Good morning, and welcome to the 2022 annual general meeting of National Grid. I'm Paula Reynolds. I'm the chairman of the board, and I must say I'm particularly delighted to be here today because last year I was on a video and the then senior independent director, Mark Williamson, had to conduct the meeting, and it was all quite awkward. Of course, last year was an extraordinary year. I'm pleased to welcome those of you who are in the room who've traveled to be with us today, and I also wanna welcome the shareholders who are online. You may recall that last year on the ballot we put a vote to have the right to hold a hybrid annual meeting, which is to allow those who want to participate online to fully participate, to cast their votes if they wish to call in or send in their questions so that you can be here in the room or you can be online and have the same access. With that change, it gives us the opportunity to change the format a bit. Even though we're still sitting at these desks at the front of the room for those of you who are online who might not see us, the truth of it is we wanna use these annual meetings to get to the questions on the minds of our shareholders, to learn from our shareholders what are the issues that are on the top of their minds and really be engaged in a conversation. You're not gonna get a speech from me, interestingly enough, you'll find as you listen to me. You will get a short presentation from our very capable CEO, John Pettigrew, but it will be a short speech, and really the purpose is to get right to the questions and to have the conversations that I hope we will have. Justine Campbell, who is our, among other things, our corporate secretary, will take a moment in a bit to try to explain how the voting equipment works, to just review that, how you submit a question, particularly if you're online. Importantly, once we get past those preliminaries, we really do wanna get to the conversation. The one thing I will do is I do want to introduce our directors because we've had quite a bit of change. When I became the chair, there were a number of directors who were at or had already exceeded their nine-year tenure, which of course under U.K. governance is the limit for them. We have refreshed the board governance. Immediately to my right is Thérèse Esperdy, who became the senior independent director and a great resource for me. To her right is Earl Shipp, who chairs our Safety and Sustainability Committee. By the way, Thérèse also chairs our Finance Committee. Then, of course, we have Justine there. Our two executive directors are John Pettigrew, as I mentioned earlier, and Andy Agg, who if you have been to this AGM before, you would have met them in the past. We're pleased that they are still with us. To the right of Andy is Liz Hewitt, who is the chair of our Audit Committee. To her immediate right, Ian Livingston, who is the chair of the Remuneration Committee. We have the chairs up here at the front of the room so that you can ask questions of them if you have questions that go to the subject matter of their committees. Also joining us online today are our directors, Jonathan Silver, who's been a director for several years, Tony Wood, who is a new director to the company in the last year, Martha Wyrsch, who's also new to the last year, Anne Robinson, new in the last year, and Iain Mackay, who will be attending his first board meeting, presuming that you will have elected him at this AGM. We have two departing directors, and every time you lose a director, you lose some of the continuity, and the wisdom that they have. Jonathan Dawson, who served nine years plus, and then, Amanda Mesler, who's been on the board four years, has chosen to stand down at this AGM. I just wanna take a moment, because I know they're online, to thank them for their service, their commitment, their constant leaning in, if you will, to the business of the company and the advice that they've offered. With that, the order of the meeting, as I said, is John will kick off with a short report. Justine will then go through the resolutions that you have to vote on. Now, some of these resolutions are less than riveting. They're technical adjustments that we have to make to the governance. There's two that are of particular note. The first is our climate transition plan, which we have submitted to a non-binding advisory vote. We want you to know more about what our plans are with respect to the reduction in greenhouse gases and also to our pathway to net zero by 2050, and so we're asking for your consideration and support of that. Second is our remuneration policy. Every three years, we have to renew the policy in which we compensate our executives. We've tried to simplify that under Ian Livingston's leadership to try to also incorporate some of these new environmental stewardship, sustainability, and governance elements to the plan under which our executives are remunerated. We're obviously asking for your support on all the resolutions, but those are the ones that would be of particular note. With that, again, I thank you for coming, for making the journey to be with us or taking the time to be with us online. With that, I will turn the podium over to our CEO, John Pettigrew. Thank you, Paula. As I speak to you all today, it's with the awareness of a very different macroeconomic and geopolitical environment than a year ago. With the devastating conflict in the Ukraine, a global economic slowdown, rapid rising inflation, and of course, U.K. political uncertainty. The communities that we serve are facing significant cost of living challenges, and the urgency needed to address climate change is accelerating. As we navigate through these challenges, National Grid is focused on positioning our business to deliver net zero while continuing to ensure security of supply at the lowest possible cost for consumers. Our vision to be at the heart of a clean, fair, and affordable energy future has never been more crucial than it is today. That vision is supported by new policies and increased clean energy targets on both sides of the Atlantic. For example, we welcomed last week's Energy Bill, as well as the British Energy Security Strategy, with its ambition to produce 95% of the UK's electricity from low-carbon sources by 2030. In the US, we were pleased to see the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law, creating