Well, in fact, I did want to give a very uplifting view of Wales’s future and how we can, for all the wonders that we’ve achieved in the past, as teachers and preachers, become a nation of scientists and technologists and move our nation onwards. I think that I want to describe us as an energy nation. One of the earliest ecological poems in the Welsh language, ‘Torri Coed Glyn Cynon’, talks of the cutting of the woods of the Cynon valley in order to feed the early industrial revolution, the medieval ironworks of that time. So, we’ve been an energy nation for a long period of time.

But the question we must face now is: how can we be an energy nation once again and how can we become the California of the Atlantic? Because we’ve got the beaches, we’ve got the surf, we’ve got the film studios, some of us have got the beach bodies—[Laughter.] Definitely. I can see the Cabinet Secretary for communities nodding his head at that. But, more importantly, we have universities, we have research, we have a history of technological development that has already been alluded to in several contributions, and we have huge energy resources still, no longer underground—no longer underground in a safe and sustainable way, anyway—but in our seas, in our air, on our hills and in the sun. It’s how we marry our latest understanding of technology with the challenges of things like climate change and the challenges of energy security that I think will give Wales a unique selling point for the next generations, and I think will make Wales that successful small nation, whether we labour still under devolution or become an independent nation.

We can build on some of those building blocks already and I think all of us would want to see Wales become as self-sufficient as possible in terms of our use of energy, in terms of our economy, in terms of the way we develop our own skills and our own people, whether it’s in medicine or in technology or in the education field. And we’re way behind. Scotland already produces, for example, 32 per cent of its electricity from renewables. We are at 10 per cent. One of the countries with the most rich renewable resource, both in the sea and on land, is one of the ones that’s actually lagging behind the United Kingdom in terms of production. Since the early 1970s, we’ve had another little revolution in Wales, because Wales is a nation of competing political narratives. One of the interesting narratives that happened in the 1970s in Wales is the small country, the small nation, kind of approach—people coming into Wales to look for self-sufficiency, living on the land, some crazy ideas and some crazy ways of living from time to time, but leading to ideas, like I said, of alternative technology and a real re-evaluation of how we produce our energy and how we go forward. So, we’re at the cusp at the moment. We still have very poisonous nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-burning power stations. We still have old technology. We have old communication links and old energy grids that are actually holding us back from this new energy future. But we also have the skills and the ideas to do it. I think it turns around three things that I’d like to see us, very imminently, doing here in Wales.

First of all, I would like us to examine how we can establish a Welsh energy company. The Welsh Government has been quite warm of late to this idea, which originated with Plaid Cymru, and I hope that we can work with the Welsh Government and anyone who’s interested in trying to explore the ability for a Welsh energy company to be established in Wales. So, we’ll make the best use and keep those skills and resources within our nation.

A second thing that I think we could look at very seriously in Wales is hydrogen. The Congress in America celebrates hydrogen cell day. Why are they celebrating hydrogen cell day? Because they say that they produced the hydrogen cell economy—particularly in California, as it happens. It originated in 1838, here in Swansea—in Swansea, with William Grove, an absolute genius, if you examine his history: a barrister who became a scientist, and a leading scientist at that, and developed the hydrogen cell technology that is still, in principle, that which can drive our trains now, our public transport, commercial vehicles, and, perhaps more for the private vehicles and private cars, looking at where we develop an infrastructure around electric cars and electric vehicles. These two go very well together. These technologies—electric vehicles and hydrogen technology—go very well together with renewable energy, because it’s a storage system that you can use in your transport system that helps smooth out the infrequencies that we get, particularly in renewable energy, and particularly with wind.

But, of course, the other thing that we can do—the third thing—has already been alluded to. It is the tidal lagoon. So, we turn to Swansea once again, where, instead of losing, as we did 150 years ago, that technology that was originated in Swansea and ended up in California, let’s make sure that this technology, which can be trialled in Swansea as the pathfinder project, as recommended by the Hendry review, isn’t lost to us and does become the technology that we now take forward and learn from, and use the skills from.

So, to conclude, as is traditional on this day, with some words of Dewi Sant, when he told us, ‘gwnewch y pethau bychain—do ye the little things in life’, and to say that’s a load of rubbish. Like the Californians say, don’t sweat the small things. Let’s do the big things—let’s do the lagoon, hydrogen and electricity.