to be able to explain to consumers and communities out there what we are trying to achieve and why it is the right thing to do. My role is to provide leadership.

We are making significant progress. When the Audit Office team came in, it was to be a three-month piece of work. It took 12 months, because this is a very complex area. I think that we reached a place with the team — Seamus is here today — of accepting, as the perm sec said, what the report said. It is a very complex area in which we are trying to, by 2050, stop having to bring in any fossil fuels. Let me be clear: we have to do that in a way that keeps costs down for consumers. Some of the perceived inactivity to date comes from our wanting to act in a way that keeps costs under control for consumers. For example, we reached a peak of renewable electricity at 51%. The trend was downwards to 43%. We know why the trend was downwards to 43%: we did the right thing by consumers and for the health of people here. We maximised the imports of electricity from Scotland to bring lower-cost electricity into Northern Ireland. That displaced locally produced renewable electricity. Secondly, we closed the coal plant at Kilroot, and that was because of action by my team. That closure brought about dramatic savings. As the perm sec pointed out, in all the sectors in the climate action plan, we lead the way. We have seen a significant reduction in emissions from 5·3 million tons to 1·9 million tons. We are starting to get to the point of diminishing returns. That is because we closed the plant.

At the same time as closing the plant, we had to use a bit more gas in the gas plant because of the way in which the technology works. We knew that we were heading to 43%, but the important thing is that we know why we have moved back to 48%. We have a clear line of sight on how we move from 48% back into the 50s — to record levels — and into the 60s. People have chastised us and said, "You're never going to make the 80%". That 80% is important because it is a target in law, but the most important thing is that we aim to get to 100%. When we get to 31 December 2030, whatever the number is, we will endeavour to get to 80%, but the next day we will move further, because the ambition is to get to 100%. We need to pay a fair price for the energy that we produce locally. In the only four and a half years of the delivery of the energy strategy, we have had two cost-of-living crises inspired by fossil fuels, over which we have no control. We need to get to 100%: irrespective of whether it is about emissions, it is about doing the right thing by consumers, society and businesses here.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): Do you believe that the 2030 target is achievable?

Mr Rodgers: What we, as officials, have to do is understand what can be achieved and do our best to achieve it, so that is what we are doing. I will give you one example. The proposed North/South interconnector has been around for quite a while and, as you know, is subject to a little opposition; there are ongoing legal proceedings. Construction of a North/South interconnector has started up here, but the target date of 2028 has been moved back to 2031 by EirGrid and System Operator for Northern Ireland (SONI) because, down South, they are slightly behind. We need to get the North/South interconnector built because, one, it will dramatically reduce the cost of electricity here, and, number 2, it will bring about a step-change increase in renewables. Our target in the strategy was 70%; the target in the Climate Change Act that the Assembly voted for was 80%. Moving the interconnector target date back to 2031 makes that more difficult, but, in 2031, when the interconnector comes on, there will be that step change.

There is a range of measures. I cannot predict exactly what we can achieve in 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030, but the direction of travel is the right one and has been taken in such a way as to get the right price for consumers and to keep that as low as possible.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): OK. Thank you.

Miss Dolan: Thank you for coming in. Sorry that I cannot be there in person. I have two quick questions. Given the challenges identified in the 2025 midterm review, are you confident that the strategy can deliver its 2030 targets? What are you doing to address those challenges?

Mr Snowden: I will take each target in turn. Richard has addressed the renewable electricity target. We are least confident about that one, in part because of what Richard said about the North/South interconnector. The interconnector's coming on will have a significant impact, adding, by some estimates, up to nine percentage points against Northern Ireland's renewables consumption targets. We need to do a number of things. We need investment in the grid, which has been started by Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE) Networks, to allow easier firm access for new renewable generators to come on stream. We have taken a number of enabling actions: a new planning policy statement (PPS) supports renewable electricity; the grid connection policy makes it more financially viable for new renewable electricity to come on stream; and we have produced a Bill for the renewable electricity price guarantee (REPG) scheme that would allow us to put in place the support scheme for renewable electricity.

Other things will need to be taken forward over the next four years with SONI — the system operator — NIE Networks and the Utility Regulator to make sure that all the pieces come together and are manifested in an increase in progress towards the renewable electricity targets. One of the major things that we can do is called "grid optimisation". At the minute — this is where the investment in the grid is important — we generate surplus renewable electricity in the west of the Province but have limited capacity to transmit that to the east, where the higher demand is. Investment in the grid will allow more of that electricity to be used, and we will therefore be able to consume more of our electricity from the available renewable sources.

The picture on the energy savings target is a bit clouded by the fact that there is such a lag in the production of the statistics. We are dependent on statistics that are produced by other public agencies and can take 18 to 24 months to become available. Our most recent figure is not even the full figure for 2024 — we are still waiting for two components of it — but you can see from past reports how far we have moved in the direction of energy savings, which shows that we are making strong progress. As additional measures come on stream over the next few years, you will see that number rise rapidly.

When it comes to the low-carbon renewable energy economy, we are all pretty confident that the £2 billion target will be achieved and probably exceeded by 2030.

Miss Dolan: Thank you. Ian, do you think that the statistics issue will be ironed out by 2030? Will you get the information before then?

Mr Snowden: When we get to 2030, we will be working with only a partial figure. It will probably include full information for the period to 2028 but be missing some information for 2029, so there will be a gap.

Miss Dolan: OK. Given the limited progress against the targets to date, how were the major spending decisions assessed against the energy strategy's headline outcomes before the funding was approved?

Mr Snowden: The largest pieces of expenditure were on the energy management strategy and the public-sector invest-to-save scheme. In total, £73 million has been spent on those to date. Obviously, that is directly linked to the energy-saving target. The assessment process identifies the savings that are delivered from that course of action.

There are other projects such as the geothermal demonstrator project, through which, again, we are looking at energy-saving targets in the long term, because all forms of heat pump-type technologies, including those involving geothermal sources and ground sources, are more energy efficient than fossil fuel sources. As it is a demonstrator project, it will be a number of years down the road before you will see at-scale developments on that site, but we need to be able to test the technology to make sure that it is viable and usable. We have had very positive results from the two major sites — there is one on the Stormont estate and one at the Greenmount campus in Antrim — which show the tremendous potential of geothermal energy in the right locations in Northern Ireland. The work on the demonstrator project will not have a direct delivery implication for the three main targets, but it is an important part of preparing for the energy transition.

Mr Rodgers: Under the energy management strategy for the public sector, we deliver the energy and carbon data repository, which is another really outstanding system. Up until then, there was a real lag in information on how much electricity, gas and oil we use in the public estate. That is part of the issues that we have been talking about. Now, however, we have implemented a system that has over 4,000 public-sector sites in it. Every time that an invoice is raised by a gas or electricity supplier, an oil company or a liquefied biogas (LBG) supplier, it automatically comes into that system. Energy managers across the government estate have discovered lots of things that have allowed them to find out more about what they spend on energy and provide the data reporting on emissions, despite the fact that we have not been able to invest capital from the invest-to-save scheme. For example, managers in Health and Education have discovered that they were using electricity in empty buildings. Their having that kind of information at their fingertips comes as a consequence of the delivery of the energy strategy.