the opportunity to accelerate the energy transition. However, the cost of living challenge is clearly the immediate focus. Although National Grid's impact on UK consumer bills is relatively small, we want to play our part in keeping consumer bills as low as possible. That's why we worked with Ofgem on the early return of GBP 200 million to our customers from interconnector revenues earned above our regulatory cap. In the US, we're also working hard to provide financial and practical assistance to our customers and communities. For example, our long-term partnership with HeartShare in New York is helping 120,000 families with their heating bills. In Massachusetts, we've implemented more than $1.3 billion in energy efficiency measures over the last three years. In that broad context, let me now turn to our progress in the last 12 months, starting with the strategic transactions that we announced last year. Last June, we completed our acquisition of WPD, and the integration process is well underway. In March, I was pleased to announce our agreement to sell a 60% stake in our gas transmission and metering business to a consortium led by Macquarie, and we expect completion in the H1 of this year. In May this year, we completed the sale of our Rhode Island business. Together, these transactions pivot our portfolio towards electricity and bring even greater visibility and certainty of long-term growth. With such significant portfolio changes during the year, we presented our financial figures on a pro forma basis to reflect the group's underlying performance. Operating profit rose 11% to GBP 4 billion, reflecting good performance in U.K. electricity transmission in its first year of RIIO-T2, the first full contribution from our interconnectors, IFA2 and North Sea Link, higher revenues in Massachusetts following the new rate case, and gains on investments in National Grid Partners. Capital investment from our continuing operations was in line with guidance at GBP 6.7 billion, 19% above the prior year, reflecting the critical role we play at the heart of the energy transition. In accordance with our policy to grow the dividend in line with U.K. CPIH, the board is proposing a final dividend of 33.76 pence per share. In addition, we've reaffirmed our commitment to the five-year framework we set out last year to invest GBP 30 billion-GBP 35 billion in critical infrastructure, 70% of which will be investment in the decarbonization of energy systems. Deliver asset growth of 6%-8% per annum, and drive average underlying earnings per share growth of 5%-7% per annum, while maintaining a strong balance sheet. As one of the U.K.'s largest investors in the delivery of net zero, we're investing at unprecedented levels to benefit consumers today and long into the future. Let me now turn to our progress on our operational priorities. Starting with New York, where we achieved a return on equity of 8.8%, 99% of the allowed level. We delivered capital investment of $2.6 billion, around $300 million higher than last year, the largest element of which was our gas pipeline replacement program. This resulted in strong rate-based growth of 7.6%. We reached settlement on a three-year rate plan for our KEDNY and KEDLI businesses in Upstate New York in January. A new three-year rate settlement for NYPA was approved, including an allowed return on equity of 9%, with CapEx of $3.3 billion over the next three years. In New England, we've made good regulatory progress with a new five-year rate plan for our Massachusetts gas business. This includes an allowed return on equity of 9.7% and a formula which factors inflation into our revenues along the same lines as our electric business. Our achieved return on equity was 8.3%, 85% of the allowed level. While higher than last year, it was short of our target to reach at least 95%. However, this performance only reflects six months of the new rate case and the initial benefits to our cost efficiency program, both of which will have a fuller impact this year, helping to improve returns. Capital investment of $2.1 billion was around $170 million higher than last year, with rate-based growth of 6.7%. In the UK, we've had a successful start to RIIO-T2 in our electricity transmission business. Returning a return on equity of 7.7%, 140 basis points above the allowed level. A significant step up in investment with CapEx increasing by 21% to GBP 1.2 billion. This increase reflects the start of tunnel boring activities on our London Power Tunnels two project and the construction of the world's first T-pylons at Hinkley Connection. Our investment in the UK will continue to grow. Last week, we received approval from Ofgem for two subsea interconnectors between Scotland and the north of England. These green links will form part of the GBP 14 billion investment needed over the next decade to deliver the necessary network reinforcements to support the government's offshore wind targets. In UK electricity distribution, WPD continued to perform well under RIIO-ED1, delivering a return on equity of 13.6%. Capital investment of GBP 899 million was driven by asset replacement and reinforcement, alongside connecting new renewable generation and electric vehicle charging infrastructure. We're working through the detail of the RIIO-ED2 draft determination that was published last month. We'll work hard with Ofgem in the coming months to ensure we agree a price control that meets the needs of our customers, including resilient and reliable networks, as well as enabling the transition to net zero. Moving next to National Ventures, where CapEx was similar to the prior year at GBP 452 million. In the UK, our IFA 2 interconnector had its first full year of operation, and we commissioned the North Sea Link to Norway ahead of schedule. In the US, our community offshore wind joint venture with RWE successfully won the seabed lease in the New York Bight. In our onshore renewables business, we started commercial operations of our 200-megawatt solar project in Illinois. Finally, gas transmission and metering delivered a strong start to the new regulatory period with a return on equity of 7.8%, 120 basis points ahead of the baseline return. Capital investment was GBP 261 million, GBP 57 million higher than the previous year, driven by spend on asset health, emission reductions, and cybersecurity. Overall, you can see that 2021 was a year of strong performance for National Grid while delivering on our strategic pivot. We're now uniquely positioned at the heart of the energy transition, making record levels of investment to deliver a better, more affordable energy future for all. Let me now turn to our priorities and outlook for this fiscal year. Firstly, in the UK, where the government's target to deliver 50 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 will require a significant increase in electricity infrastructure. I know that some here will be particularly concerned about the impact on local communities of the transmission projects needed on the East Coast to deliver decarbonization of the energy system. It's something we care deeply about, and as a consequence, we've carried out extensive studies on route selection even before reaching the current public consultation phase. We appreciate the time and effort the local communities have taken to respond to this consultation. We're reviewing all the feedback and will demonstrate how this has been considered as we further develop our proposals. With these changes needed in the energy system, there are some key questions that need to be considered, including where is it right to use overhead lines and where should cables be buried underground? How should local communities be compensated for hosting electricity infrastructure? The decisions on these issues ultimately sit with government, and they are rightly debating and consulting them at the moment. National Grid is a part of this discussion, and we're also sharing the views that we've heard from local communities directly to government to inform them of their decision making. We want to work with communities, government, regulators, and industry to find the best and fairest solutions for local communities and energy bill payers to enable the investment needed to deliver the government's net zero goal. We're also very conscious at the moment of the heightened awareness around supply security and our focus on delivering world-class reliability across both our transmission and distribution networks, and that's never been greater. We currently have sufficient supply to meet demand in both our gas and electricity networks. Although, as you'd expect, we will closely be monitoring this as we move towards the winter. Finally, in U.K. electricity distribution, we'll maintain our focus in the year ahead on agreeing a settlement for ED2 that provides the flexibility to deliver the investment required. Turning now to the U.S., we'll continue to work with our states in developing net zero pathways. In April, we announced our Clean Energy Vision, setting out our plans to decrease reliance on fossil fuels and increase the use of fossil-free gas, enabling homes and businesses to meet their heating needs without the use of fossil fuels by 2050. The plan sets out four pillars, to continue to increase energy efficiency, to eliminate fossil fuels from our gas network, to give customers tools to maximize the benefits of pairing electric and clean gas, and solutions to support targeted electrification of heating where it's cost-effective to do so. We estimate this hybrid approach could lower home heating costs by 15%-20%, helping to keep energy bills more affordable for our customers. In the next 12 months, we'll channel this work into the public proceedings that are ongoing in both Massachusetts and New York to help formulate pragmatic long-term policy. We'll be building several demonstration projects that support the delivery of this vision. On the regulatory side, we expect decisions on three filings in Massachusetts, as well as an order from the DPU on the future of gas proceedings. In New York, we are preparing for our next KEDNY rate filings. In National Grid Ventures, we expect an outcome on the bid to install increased transmission capacity to Long Island to support up to six gigawatts of offshore wind generation. In summary, National Grid has made significant progress over the last year, and we got another busy and exciting 12 months ahead. We're continuing to invest in scale and at pace in the most efficient and affordable way for all our customers to help ensure that no one is left behind. Our vision is supported by new policies and increased clean energy targets on both sides of the Atlantic. These increased targets, coupled with our strategic transactions, give us even greater certainty of growth into the medium term. Thank you very much for your attention. I'll now hand over to Justine, who will explain the formal business of the meeting. Thank you, John. Good morning, everyone. I can confirm that we have the quorum of shareholders necessary in the room and electronically on the virtual meeting platform, Lumi, so we can proceed with the 2022 annual general meeting. The resolutions for today's meeting are set out in the 2022 notice of meeting, which I propose to be taken as read. Thank you to all those who have registered your votes in advance. As is our usual practice, voting on all resolutions will be by way of a poll. For those of you attending in person today, you'll be voting using the handsets that you've been provided with. Your handset will not be activated for voting until the poll is formally opened by Paula as chair of the meeting at the start of the question and answer session. At that time, instructions will appear on the handset, or you can refer to the instructions that you received during registration. If you do have any problems, please raise your hand and someone will come and assist you. If you have already cast your vote via a proxy, then you do not need to vote again. If, however, you do choose to vote again today, your votes cast at this meeting will replace any proxy that you've already lodged. For those of you attending electronically, once the vote is declared open, please first click on the Voting icon, which will appear on the navigation bar. This will allow you to cast your vote on each resolution. If you require any further guidance on how to cast your vote via the Lumi platform, then please refer to the instructions on the homepage. There's also a user guide available on the Documents tab. Please note that for all AGM attendees, voting will remain open until the close of the meeting. Final results of the voting will be available on our website and will be announced on the London Stock Exchange as soon as