Miss Dolan: OK. That is useful. Thank you very much.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): I have listened to the detail that has been shared. Is the present pace sufficient to meet the 2030 target? We have talked about the amount of money that has been spent and the number of staff in that section of the Department, but is the pace going in the right direction?

Mr Snowden: I have been in the Department for two and half years now. My assessment is that the energy group is probably the busiest part of the Department when it comes to the sheer volume of things that it does simultaneously and the amount of work that it produces. The complexity of its work is also probably in excess of what happens in other places. That is not to say that other parts of the Department's work are not challenging and complex, but the sheer volume and pace of stuff that we are delivering in that part is quite remarkable. That will be maintained over the next four years.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): Thank you.

Mr Honeyford: Before I go to my questions, I want to pick up on a few things that have been said. Important answers were given, and I do not want the report that follows to —. You said that, if the North/South interconnector was there, renewables would increase by 9%. We already have a connection to the South, so what percentage of renewable energy that comes from the South of Ireland today is counted in our target?

Mr Snowden: I do not have that figure off the top of my head.

Mr Honeyford: The answer is zero, Ian. The answer is zero. You just said that there would be a 9% increase. Renewables are counted where they are made, not where they are imported.

Mr Snowden: No, this is to do with how the electricity supply across the whole island is transmitted from one place to another —.

Mr Honeyford: Jemma asked you about the 80% target, and —.

Mr Snowden: May I finish my answer?

Mr Honeyford: Yes.

Mr Snowden: The North/South interconnector will allow for much more transmission of electricity from where it is acquired to where it is needed.

Mr Honeyford: I understand that.

Mr Snowden: Our figure is for the amount of renewable electricity that is consumed in Northern Ireland, not the amount that is produced in Northern Ireland. The target for renewable energy production is much more challenging. The North/South interconnector will allow us to move some of the non-renewable, fossil fuel-generated electricity south of the border. That will help us with our figures for the renewable capacity that is consumed here.

Mr Honeyford: OK. The energy strategy was in 2021. You have talked about significant progress and substantial progress. You have used the word "progress" so many times. In 2021, the figure for renewable energy was 51·6%. It is now 48%. Tell me how that is progress.

Mr Snowden: Mr Rodgers has explained that already. Two major things have caused that to happen, the first of which is the closure of the coal-fired power plant at Kilroot. That has had the impact of placing more of the non-renewables generation capacity on to the gas plants. The minimum generation requirements for those gas plants to maintain system stability are slightly higher than those for the coal plant. That means that, at your baseload, you need to have more of the fossil fuel-generated electricity in the system to start with. The benefit of closing down the coal plant, as Mr Rodgers explained, was in the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and in respect of the cost to consumers. That is one component, but it is a significant one. We knew that that was going to happen.

The second thing is that, since 2021, the differential — I think you heard evidence on this yesterday at the Economy Committee — in wholesale prices between the single electricity market in Ireland and the electricity market in Britain has increased to about 20%. Electricity in Britain is cheaper, and, in order to make electricity cheaper for consumers in Northern Ireland, we maximise imports through the Moyle interconnector. Those imports, even though they may be renewably generated in Scotland, do not get counted towards the renewable figures here. In our figures, they are treated as if they were fossil fuel contributions.

Mr Honeyford: It is exactly the same as the ones in the South. We were talking about the interconnector. The Moyle interconnector has been there since 2001, so do not pretend that the Moyle interconnector is the reason why, in the past four or five years [Inaudible.]

Mr Snowden: Sorry, but I will have to correct you on that point. It is very clear that, for price reasons, we have maximised imports through the Moyle interconnector over that period. The interconnector flows in two directions, so, if the electricity was cheaper here, it would be sold to Britain, but it is not at the minute. That price differential has increased since 2021. Those figures are pretty clear and were demonstrated in the information provided yesterday. It is completely wrong for you to say that what has happened over the past four years has nothing to do with the interconnector.

Mr Honeyford: Right. We have the figures for the interconnector. The interconnector went back the way — to 500 MW in 2021 — from here to Scotland.

The NIAO report talks about how the action plan lacked measurable outcomes linked to targets, lacked milestones and did not have proper performance measurement. Why should we have any confidence that the 2026 action plan will be any different?

Mr Snowden: We accept that there were flaws in the way that the previous action plans were produced. If you look at the action plans each year since 2022, you will see that we have changed the way that they are presented and the way that the actions are framed. In the first action plan in 2022, there were a number of overambitious targets; we really ought to have been a bit more careful to make sure that they could be delivered. I am sure that we will talk about the detail of some of those specific actions. The non-domestic energy efficiency scheme, for example, was proposed to be launched in 2022, but we were not able to do that until 2024. It is also fair comment for the Audit Office to say that some of the targets were not specific or outcomes-focused, and it is quite difficult to then make a binary assessment of: "Was it achieved? Was it not achieved?". Over the years, we have substantially changed and improved how those targets are produced. Look at the action plan reports that have been produced. In 2023, for a variety of reasons, not least that we did not have a functioning Assembly at that time and were unable to pass legislation or progress policy, only two of the 13 actions were capable of being completed during that calendar year. In the year just past, I think that the figure was 14 out of 19. Therefore, we are picking up the pace at which we deliver those actions during the year.

I will not say that we have got it perfect in the 2026 action plan. We continue to learn how best to frame these things. What is very clear to me, from looking at all of this and reflecting on what the Audit Office report says, is that, while we are doing a lot of work and delivering a lot of things in relation to the energy strategy, we are not getting that message across and people are not clear about what is being done, how it is being done or the — I am sorry to use this word again — progress that we are making. We need to substantially improve on that.

On the question of whether we could have had milestone and interim targets in the action plan, I will say that, since 2021, there have been two wars that have caused energy price spikes; a period when the Assembly and Executive were not functioning; a change in Government in the UK; and at least two significant changes in energy policy and direction. It has not been a stable operating environment for us. It would have been incredibly difficult for us to predict in 2021 what was to happen every year between then and 2030 and to introduce interim targets and milestones. Having said that, we need to explain what we are going to do. You have made the point numerous times at the Economy Committee and elsewhere, Mr Honeyford, that we need to be clear about what we will do to achieve the targets. That is where we have fallen down, so, later this year, we will produce an energy policy statement from the Minister that will set out the most significant things that we need to do each year between now and 2030 in order to deliver against those targets.

Mr Honeyford: We are talking about the 2026 action plan. How many actions in the 2026 action plan have a specific completion date?

Mr Snowden: All the actions are to be completed in the current calendar year: 2026.

Mr Honeyford: All of them will be completed in 2026?

Mr Snowden: That is what we aim to do. Our intention is to complete all of them in 2026, but I cannot predict the future. I cannot say with absolute certainty that all of them will be done, but that is our intention.

Mr Honeyford: Why is there no date in the action plan? The 2024 plan, the 2025 plan — all of them are just a list of things. Why is there no completion date on them?

Mr Snowden: They are to be completed in 2026.

Mr Honeyford: So, the measurable outcome is that all the actions will be delivered in 2026.

Mr Snowden: That is what we aspire and aim to achieve. The work that we are putting in is directed towards doing that.

Mr Honeyford: OK. Who signed off a document that has no real targets or deadlines in it?