practicable. Turning to the business of the meeting, resolutions one to 23 inclusive are proposed as ordinary resolutions. Resolutions 24 to 27 inclusive are proposed as special resolutions. The board is unanimously in favor of each resolution proposed and recommends that you vote in favor of all resolutions. I'll now hand over to Paula to formally open the meeting. Thank you, Justine, for that overview. The polls are now open for voting and will remain open until I announce its closure after the conclusion of the Q&A session. Now we'll move into the Q&A session, and Justine will be coordinating it because she's going to try to go between in-person questions and online questions. To allow us to answer as many questions as possible, we will appreciate your keeping questions short and concise. Of course, all questions that are asked should be relevant to the business of the meeting. Any questions that you might have about your shareholding itself should be put to our registrar, Equiniti. If you would direct any of those personal questions about shareholdings there, we'd appreciate it. If there's a question that cannot be answered today, and every once in a while there is a question that, you know, even baffles the experts, we'll investigate, and we will get back to you with an answer. I'm thinking that we'll take questions for about an hour, but we wanna make sure that we get to all the questions, so we will try to be very efficient in our answers as well. With that, I'm gonna turn the program back to Justine to coordinate. Thanks, Paula. For those of you joining electronically, you can submit questions via Lumi. If you select the messaging icon from within your navigation bar at the top of the screen and type your question into the text box at the top of the page, the question will come here. For those shareholders attending in person, if you didn't register your question earlier at the question registration desk, but you do still wish to ask a question, please make yourself known at any point to one of the marshals, and they'll take you to the reserved seating area in the room. They will then inform you when it's time for you to ask your question. When you're asking your question, as Paula said, please try and keep it concise, and give your name and direct all questions either to Paula or myself. I will try and manage between the room and the electronic platform, and if we receive multiple questions on the Lumi platform and in the room on the same topic, we may group them together and provide a single answer. We'll, as I say, we'll try to give everyone equal opportunity to answer, whether in the room or on the electronic platform. I think we're gonna start with a question in the room today. The first question is a short statement from Tessa Younger from LAPFF, and I think then, Tessa, you're going to ask a few questions. Thank you, Justine. Chair, members of the board, fellow shareholders. My name is Tessa Younger. I speak on behalf of the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum, Northern Trust, and Rathbones. We are signatories to Climate Action 100+, an investor initiative with $68 trillion in assets under management. We engage to support companies in cutting carbon emissions and to accelerate the transition to a zero-carbon economy. In this process, it's vital that government, regulators, and companies work constructively together to deliver this energy transition. We welcome the consistent positive engagement we have had with you and commend National Grid for the adoption of real zero as a goal and actions already taken to address climate change. Our questions to you, Chair and the board are. How can you assure investors that the group Scope 3 targets are in line with remaining within the existing global carbon budget and are fully aligned with remaining with 1.5 degrees? Will you disclose more detail on processes in place to ensure all direct or indirect lobbying is in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement? Finally, will you consider disclosing progress against the Climate Action 100+ benchmark in your reporting to help investors evaluate action against ambition on the transition as other companies have done? Thank you, Tessa, very much for the questions today, and thank you for the quality of the engagement in which you have undertaken with National Grid. I wanna sort of take a moment to say it's exactly this kind of engagement that we learn from and we get better from. As we are trying to navigate this transition to net zero at real zero, it is this quality dialogue that we have with very serious shareholders who've organized themselves that can be so valuable. I think we actually have some good answers to your three questions, and John will share those, his thoughts on those. Obviously there'll be more follow-up in the months ahead. Hi, Tessa. First of all, thank you for your comments. Really do appreciate, and the engagement you've had with National Grid. With regards to the first question, you'll know that we've been working incredibly hard to make sure that we've got detailed, robust, and real plans to deliver on the emission reductions that we've set out. I'm really pleased actually that the climate transition plan that we've set out and looking for shareholder approval on today actually aligns with the 1.5 degrees that you mentioned. What we've been doing is looking at each individual business and setting out plans in detail. Our electricity transmission business, our electricity distribution business in the UK, and our system operator are already aligned with 1.5 and have accreditation with SBTI. What we're going to do now is take the transition plan and look for accreditation for the whole group, so it's absolutely consistent with the 1.5 degrees. In terms of your two other questions, you're probably aware we provide quite extensive and full statements in the annual report on the second point. But we'll look to provide more detail to give you that assurance that you're looking for, and we'll look to do that next year. In terms of your final question, the simple answer is yes. You know, we wanna provide as complete an assessment as we possibly can, so we'll look to align our assessment process with the benchmarks that are being set. Thank you for your questions. That's great. Thank you very much. Thank you. We have another question in the room from Mr. John Farmer. Mr. Farmer, welcome. Would you like to? Mr. John Farmer, shareholder. There are constructive questions on the annual reports and the AGM before a wider question on strategy and performance. May I, as a longstanding shareholder and attender of many of your Birmingham AGMs and also the sensitive AGM you held in London last year, during the pandemic, welcome the move to London. It's entirely appropriate. This is the capital, arguably the world's financial capital, and this is really where you should be. However, will you please hold future AGMs not at the crack of dawn, 10:00 A.M., but at 11:00 A.M.? Shareholders should not have to toil through the London rush hour when, strictly speaking, their Freedom Passes and bus passes are invalid. Even in Birmingham, you, in good times, held lunch at 1:00 or 12:00 or 1:00, and the AGM in the afternoon. Which raises another question, Chairman. Is your 10:00 A.M. start a device to avoid giving us lunch? That's really what I have to ask about the AGM, Chairman, so it's your opportunity to. I'm sorry, but so it's your opportunity to answer, and I would like to make some remarks, as I say, comments on the annual report. Would you like to respond on the AGM? Surely. Well, actually, Mr. Farmer and I met out in the reception area, so his question is not a complete surprise to me. Although I have to say, as an American, I was unfortunately unaware of the Freedom Pass and the logistics of what it would mean by having a 10:00 A.M. AGM. I confess that because I ultimately approve these arrangements, I am the one ultimately to blame, for whom you should blame, and I accept that. I won't even bother to try to defend myself on that decision. I mean, I think bottom line is sometimes we aren't as thoughtful about things as we should be. In the future, I think that we can create a reasonable accommodation here so that you don't have to be here at, as you say, the crack of dawn. As to the issue of the arrangements of food, I have to say that of the many things for which I am responsible, I have to say, I would rather decline to be trying to speak to the catering arrangements at the current time. Only to assure you that we will have appropriate catering arrangements based on a different timing of future AGMs. Well, thank you, Chairman, for a gracious and humorous response and Could I add something, Mr. Farmer? Sorry. Just to say there is actually going to be a bit of lunch available for you on the way out. There you go. I don't know if that's a pleasant surprise or not, but it's gonna be there. Well, thank you. Life will be sustained for next year. Good. Good. Good. A constructive point about the annual report, Chairman, from one who reads a lot of them and with varying difficulty, yours is, compared with others, just about legible. I think you could slightly darken the print. I speak as one with reportedly excellent eyesight, so if I'm finding it a mild strain, then others presumably are. Can I constructively say, I think you could do away with the color. I've just read the J Sainsbury plc annual report, which is monochrome, perfectly adequate, quick to read, whereas some of your graphic designer's excesses are a bit wearisome. There's one page near the beginning where you print in white on pale green, and that's a bit of a strain. You've got pastel backgrounds in many places. I think you could get rid of the lot of it and just print in black on white. I constructively suggest across the page, not in columns, which I suspect would save paper and if read online, scrolling. It's infuriating to have to go up and down, up and down, up and down if one's reading online. Would you care to respond on that before I go on? Well, I think I would simply say that we take your feedback. It is. In fact, it's a twofold challenge. One challenge is the challenge of how much government requires that we report. You know, in other words, what is at the front of the report is what we feel that you would like to know about our company, but then there's hundreds of pages after that that are required. We think that there will be a good time for government to take stock of whether or not all the disclosure that you're being provided is truly valuable to you, and we'll be taking part in those discussions as they take place. As for whether our graphic design people have run amok, we'll take that into consideration as well. I certainly would agree with you. There are some pages that are rather challenging for interpretation, and one of the things that the board took on with management in this last year is this idea of simplifying materials. The use of graphics can be very good, but they should be clear and that we could probably try to reduce our word count because we don't pay our employees by the word. Well, thank you again. I think we're aligned. Thank you again for another constructive and playful answer. The report struck me as a little long, but not exceptionally so. If you're inclined to condense- Okay ... then please do. A small constructive point, can you eliminate abbreviations which may slip off your tongue, but although you publish a glossary, if one's reading online, one has to scroll through 200 pages to get there. The custom, all too common, I'm afraid, of putting in brackets the explanation of the abbreviation on first occurrence, it's not really adequate. Because when you've read a few more pages and it crops up again, you've forgotten what you were told. There's I came across one short sentence where you actually had three abbreviations in the very short sentence, and one despairs. The extra space involved in putting things in full is trivial in 278 pages, I suggest to you. I take your feedback. Thank you. I think you would not be the first to say that the acronyms are just a bit overdone. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you very much. Can I just widen it with a question about strategy and performance? You're doing reasonably well. I mean, you've got a positive total shareholder return. What scope do you see for widening your operations, such as in the United States, to earn a bit more for the company? Can you get access to more franchises, not just New England, or are there other diversification areas, whether geographic or product, that you could exploit. As a subset of that, how ready are you for when the UK government eventually gets around to installing some modern nuclear generation, which is sorely needed in your commendable enthusiasm for clean generation? Government's procrastinated for decades. If only we had some Rolls-Royce small modular reactors and Alpha BT infrastructure, we could build nuclear power stations and not be so dependent on gas. Are you ready for that? I repeat my wider point, what about diversification product or geographic to enhance your already fairly reasonable shareholder return? Well, thank you very much for that question. If you don't mind, I'm going to split it into two pieces. I'll handle the first and then turn it to our CEO. Then if you don't mind, I'd like to maybe get some other shareholder questions forward. Oh, sure. Absolutely. Oh, sure. Absolutely. If we've not answered everything, then we'd certainly be delighted to come back. With respect to your first question, which is, you know, what about strategy? What's on your mind? What we did at the beginning of my tenure as board chair is we sat as a board with John and Andy and said, "What are the things that we should be talking about? Let us not get ourselves so bogged down in every little detail that we miss the bigger picture." We have been doing what we call deep dives at every board meeting where we try to focus on what is the strategic matter of the day, and how should we think about it. Among them is the issue of our U.S. strategy. Certainly, it's one of several topics. As we have gone down this road of trying to deep dive, we also have heard from our leadership that says, "Look, we have just done a very major transaction in the acquisition of WPD. We have major transactions ahead of us." Recently, we closed on Rhode Island, the sale of Rhode Island. We have yet to close on the sale of our gas transmission business here in the UK. We have other things that John outlined. We have had a lot on our plate this year. We are continuing to have the discussions about, for example, what's our future in the US? You know, what are our opportunities? I can assure you that it is very much on the board's mind to look at the U.S., our unregulated businesses where we've had some success because most of them are very tied to regulation, to new technology and what that is going to offer, both in terms of what we have invested in as venture, but what is the direction of technology. It's the most interesting time I've seen in my entire career where there's such a wealth of opportunities. We're trying to dive deeply into them so that we don't simply get intoxicated by the world of possibilities, but that we're very strategic in what our next steps are. We do have to get through this year in finishing the transactions in front of us. With that, JP, I'll turn it to you for nuclear and anything else. Yeah, I think what I said, Mr. Farmer, is, as you can imagine, we spend an awful lot of time thinking through future energy scenarios and what's the mix of generation going to be. In fact, National Grid publishes every year our future energy scenarios, thinking about what potentially could be the opportunities ahead. As part of that, we think not just about nuclear, but we think about offshore wind and onshore wind and solar and actually more recently, things like hydrogen, electrification of transport. All of that we consider and put into the mix. The way that the industry works is that ultimately, if someone comes forward and wants to connect to the transmission system, the National Grid will do the engineering and work out how we do that. You'll know from the history of nuclear in the U.K. that quite often we've done quite a lot of work on new nuclear stations that haven't progressed. The latest Energy Bill, as you know, and the Energy Strategy that the government just announced includes very ambitious targets for nuclear. We will work with our key stakeholders, with our customers, with government to make sure that if and when that does come forward, that National Grid is ready to be able to connect those new generating stations. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for the questions and the challenge. The next question is also in the room. It's from Ms. Gillian Kale. I think I'm gonna have to put my sunglasses on for this one. Sorry. Good morning. Good morning. It's Gillian Kale. I'm a shareholder. Next year, I'm running a conference on resilience. I'll try and hone in on only one area, which is solar energy. You may have already thought of this, but I haven't seen it elsewhere. You've got a lot of wind turbines, and basically, why don't they have solar panels if they're being built in bed so that when they're not moving, they're still producing additional energy? Also, I was gonna ask, are you across your bases taking advantage in your infrastructure of solar panels to cut your own use of electricity? When it comes to customers, and you said you wanted to hold down the cost for them, and you're a National Grid, many of the new devices are all demanding electricity in the home for heating as well as cooling. The U-value, that's the temperature change in many of the walls of the UK housing stock, is not likely to change until about 2050, and even by then, a lot of the old stock is still gonna be there. What are you doing to generally promote with the householders a sort of hybrid between solar and the use of energy? As the population in the UK is growing, so will be the demand. Many thanks. Well, thank you for your question, and thank you for really the thoughtful exposition of what so many of the factors are, because in fact, this very challenge of we're continuing to electrify households, and yet are we going to have the resilient generation mix that we need to have to satisfy? That's very much on our minds. John, do you wanna take? Yes. Thank you for the question. Great set of questions, actually. I'm gonna start, just at sort of macro level. One of the things that, National Grid is doing as the system operator is really thinking through how do we ensure we have a resilient network when we have all this intermittent generation, whether it's offshore wind, onshore wind or solar, and making sure that we can actually operate the system under all circumstances. We've actually set out a goal by 2025 to be able to operate the system with zero carbon generation, and that requires us to develop a whole host of tools to operate the network, and that work is progressing very well. We're thinking about it in terms of the