Mr Rodgers: The document clearly says that the actions will be achieved in 2026. It says that. Full stop. I signed that off.

Mr Honeyford: With respect, the 2024 document stated that there would be —.

Mr Rodgers: Sorry. The 2026 document says that the actions that were published in May will be delivered in 2026.

Mr Honeyford: This year, in the next six months.

Mr Rodgers: In 2026, yes.

Mr Honeyford: OK.

We have legally binding targets for 2030 and 2050. You talked about money. We have targets at one end; we have businesses ready to invest; we have opportunities around energy security and economic growth: why has this been allowed to drift?

Mr Snowden: I completely reject the "drift" allegation.

Mr Honeyford: 2026.

Mr Snowden: What has drifted?

Mr Honeyford: In 2021, there was a 2030 target. We are five years in.

Mr Snowden: OK. If you are referring to Transmission Investment and its interconnector proposal as one of the investments that developers say that they are ready to implement — I think that you heard evidence on that at the Economy Committee — I will say that I referred earlier to the fact that multiple organisations in the private sector, among others, have interests in how the target gets delivered. The interconnector project would not be welcomed by many others in the renewable electricity sector. As I said in relation to the lessons to be learned from the RHI scheme, we need to make sure that, in designing the policies, we get those things right. By rushing something such as an interconnector policy, we could permanently bake in higher costs than are necessary for consumers, so we have to make sure that we analyse all those things in a degree of depth that is appropriate and proportionate to the risks and the amount of money involved.

I have made the point that we are not making our policy sufficiently clear to people so that they understand it. That is entirely on us and our communications approach, so I will say this again: we will produce a policy statement from the Minister that will say what we are going to do each year between now and 2030 in order to deliver that renewable electricity target. It will specify the actions that will be taken and the sequence in which they will happen.

Mr T Buchanan: Thank you for being with us this afternoon. A number of action plans have included actions aimed at providing financial support to assist the renewable energy economy. Has enough been done to help people and businesses in Northern Ireland to achieve those aims?

Mr Snowden: The straightforward answer is, probably, no. In the non-domestic sector — businesses — there are the £40-million energy and resource efficiency programmes. The energy efficiency grants scheme was part of those. We launched that scheme in 2024, and a very large number of applications came in. Obviously, there is a huge appetite amongst businesses to invest in energy efficiency measures: it saves them money and helps to decarbonise their activity. Unfortunately, our capital budget is not sufficient to meet the demand for that scheme. We would like to be able to do a lot more to support that, but, unfortunately, the budget needed to take it forward is not available to the Department.

On the domestic side of things — energy efficiency and heat — there is huge demand for grant support for heat pumps and other such things. We have been working with the Department for Communities to coordinate the work that it is doing on fuel poverty and on what it now refers to as the warm healthy homes scheme, which is the successor to the affordable warmth scheme, as well as on our own domestic energy efficiency and heat programme, which will support households that are not low-income households. We need substantial sums of money to deliver that at the level at which we would like to see it delivered. There is a proposition in the draft investment strategy for Northern Ireland (ISNI) for up to £68 million per year to be invested in energy retrofit. That investment strategy has not yet been agreed, however, so the money is not available for us to deliver that.

There is a lot more that we wish to do on that. Those programmes are significant because, on average, an electrified heating system, or heat pump, uses about a third of the energy, overall, of a fossil fuel-, gas- or oil-fired system. If we were able to shift even half of properties off heating oil and gas and on to heat pumps, for example, it would save about a third of the current energy usage in the domestic sector. Those are significant and very important measures, but we need money to deliver them. That is the simple point. Yes, we would love to do a lot more; there is no question about that.

Mr T Buchanan: OK. Your 2026 action plan notes that a draft biomethane policy will be developed with support from the interdepartmental biomethane group. To what extent will that increase producers' and investors' confidence in biomethane? When do you expect that we will see the benefits of that increased production?

Mr Snowden: Mr Rodgers mentioned the RHI scheme. This happened quite recently, but one of the most significant things is that there is an allocation of about £33 million per year from the UK Treasury to decarbonise heat for non-domestic settings — businesses, essentially. The closure of RHI will use up part of that money, but a reasonably substantial sum per year will be left and available for other uses. We have secured the agreement of the Treasury that it will work with us on, and accept from us, a proposal for the use of money for biomethane in industrial settings. That is the most recent thing that has happened; it happened in the past couple of weeks. That will then allow us to have a funding stream in order to develop, with the industry, a viable support system that will help industrial biomethane production. We want to be able to use that to set up a system that will create an industry that is not dependent on subsidy in the long term; that will help to grow the system, making it more effective and efficient; and that will allow that biomethane to be injected into the gas system more generally in the longer term. That is a significant move forward.

Mr Rodgers: The reason that it is important to work with DAERA is that the feedstock is agricultural feedstock and waste feedstock. There are also significant environmental implications in anaerobic digestion to produce biomethane. At the bottom end, there is a really useful gas that can displace fossil fuel gas, but there is also a liquid digestate. We know that, when liquid digestate is spread on the land, there are already excess nutrients in and excess nutrients out, so we have a deal with the excess nutrients. That is why DAERA needs to be deeply involved. The composting of those nutrients and the selling of the compost off the island is the way forward, but we have to do that sustainably — environmentally sustainably as well as financially sustainably. We are working hard with DAERA to get to the answer that will allow us to use the available annually managed expenditure (AME) money that Treasury said that it would look at for a scheme. Like a lot of things to do with energy, it is very complex, and we need to make sure that we do not end up with a perverse outcome for the environment but, rather, that we get something that is truly sustainable.

Mr T Buchanan: When can we expect to see the increase in that? When can we expect to see it come to fruition, if you like?

Mr Rodgers: We have promised that the group's outworkings will be a policy this year. Once the RHI closure is resolved, which should be this year, the AME money will be available for a support scheme, so we have got to try to get that to market, so to speak, as quickly as possible.

Mr T Buchanan: So it is some way down the road yet.

Mr Rodgers: No, no. The money will become available in this financial year. Members will know that over £100 million of available AME was never drawn down and is lost forever. Every year that goes by, there is maybe £10 million to £15 million or so more, so time is of the essence. There is an urgency about this.

Mr Snowden: I think that, specifically, you want to know when we will start to see things happening. I will talk through the sequence of what needs to happen. We need to get the Treasury to agree to and accept our proposition. That could take up to a year, I think, on the basis of experience with other schemes that we have had to administer recently. We then need to have the system set up and operating. I think that, realistically, you are looking at 2028 for that.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): Is such a proposition drafted and with the Treasury, or is that —?

Mr Snowden: Only in outline. The Treasury will need to see a fully worked up and developed business case. That will have to include the mechanism by which the scheme will work and how it will be delivered. All those details will have to be worked out with the industry.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): It is interesting that you have made that point. Tom and I represent the same constituency, where we have assisted a number of businesses, in one way or the other, with navigating some of the challenges that exist in the sector. How have you dealt with the financial opportunities that are potentially forthcoming in your proposal? How do you see that working? Will it be like a renewables obligation certificate (ROC) payment to incentivise people to move in that direction? How will that work?