country as a whole, in terms of how we manage resilience. In terms of your specific questions, there is an awful lot of people thinking about consolidation and bringing together renewable generations. National Grid in the U.K., of course, doesn't develop its own offshore wind farms, we only connect them. I have seen a number of developers bringing storage and solar and offshore wind together, and onshore wind together, in fact, and thinking about how they can provide a firm product into the market. I suspect that will continue as the economics for these different technologies continues to evolve. In terms of own use, the answer is yes, we do. We have a number of our facilities where we use solar. Our main office in Boston, for example, is accredited at the highest level for using solar power on its roof. Actually, we've started to provide solar power in some of our operational sites as well, and actually linked that to allow our staff to charge their EVs, for example. In terms of new devices and energy efficiency, I think is the core of your question. You would've seen perhaps in our response to the UK energy strategy document that one of the areas we urge governments to continue to think very carefully about is how we promote energy efficiency. We do a huge amount in the U.S. because in the U.S. we are the supplier. You heard in my remarks this morning that we have invested $1.3 billion over the last three years because we're doing that 'cause we're the supplier in the U.S. In the UK, we believe it's got a massively important role as we think forward to how we manage this energy transition. From the demand side, it's as important as the supply side, and we'll continue to advocate for energy efficiency as well. Thank you very much. I have another question, but I'd like to ask that outside the meeting, perhaps afterwards, if that can be done. I'd love to. 'Cause that's other people here as well. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. We now have a couple of questions which have come in on the platform. They're both from Mr. Val Brankie. Mr. Brandewski, I hope I've pronounced your name correctly. Apologies if not. First question is, the number of shares in circulation equates to 3.6 billion. A few years ago, it was 3.4 billion. Why are we increasing the number of shares issued when instead we should be reducing the number of shares and increasing the earnings per share and making each share more profitable to hold? Thank you very much, Mr. Val Brandewski. I hope you're listening for the answer, and it's a very good question about why our share count has gone up. I would like to say that in fact, our share value has gone up even as our count has gone up, but I'll give that to our CEO to answer specifically. First of all, Val, if you're listening, I hope you're well. We've known each other for many, many years. I'd probably take it back, Val, actually to the announcement that we made last year with our financial framework in which we set out, and as you heard in my remarks this morning, that we're looking to invest GBP 30 billion-GBP 35 billion across National Grid over a five-year period, and that's gonna grow the asset base by 6%-8%, and we're aiming to increase our earnings per share on average each year by 5%-7%. That is a huge amount of growth, and we recognize the importance of getting the balance right between the dividend that we pay every year, but also supporting the investment that's needed. The investment that we do undertake is supported by the profits that National Grid makes and that we retain and plow back into the business. We raise debt on the debt markets, which helps to support that, and we have the regulatory support for that. Also we issue what's called scrip every year, which allows us to increase the shareholding where people, rather than take a cash dividend, take the shares themselves as a way of recognizing, I guess, the support of the company, and that effectively over time increases the number of shares. The key thing is that we've got a significant amount of investment over the next five years, and this is the most efficient way we believe to finance that investment. Thank you, John. Second question from Mr. Val Brandewski is, after the National Grid shares went ex-dividend in June, the shares in circulation lost GBP 7.1 billion worth of value. Isn't this sufficient reason to bring in a quarterly dividend strategy to remove the volatility, where after the first of June, there isn't any justification for major institutions to hold National Grid shares until November? In the past, this strategy was rejected due to the increased cost of administration a quarterly dividend would attract. Considering the loss and the volatility, doesn't the board agree that the administration cost is a small price to pay? I think that is a very good question, and I'll turn it to our Chief Financial Officer to take a crack at it. Thank you, Chair. You know, thanks, Val, for that question as well. I know it's something we've discussed in the past as well. You know, we have looked at this in the past and we are satisfied that the biannual dividend is the right strategy for us. There's a number of factors that move the share price within the year, not just the ex-div status. A number of other factors, both company performance but macro events as well. We continue to believe that the biannual dividend approach is the right strategy for us. Thank you for the question. Thanks. We're back into the room, and I think the next question is from Mr. Nigel Stratton-Fidel. Good morning. I'm a private ordinary shareholder, like, I guess most of the people in this room. My question concerns all shareholders present and all those who want to be present at future AGMs. Madam Chair, you actually touched on the subject of my question in your opening remarks when you said that you participated in last year's AGM by video, and you described that as awkward. I have different words for that sort of AGM. For those who don't know, this year, Marks & Spencer directors banned all shareholders from attending the AGM. They retreated to a TV studio somewhere and actually had someone pretend to be a shareholder asking questions to them. My question to you, Madam Chair, is very simple and requires a yes or no answer. Do you have any plans or any intention to fall into that bunker mentality by banning shareholders from AGMs? Good