Mr Snowden: Biomethane is more expensive than methane, even at the current increased prices, so there needs to be a subsidy to make it economically viable for the end users to take it. There would need to be some sort of subsidy arrangement in place. What we do not want to end up with is a continual subsidy at that level, in perpetuity; otherwise, we will develop a sector that will fall away when the AME money from this particular programme is no longer available.

We then need to think about how we incentivise increased efficiency in that process year-on-year. Mr Rodgers mentioned the digestate problem. You have those nutrients. As the technology gets developed, we may be able to produce it as a pellet-form fertiliser. That is a non-carbon fertiliser to start with. Many other parts of the world have a deficit of nutrients, especially phosphates and potassium. We could then export that. That could be a new export product for Northern Ireland, which would help to produce the financial model. In order to make that work, however, we need to ensure that the technology is viable and sustainable. That is why we need to work very closely with our colleagues in the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs to get it right. We have very strong relationships with them. We will drive that forward now that we know that the funding stream will potentially be available.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): Aside from those opportunities, am I right in saying — I am learning about this as I go — that, as a result of that process, there are potential opportunities for the economy from CO2?

Mr Rodgers: Biogenic CO2 is effectively what is produced when you convert biogas to biomethane that you can use in homes and businesses. Biogenic CO2 is a valuable product. It can be used in sustainable fuels such as e-methanol. The answer is yes: there are opportunities for biogenic CO2 because it is not fossil fuel CO2.

Mr Honeyford: I just want to clarify something. I asked you about the completion date in that energy plan. I do not want to put words in your mouth, but I think that you said that it says that those would be actioned in 2026. Yes?

Mr Rodgers: Uh-huh.

Mr Honeyford: Can you show me the line in the action plan that says that?

Mr Rodgers: I do not have it with me, but —.

Mr Honeyford: I will give you it if you want it. Do you want me to —?

Mr Rodgers: Right, OK. It will be somewhere in the introduction, which says, "These are the actions for 2026".

Mr Honeyford: Every year, it says that line.

Mr Rodgers: That is what it says.

Mr Honeyford: Can you tell me where it says that the actions that are in your plan will be delivered in 2026?

Mr Rodgers: It is a semantic point.

Mr Honeyford: No, it is not.

Mr Rodgers: It is there, and it says "2026".

Mr Honeyford: It says "2026" in the date of the document.

Mr Rodgers: No, in the paragraph, it says, "These actions are for 2026". There are six and a half months to go. That is what our focus is. Once we get to January, it will be 2027.

Mr Honeyford: My question to you was about the completion date for the actions. I am asking you to show me the line in the action that has a specific completion date for that action plan.

Mr Rodgers: It says, "These actions are for 2026".

Mr Honeyford: There is no completion date.

Mr Rodgers: No, but, once it gets to 2027, it will not be 2026.

Mr Honeyford: It does not have a completion date.

Mr Rodgers: OK.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): The point has been made. We will move on.

Mr Dunne: Thank you, folks, for your presentation and your answers so far.

I will turn to some of the issues of governance, oversight and accountability. The Audit Office report described some of the governance arrangements as "complex" and "ineffective" in addressing a number of strategy implementation issues. I am keen to establish why the energy strategy oversight group (ESOG) failed to identify and correct weaknesses in planning, delivery and reporting.

Mr Snowden: As I said in response to the one of the Chair's questions, we recognise in retrospect that the first year's action plan could have been tightened up substantially. At the time, the energy strategy programme board, as it was called, was responsible for that. There is evidence in the minutes that it examined the actions, and there was some challenge on them. We have learned from that experience. It is now called the "energy strategy oversight group". The change in name is not material to how the group functions. It challenges the actions; it asks questions about feasibility; and it wants to get detail on how actions will be implemented. We then get reports from the group about how Departments are progressing against the actions.

I would never say that we have any system operating perfectly. We certainly learned lessons from what the Audit Office found, and we have been applying those lessons in how the material is provided to the energy strategy oversight group and how discussions are recorded in order to give transparency on what is happening.

I was here maybe 18 months ago talking about the skills strategy, and I got a lot of questions about cross-departmental collaboration. In my experience, it is and can be challenging to deliver, but this is probably one of the best examples that I have seen in my career of collaboration across Departments. We just talked about the work that we are doing with the Department of Agriculture on biomethane. You see collaboration across a number of Departments; for example, with the Department for Communities on home energy efficiency, the affordable warmth scheme, fuel poverty and so forth and with the Department for Infrastructure on some transport-related issues. We are working collaboratively with many Departments. That is sometimes difficult to capture in the documentation, but it is probably one of the most positive aspects of the way in which the strategy is being delivered.

Ms Anne-Maire McConn (Department for the Economy): The report covers the period between the production of the energy strategy document and the beginning of the implementation. Then there was a change in governance. The complexity appears from the fact that there were different governance set-ups for those aspects. There was significant engagement, and lots of groups were set up to make sure that everybody had their say on the energy strategy document. The Audit Office said that the document was well produced and very effective. It then moved straight from being a project to a programme.

The intention behind that was to ensure that there was absolutely no gap between the production of the document and the beginning of delivery at a point down the line. Then the governance was reviewed and simplified. Again, the Audit Office report welcomed the fact that it was simplified. It is now simply an energy strategy oversight group. Below that, there is an action plan working group in which the action plan leads nominated by the grade 3s on the energy strategy oversight group nominate a delivery lead. That working group meets every two months and reports to the oversight group. Then there are all the policy teams. The structure is fairly simple and straightforward now, and it works really well because everybody knows what their role is.

Mr Dunne: That review — the new workings and governance arrangements that you talked about — was on the back of the Audit Office report.

Ms McConn: No, that was done in 2023.

Mr Dunne: OK. I will return to the ESOG issue. Who had the authority to delay, change or abandon actions? We are keen to know why such decisions were sometimes taken without the formal approval of the ESOG.

Mr Snowden: Decisions will be taken by the Departments responsible for delivering those actions. One of the features of our system of government is that each Department is separate and operates under the direction and control of its Minister. If there are priorities in a different Department that mean that an action cannot be taken forward, nobody in the Department for the Economy, whether in the energy strategy oversight group or elsewhere, has authority to prevent that change. We attempt to prevent those actions from falling off the list by working collaboratively, if we can, with Departments. Ultimately, however, the authority rests with the Department responsible for delivering the action.

Mr Dunne: The Audit Office report recommended a review of the governance arrangements. For clarification, has that been carried out yet? If so, what did it conclude, and when will we see improvements in the governance arrangements?

Ms McConn: Since the Audit Office report was published, we have been working to implement each of the recommendations. For example, we did significant work to develop the reporting of the metrics. We produce a dashboard on that now, and we publish a statistical report every year. We have also made sure that there is more comprehensive documentation on what is discussed and links with the climate change information and so on.

We have been working those things through in the recommendation. We also have a specific process whereby the energy strategy oversight group works through that feasibility assessment and the specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) targets and all that. That is documented and delegated to the delivery lead, who is told, "This is what you will operate to as you progress this". We have upped the number of reporting cycles so that the working group reports to the oversight group every two months. That gives the group more opportunities to spot things that are going off track and to have a conversation around the table about whether one target will be delivered and whether another target will be an issue. We have been introducing all of that.

The policy statement that we will produce in the coming months will have the milestones in it. That is another thing that we are doing. That was a major issue that was identified in the Audit Office report. That statement will have the milestones in it and will work through into next year's action plan. As well as the one-year milestones that will be delivered by the end of that year, we will have the milestones for the following years. Each year, those milestones will be refreshed and will hopefully be more detailed as we get closer to them each year. Once we have produced that document, we will have all the enhanced governance in place and will seek the review to confirm to ourselves that we have implemented everything properly and there are no further improvements that we can make at that point.

Mr Dunne: OK. Thank you. Finally, on a wider point, you mentioned some examples from the UK and beyond. I am looking for some thoughts from you around the fact that Scotland amended its climate legislation in 2024. The Climate Change Committee advised that the 2030 target was no longer achievable or credible. Scotland repealed its 75% reduction target for 2030 for a number of reasons, including the unachievable targets and the 2030 bottleneck. One of the key findings was that the targets needed to be realistic and, importantly, affordable for consumers. Do any of you feel that Northern Ireland should consider doing that?

Mr Snowden: I will decline to answer that question, because it is very much a political point rather than a ministerial one.

Mr Dunne: I am asking in relation to your professional and technical backgrounds and your expertise on energy. Ultimately, the cost for consumers is paramount for me, as an elected representative.

Mr Snowden: The energy strategy also places the interests of consumers at its very heart. The whole purpose and vision of the energy strategy is net zero affordable energy for Northern Ireland. However, I will not answer the question about whether the Assembly should change its legislative targets. It is not appropriate for me to answer that question.

Mr Dunne: I have seen their impact on major infrastructure projects, such as the A5 and other key projects, that are impacting on the economy in Northern Ireland, so it is a serious discussion. You will have seen what has been done in Scotland. I appreciate that it is moving away from the specifics of the report under review today, but it is a very important issue.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): I understand why you cannot answer that question. You cannot delve into policy-related political questions, and that is fine.

Mr Burrows: In contrast to the position in England, where a legacy IT risk assessment framework has operated for several years, there is a lack of understanding of the extent of legacy IT systems being used in the Northern Ireland Civil Service. What is being done to address that?

Mr Snowden: Is that for the energy strategy?

Mr Burrows: Sorry, I was running late from the Secretary of State's meeting, and I have asked the wrong question.

Mr Snowden: That is a Department of Finance question.

Mr Burrows: Sorry, I have got you now. I recognise that the Department cannot deliver the energy strategy without effective collaboration with other Departments. For example, we learned in a previous inquiry that the Department of Education continues to undertake construction work without an eye to future energy efficiency, only for retrofitting work to be required later at an increased cost. What is the Department doing to achieve better cross-departmental working and better value for money for Northern Ireland as a whole?

Mr Snowden: I mentioned in response to Mr Dunne or Mr Buchanan that the energy strategy is probably one of the best examples of collaboration that I have seen in my career across multiple Departments. We try to make sure that we can all agree on actions that will serve the purposes of multiple Departments or agencies and align our objectives as far as possible. That said, we cannot have any degree of control over specific actions taken by, in that case, the Department of Education in its building standards and so forth. However, we can encourage people to take advantage of the support systems that are there.

The building regulations, which, I believe, are currently sitting with the Executive, will be one way in which, across the whole system, something like the example that you have just cited would not happen again.

Mr Burrows: Why did it take almost three years after the publication of the energy strategy for progress against the headline targets to be formally measured and reported?

Mr Snowden: Specifically, that relates to the energy savings target. The energy savings target or the figures that relate to it are created by collating information from about 10 different sources because they relate to 10 separate interventions that will produce energy savings. Those are figures produced by several organisations that are responsible for collating information. Some of that is produced by the Office for National Statistics, some of it is produced by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), and some of it is produced by other organisations, such as the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) in the UK. We have to wait until that information can be collated. For the 2022 action plan, the first time that any information in relation to that was available was 2024. Unfortunately, it was almost three years after the strategy was published before the first figures were available to report on for that measure. We have more frequent information available on the other targets, specifically the renewable energy consumption target, which has been produced quarterly since 2014.

Mr Burrows: Three years is not really acceptable, is it? I know that you have outlined some challenges and reasons, but —.

Mr Snowden: A significant target of the strategy is energy savings. You need to have robust information on which to assess whether you are moving in the right direction on that. It might surprise the Committee to learn that it is not that uncommon in economic and energy-related statistics to work with figures potentially up to two years after the event.

Even in relation to trade and exports, for example, our figures are significantly delayed before they are available to us. That is not ideal. We have, as Anne-Maire mentioned, produced a statistical report on our progress against the metrics in the energy strategy. We are looking at how we can develop our data sources to give us additional information as well. For that key headline target in the strategy about energy savings, we need robust information that is reliable, and, unfortunately, that takes longer to appear than we would like.

Mr Rodgers: We now have a public-facing dashboard that is updated as soon as new information comes in. That 15·6% figure on the energy saving target is updated on the dashboard for any member of the public to see. That might get updated next month as a new figure comes in. We are now on a rolling basis where there is much better information even though quite a lot of it is lagged.

Mr Gildernew: I will make a comment first and then ask a couple of questions. There has been a serious leak at a biomethane production facility in my constituency in recent weeks. That is being investigated by the NIEA, and I do not want to dwell too much on that. All I want to say is that we cannot build a green future on the basis of unsafe, unacceptable or unsustainable practices. It is key that what we do meets the needs of communities as well as the economy and that smells, risks or gas leaks are addressed before we roll out any schemes. That is a comment.

Mr Snowden: I am also responsible for the Health and Safety Executive. Biomethane is subject to the same gas safety regulations as fossil fuel gas. There is no question of rushing stuff that is not safe. It is subject to the same safety requirements.

Mr Gildernew: Yes. I am flagging that. I have never had any issues raised about that, so it would seem to be problematic. It is probably a management issue, but it needs to be addressed; otherwise people will not have confidence that the technologies or the systems are sustainable for communities.

I visited a development in my constituency where social houses are being built. I am told that they are not just carbon-neutral but carbon-positive. They are generating electricity, and the average heat and electric cost is estimated at £100 per year, delivering significant value for the tenants, the economy and the environment. The houses also have a minimum lifespan of 100 years. Are we moving quickly enough to adopt new technologies in building? I am told that those houses cost no more than current building methods. There is almost a perception that they would be expensive and that is why we are not moving more quickly. Are we adopting new technologies quickly enough in buildings to future-proof?

Mr Snowden: There are two parts to the response to that question. You attended a new-build development of social housing. New builds are subject to building regulations. I mentioned that new, upgraded building regulations are sitting with the Executive awaiting their consent. They would start to apply some new technology requirements in all properties. For example, heat pumps, solar panels and battery storage would become standard additions to new-build property.

Mr Gildernew: All of which are in that development.

Mr Snowden: It is fair to say that the social housing sector is more advanced than the private sector in that regard when it comes to new builds, but, as the building regulations come in, standards will be uplifted for all sectors.

The second part of my answer is about existing properties and retrofits. We build in the region of 6,000 houses per year, which is not enough. There are about 825,000 household properties in Northern Ireland. If we are to make progress on new technology updates, that involves the retrofitting process. I mentioned the warm healthy homes scheme, which the Department for Communities is rolling out as a replacement for the affordable warmth scheme. That will be for low-income households. Our domestic energy efficiency and heat programme will dovetail with that for other people.

If the money is available to deliver those schemes, that financial support will be significant in encouraging people to adopt the new technologies, and that will make significant inroads into our efficiency savings.

Mr Rodgers: May I add to that? Recently, our Minister announced the smart meter design plan. There is a massive opportunity to tackle fuel poverty in lower-income homes that can be led by the Housing Executive and the housing associations. The prize, if you like, comes with NIE doing the procurement this year and next year and the roll-out into the best part of 900,000 homes, led in the lower-income homes, over three years.

The opportunity is as you describe it: given what people pay for electricity today, if the landlord adds solar panels, a battery and a heat pump, with the smart meter, we can see service providers providing heating and power at the same price as people currently pay just for power. Heating and power for the price of just the power is the prize. We see real-life examples of that, because people are building homes in advance of the building regulations, and it is what we should do, because it will really help a lot of the people whom we need to help.

Mr Snowden: Another project that you will be familiar with is South West College in Enniskillen.

Mr Gildernew: Yes.

Mr Snowden: It has a control panel in the foyer showing how much electricity it has used each day. My first visit to it was in April last year. At 3.00 pm that day, it had used five pounds' worth of power to run a very large building.

Mr Gildernew: The houses that I visited are not even connected to electricity, yet they charge the batteries for the workers and the site — lights and everything. It is phenomenal; there is huge potential there.

Thanks for that. I will come to the updated performance figures in the information that you sent us last week. There are some inconsistencies with the 2025 NIAO report; I will work my way through those. The baseline figure for measurement of the target of 25% energy savings from buildings and industry appears to have changed from 8,000 gigawatt-hours to 6,920: what is the reason for that change?

Mr Snowden: That change was made by the responsible UK Government (UKG) Department. When the energy strategy was set, the 8,000 GW baseline was the figure that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero had reported. After the energy strategy had been published, it said that the baseline was lower, having been recalculated. That is why the baseline and the target number — the 25% — have changed.

To provide reassurance, the change is not massive. In the information that I sent last week, I stated that we had achieved 15·6% of the revised target. If we had been working to the old target, the number would have been 13·8%, which is obviously lower because it is a proportion of a higher denominator. We are still making headway towards that target.

Mr Gildernew: Why did the British Government reduce the baseline figure?

Mr Snowden: They must have revised their calculations. That is not a unique occurrence. One of the challenges of our measurement system is that there are often retrospective changes as figures are adjusted. It happens to figures for economic growth, inflation, unemployment — everything. The figures are revised by the statisticians as new information becomes available.

Mr Rodgers: They will change again, unfortunately; we just have to live with that.

Mr Gildernew: OK. It is claimed that there has been a 24% increase in the size of the green economy, but the figure for the size of that economy has gone down from £1·58 billion, as quoted in the NIAO report, to £1·5 billion. How can there have been a 24% increase?

Mr Snowden: It was £1·1 billion.

Mr Gildernew: It is £1·51 now; it was previously £1·58 billion.

Mr Rodgers: At the beginning, it was £1·1 billion.

Mr Snowden: Yes.

Mr Gildernew: I am looking at paragraph 16 of the report's executive summary:

The figure that you gave us recently was £1·51 billion.

Mr Rodgers: It is a statistical survey by UKG.

Mr Snowden: I will explain how that number is calculated. A statistical survey of businesses is undertaken by the Office for National Statistics. It does not cover the entire sector.

It produces figures that are based on that sample size and extrapolates from those. That is a standard enough process in official statistics. There is a confidence interval in that because of the sample size. I think that the 24% increase refers to the difference between the date of the strategy and the current date, rather than from the last reported point. In 2021, the baseline figure was £1·1 billion, and now it is £1·5 billion.

Mr Gildernew: OK. Given that there are a lot of moving parts in that and a lot of changes, do you understand why it might be difficult at times for people to have confidence in the figures? Does the fact of all those things changing create a crisis of confidence that you find difficult to manage? Are there better ways of doing it?

Mr Snowden: There needs to be an understanding of what the figures are and the most appropriate way to use them. We have to be careful about the comparison of one quarter with the next quarter or one six-monthly report with the next six-monthly report. We need to see, over a number of years, a trend that goes in the right direction overall. That is most significant. By comparison, in my previous job in Land and Property Services (LPS), which is very much an operational business, we had real-time data that was quite precise. We could use that data to manage performance in a much more finely tuned way. The metrics here are not suitable for the same kind of performance management. We need to look at the additional metrics that we have and then monitor our delivery of the things in the action plans and the other policies that need to be taken forward.

Earlier in today's meeting — this is why there may be a lack of confidence in our progress towards achieving the targets — I said a couple of times that we had not clearly explained the sequence of things that need to happen and how those things will interlink and produce the outcomes that we are looking for. There are 80 separate actions in the action plans that we have produced to date, and that is taking out the rollover actions and the actions that have been duplicated from one action plan to the next. It is difficult to map out how all of those are linked, so we must have a simplified explanation of the core actions that we need to take in, for example, domesticating energy, business use, the energy production sector, transport and so forth to allow us to say, "This is how we are going to achieve those targets".

Mr Gildernew: If you are providing figures to a lay audience, those figures need to be understandable. Not everyone will understand that that is what is behind some of the changes. What assurance can you provide that the revised approach to metrics and data is robust enough to support timely corrective action between now and 2030?

Mr Snowden: I go back to the point about corrective action. As I said, this is not an operational system like the one that Land and Property Services had, in which I could look at the information that was available and take management action to make adjustments and correct our course. We do not, unfortunately, have control over all the factors that impinge on those indicators, or they are not amenable to management action in the same way as if I were running a service of that nature. Therefore, we are unable to use those metrics as a way of adjusting course and taking corrective action, although they tell us whether the things that we are doing are helping us to move in the right direction.

We have much more detailed and substantive statistical reports produced. There have been reviews of the statistical methodology for, for example, the renewable energy consumption figures. I saw commentary from some stakeholders in the industry suggesting that that manipulated the figures in our favour; in fact, that makes it more difficult for us to achieve them, not easier. You can place much more reliance on that being a robust number and demonstrating genuine progress. The Department has a strong capability in its analytical statistical services division. It works alongside us to produce the metrics and reports that will give us a clear picture of how we are progressing.

Mr Gildernew: You went back to the point about corrective action; I will go back to the point about assurance. Are you able to provide assurance?

Mr Snowden: The assurance that we are able to respond —

Mr Gildernew: Yes.

Mr Snowden: — and improve things in the right way? The large volume of data, information and evidence that we have gives plenty of assurance that we are doing the right things and progressing in the right way.

Mr Wilson: A few of my points have already been covered, so I will develop a few more as I go. I will kick off with a general question. Do you feel that part of the reason why you are sitting here with this type of report is the overreach of the proposals versus their realistic implementation?

Mr Snowden: Overreach or ambition, I suppose. The action plans contain a lot of ambitious actions. The Chair, in his opening remarks, made the point that the Climate Change Act 2022 set a sizeable challenge. We have to be ambitious in what we attempt to achieve in the delivery of the strategy. Targets have been set for us in legislation, not least for renewable electricity. A conservative approach would not help to get us moving in the right direction.

Since the early days of delivering the strategy and the production of the action plans, we have learnt that we need to be a lot more robust about what we include in an action plan and whether it is feasible to deliver that in the year in which it is expected. Sometimes, there is a tendency towards optimism in saying what we will be able to achieve in the next 12 months. That optimism will not always be matched by the reality of what it is possible to do in the time available to us. We have definitely learnt from that.

There is a huge amount of work to be done. At the outset, I said that we had delivered a lot. I do not want this to sound like jargon, but we need to do a lot of enabling in order to allow the more substantive actions to be taken forward, which, in and of themselves, may not make a difference on any of the individual targets. Unless we take them, however, we will not be able to deliver the rest. One pretty clear-cut example is that the way in which the grid connection policy operated was a significant financial barrier to some renewable electricity projects. The policy has wider benefits to households and businesses across the board. Specifically, however, if you wanted to put up a wind turbine and needed to get investment made in the grid, that could result in a substantial cost, running into tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of pounds, depending on the nature and location of the project.

One of the changes that we have made as part of the energy strategy is to the grid connection policy. That change socialises some of those costs and removes some of those financial barriers. In itself, that will not make any difference to any of the targets, but it is a very important thing to have put in place to get us started. Lots of actions in the early stages of the delivery of the strategy are like that. I have said a couple of times that we have to be clear about how each of the things that we are doing links towards delivering those targets and why they are important to do.

Mr Wilson: I am not surprised that it all appears to be something of a quagmire, and, to be perfectly honest, I cannot see that improving. I am passionate about this. It is my view that, once we move away from a UK-wide contribution-based response that truly takes account of our unique circumstances and away from the productive collaboration, with achievable targets in mind, with England, Scotland and Wales, you will, because of missed targets, be back here quite a few times. That is my personal opinion, but I will flesh that out.

You were talking about turbines. I spent 10 years in my local council's planning department. I would like to hear your views on planning policies on renewables, because they are not up to speed. You spoke about the need for policy change: I do not feel that planning policy is in any way responsive enough to meet the targets that you have set. Your Department does not have enough say in how planning policy is discussed, debated and then implemented in the 11 councils. I have seen turbines and other renewable initiatives being severely delayed. What is your response to that? How do you see that element of progress being implemented, given that there are only so many instructions that your Department can issue? How do you beat that?

Mr Snowden: One thing to say before I answer your question directly is that you referred to the target as our target. Of course, the target was set by the Assembly, not by the Department. It is important always to bear that in mind. We did not arbitrarily set the target.

Mr Wilson: That is an issue. I feel that you treat it as a political issue, and you have said that. It falls down because the rubber hits the road departmentally, technically, financially and from a common-sense point of view, and that is where the wheels come off the cart. That is my personal view.

I would like to hear your response on the planning issue.

Mr Snowden: The revised strategic planning policy statement was agreed by the Executive in, I think, January this year and published in April. It is now out. That makes important changes to how planning policy operates. One of those changes is to the safety radius around a turbine, which was previously set at 10 times the diameter of the turbine blades. It is now standardised at, I think, 1 kilometre. That is significant because, on an existing turbine site, if you wanted to do what is called "re-powering" of a turbine, which is basically to make it generate more electricity by making it a bit bigger, you would not, because of the safety radius, be able to do that on more than 90% of the existing turbines in Northern Ireland. However, the change in policy allows those turbines to be re-powered. That is a significant change in the policy.

There are, however, other planning policies that start to create challenges for us. One is that most of the suitable sites that remain available in Northern Ireland are in areas of outstanding natural beauty (AONBs), where it will be difficult to get planning permission to put a wind turbine or any other renewable generator. Therefore, we have to look at the alternatives, since most of the viable private sector sites have been taken. One approach is to look at the substantial holdings of public-sector land in Northern Ireland. In my previous job as chief executive of Land and Property Services, I set up the government land and property database. That gives us a clear overview of what public land is available and where it is located, and it is all mapped out in some detail. We are working with Forest Service and Northern Ireland Water, which are the two largest landowners in Northern Ireland, on how we can use their land — this appeared in a couple of the action plans — as sites for renewable generation capacity.

After that, you are into how the planning system operates, its efficiency and how fast you can get decisions taken. That is not our area of responsibility. A lot of that is now devolved to local authorities — the councils — to make the planning decisions, so it is beyond our capability to give them directions on that stuff. What we do, however — we have done it at the suggestion of the Department for Infrastructure — is talk to councils about the strategy, why renewables are necessary and what we need to achieve, and we get into a discussion about how we can address some of the delays and backlogs in the system and what we might do to make sure that those projects go through the system faster.

Mr Wilson: I will move on to home heating specifically. This is a reality for rural Northern Ireland, and my constituency of Newry and Armagh is no different. There are huge costs associated with an average homeowner in a 50-plus-year-old house embracing energy-efficient, up-to-date heating mechanisms, such as a heat pump, in an old, draughty structure. Yes, you might say that that will lower your bills, but it will be expensive to install and that house will still be draughty and old, so it will cost more to make it more airtight. You then introduce an electric source of heating and, to an extent, eliminate ventilation, and you will then have to replicate that through forced air or some other method that will cool the house again. In reality, how, initially, do you see that working effectively and affordably? You mentioned incentivisation, and that will be a key part of it all but at what cost? Where does it end? Maybe this is a better question: where does it even start?

Mr Snowden: The whole-house approach, as it is called, to those energy-efficiency measures has been a pretty common feature of the approach since at least the middle of the last decade, when the affordable warmth scheme was launched in, I think, 2016.

The idea is not to do simply one part of that. The previous warm homes scheme was focused primarily on loft insulation and other straightforward measures. It cost £1,000 per property on average for those that we supported. When we moved to the affordable warmth scheme, the cost went up to closer to £10,000 per property, because, at that point, we were looking at the heating system, the windows, loft insulation, cavity wall insulation and draught exclusion — some of the things that you mentioned. To be honest, properties do not have to be that old. My house is 24 years old and probably would not be suitable.

Mr Wilson: I pass a development that has just started, and there is fibre wool in 100mm cavities. That is a scandal.

Mr Snowden: Building regulations will address some of what requires to be done, such as putting the right insulation into new-build properties. Even relatively young properties, however, will need to have some work done to them to move them to heat pumps.

Mr Wilson: Who pays for that?

Mr Snowden: That is where our support schemes come in. We will be able to deliver those only if we get the capital funding required from whatever source we can, whether the investment strategy allocates that or the Executive are able to make that money available to us. We need a grant support scheme for householders. For low-income householders, that will be the warm healthy homes scheme, which the Department for Communities will introduce to replace the affordable warmth scheme. For everybody else, it will be the domestic energy efficiency and heat programme that we are working up. Those two things will —

Mr Wilson: Will that be means-tested?

Mr Snowden: The second one? No, the affordable warmth scheme is the one for low-income households, so we need to work through the detail of that through a consultation process that is to start soon. The idea is for grant support to be available for homeowners to allow them to invest in that kind of property.

Obviously, we need to think about this. My house, as I said, is 24 years old. It has an oil-fired boiler that will not, going by the law of averages, last for many more years, I suspect. It will have to be replaced, so I will have a decision to make about whether I replace that oil boiler with an air source heat pump, for example. As technology advances, different options will become available.

Mr Wilson: Aspects of the policy place a considerable onus on agriculture. What collaboration or joined-up thinking are you promoting or do you envisage having with the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs to deliver on some of your objectives?

Mr Snowden: I can point to two specific things. One is biomethane, which we talked about earlier. We have the issue of nutrient run-off into Lough Neagh and the blue-green algae to which that contributes. There is an opportunity for us, working jointly between Departments, to come up with a solution that will, essentially, fix two problems. For us, it would be energy transition; for the Department of Agriculture, it would be nutrients. That is an area where we will work together closely. We spoke about that in a bit of detail in response to Mr Buchanan.

The second issue on which we have been working closely is the geothermal energy demonstrator. As I mentioned, the deep geothermal project is being delivered at Greenmount College. That is the kind of project that can produce large amounts of energy. Greenmount has greenhouses that it uses to produce horticultural products, and the two Departments working together could get significant benefits from that. We are working jointly on several projects.

The biomethane project also deals with household brown bin waste, which is another issue that we could provide a solution to. That brown bin waste could be used as part of the feedstock for the biomethane production process as well as for slurry. Again, that is a Department of Agriculture responsibility.

Mr Wilson: Lastly, RHI focused on heat but created a chill factor, you could say, in the wider community. There is scepticism about government-operated grant schemes. How does your Department plan to turn that scepticism into enthusiasm? That is a big challenge.

Mr Snowden: We will do that only by demonstrating effective delivery and that things are working as they should. That will then address the legacy of the problems. If there were to be any indication that we were making the same mistakes or repeating the process, people would rightly be sceptical of us. We will get that enthusiasm only if we show that we are delivering things effectively, which is why I have said quite a few times that we need to take sufficient time and put proportionate effort into making sure that we do them correctly. They all involve substantial sums of money; they potentially tie consumers into high costs if not done correctly; and there are lots of competing interests that would like us to do things in particular ways. We need to do the analysis and detailed policy work to make sure that we are effective.

Mr Rodgers: I go back to a point that you made at the beginning of your contribution, Mr Wilson. I think that the chief executive of the Utility Regulator (UR) said to the Economy Committee yesterday that, without being at 48% renewable electricity, electricity prices would be 50% or 60% higher. Renewable electricity is putting a downward pressure on prices. That is why we need to keep increasing the proportion. We have had seven energy crises over the past 50 years, including two in the past four years. Those will not stop, so it is about having control over what we pay. All the points that you made are really valid. It is a question of getting on with the delivery and keeping up with the technology so that we can deliver cost-effective solutions to all of the things that you talked about.

Mr Honeyford: The Committee has received copies of the report on energy from the NI Chamber, which speaks for the business community and stakeholders in the sector. Were officials involved in that report? Do you have any thoughts on it?

Mr Snowden: No. We were not involved in the production of the report. It is very much the chamber's report. It states in a couple of places that industry recognises the challenges that we face. I have discussed a lot of the points in the report with the chief executive. She mentioned the opportunities for secondments to the Department to work in policy areas in which we need commercial expertise to help us to work through the detail of how some of the schemes or policies will be implemented. There is not an awful lot in the report that I disagree with. It is pretty much in line with what, we know, needs to be done.

Mr Honeyford: Businesses talk about urgency. They feel that, while they are sitting ready, the Department is moving more slowly than industry would like. Is that a fair enough comment?

Mr Snowden: We get such feedback regularly. The gas sector, for example, would like us to move a lot faster on biomethane. The renewable generators would like us to move a lot faster on things such as the support scheme for renewable electricity. There is no question that lots of business areas would like to see us move faster on some policies. We have responded to all of that feedback. We now have regular engagement on many of the issues in the energy strategy with working groups that were set up by the CBI. We are developing those working relationships, which has been productive.

When I first arrived in the Department, one of the things that were evident to me was that it was quite insular. Many people in business would say that they have no real idea of who does what in the Department or of what we are working on. We have spent quite a bit of effort on trying to address that over the past few years. I think that business representative organisations would say that access to and engagement with the Department have substantially improved over the past couple of years.

Mr Honeyford: You mentioned the renewable electricity guarantee price scheme, which is in the action plan for this year. The reason why I am pushing you on that is that there is no mention of accountability for the actions in that plan. The wording used is, "The actions for 2026 are", but, in 2025, the wording used was, "The actions for 2025 are". The final design of the terms and conditions was in last year's document. How can investors have confidence to move forward with investments when they have not seen the Bill?

Mr Snowden: The Minister sent a paper on the renewable electricity price guarantee Bill to the Executive last week. Unfortunately, it was not agreed for discussion on the agenda for today's meeting, but the Bill has been prepared. The detailed design work has been done. Similar to the way in which we approached, for example, the RHI scheme, when the Bill is introduced in the Assembly, we will move forward with the detail of the design and the regulations that will flow from the primary legislation thereafter. There will be a lot of engagement, especially with the Economy Committee, on what the detail of that looks like. At this point, we need the Executive to approve the Bill's introduction in the Assembly to allow us to move forward.

Mr Honeyford: What is the latest date on which the Bill can be introduced so that it can be enacted before the end of the mandate?

Mr Snowden: We cannot now achieve Committee Stage before the summer recess, but the Bill could have its First Reading.

Mr Honeyford: OK. What was the cause of the blockage in the Executive?

Mr Snowden: I assume that they have a busy agenda.

Mr Honeyford: OK, no problem. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): OK. Do members have any other questions that they wish to ask? Are we content? OK.

Thank you for being with us and for taking quite a number of questions and answering them in detail. We got off to a bumpy start when you last visited, but, hopefully, the road is now clear, and we can expect to see clear evidence that lessons are being learned, as you have outlined, and that the Department can carry out the important role of leading on a strategy that ensures that Northern Ireland meets its obligations on these important energy issues. There is a lot going on, and we appreciate that you have shared a lot of information with us today. We will engage further with the Department, and we hope that you can continue to update us on any progress that is made.

Does the Comptroller and Auditor General have anything to say before we end the evidence session?

Ms Dorinnia Carville (Northern Ireland Audit Office): No.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): OK. Stuart?

Mr Stuart Stevenson (Department of Finance): I will make one brief comment, Chair. From a Department of Finance perspective, this was quite a technical session. Nonetheless, there was a very important exchange on value for money, which was particularly helpful. I know that the Public Accounts Committee has consistently focused on issues of preventative spend. That was reflected in Mr Snowden's comments about investment in the Government estate and the seven-year payback aspect. The report is very helpful, and the recommendations that flow from it will also be helpful, given some of the public expenditure decisions that lie ahead. The session has been very helpful indeed, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr McCrossan): Thank you, Stuart, and thank you to the C&AG, Dorinnia, and the Audit Office for their help and support. Thank you, Mr Snowden, Ms McConn and Mr Rodgers. We appreciate your time and that you have taken our questions.