question. Hear, hear. Hear, hear. Yeah. I'm going to repeat the question rather than say yes or no to make sure that I have it properly. When you say yes or no Can you confirm that you have no plans? We have no- to exclude shareholders? We have no intention to suspend or otherwise eliminate an in-person AGM. We simply use the resolution to be able to expand access so that people didn't have to. We welcome you here. We're actually, I guess we are providing lunch afterwards here. you know, I said quite seriously at the outset, this is a chance for the board to hear from people. It can be very effective to hear from them in person. We wanted to widen the aperture, if you will, so that we get these questions online if somebody can't hear, be here in person. It's absolutely our purpose, our intention, our desire and our delight to be able to engage with shareholders in person. no, we are not going to eliminate the in-person annual meeting. Yes, we will be here next year, and I will look forward to having a conversation with you next year as well as this. Thank you, Madam Chair. That's all I needed to hear. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have one of our regular attendees, Mr. Peter Tory. Welcome, Mr. Tory. Oh, thank you. Good morning, Madam Chair, fellow board of directors, my fellow shareholders. John Farmer's preempted one of my comments. It's not a question. I've got some comments to make, favorably, non-favorably. Madam Chair, it's very nice to see you here in person this year, and we appreciate last year, you had to get up very early in the morning to come up. Now you know what we have to go through when we wanna watch the Super Bowl through the night, okay? If I make it to the halftime show, I consider myself very fortunate. Trying to find it in sequence, and I must embarrass John Pettigrew. He came up to me and said, "It's nice to see." Was it a familiar face or an old familiar face? I think familiar face. We have a common bond. We're sort of runners, inverted commas. I did your New York Marathon six times. It was wonderful. I did, not still do. I'm in conflict with John Farmer in so much as I come onto the Freedom Pass in a minute. It's all coming back. I like going to Birmingham. It's my annual visit to Great Britain's second city, and they're putting in a marvelous tram system. I like to see how it goes around. You know, big boys' train sets type of thing. Less than GBP 10 return from Marylebone Station at 6:00 A.M. is my adventure. I live at Mill Hill East on the Northern line. It's the last stop, end of the line, sometimes referred to as end of the world. With regard to Yes, John likes to come here, I like to go to Birmingham, but it's nice to be here. This is a Freedom Pass, and with respect, Madam Chair, rank carries privilege. It also carries responsibility. Somebody has not informed you about the Freedom Pass. You come from the States, you don't have these sort of things. You have other things as well. Somebody should have told you about this and arranged the meeting for 11:00 A.M. I look around at my fellow shareholders. With the exception of the youngsters here, we're all of mature years. We can't use the Freedom Pass until 9:00 A.M. I cheated a little bit and got on the train at 5:02 A.M. I got here in good time. It's not a big deal, but perhaps you'll consider next year, possibly 11:00 A.M. In anticipation of this gourmet lunch we're gonna get, I thank you on behalf of my fellow shareholders. I really can't think of much more to say, except as I said last year, it's very good that National Grid provide the power that keeps everything going. We forget or we forgot, and I did pass an opinion last year and everybody clapped. Thank everybody who runs National Grid, because if it wasn't for you, we wouldn't have all the infrastructure that goes on that we take so much for granted, especially nowadays with what's going on in Ukraine. We shouldn't complain about anything. Quoting the words from Mr. Macmillan in 1957, "We've never had it so good." We thank you for your stewardship of the company and all the people at work. Yes, I will call upon my fellow shareholders through you, Madam Chair, to express our appreciation in a way that seems appropriate. Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, I'm a founder shareholder from the beginning. Mm. Individual one, of course. Thank you. Thank you so much for your remarks, and I will look forward to many years of our seeing one another at these AGMs. The next question is from Miss Caroline Lamb. Hello. Madam Chairman and the board and shareholders, my question is about executive pay. Now, if executive pay is based on a forecast achievement, and if the economic situation changes for the better, does executive pay go up accordingly, if the profit suddenly goes up or whatever you base it on, the 5%, does it mean executives get 5% more for that year? I'm going to give it just a very brief overview and then ask our Chair of the Remuneration Committee, Lord Ian Livingston, to give the response. I would just say that the preponderance of the way we pay our executives is on performance, partly the performance that they deliver in a year and partly on the long-term value of the company because they get much of their pay in stock. That way we are all aligned with one another that we are for the increase in value of the stock. The stock value goes up from many, many factors. We're trying to make it a bit simpler to understand. With that, I'm going to turn it to Ian to maybe go through it a bit. Thank you, Chair. Ms. Lamb, thank you for your question. Certainly at this point, I'm very much looking forward to the situation you talk about, the economy improving. We may be a few years away from that. The answer is it doesn't quite go up like that. I mean, obviously, a better economic environment helps, but a lot of the things that affect the financial side of this business are about the efficiency of this huge investment program and delivery of it. But also what we've done in the remuneration policy is we base it on a lot more things than just what's the earnings per share and the return that are achieved, recognizing that the company has a wider obligation. For example, they've been asked today quite a lot, so questions such as our delivery of our climate change ambitions, how we do under that. That's a big part of it. Also, our relationship with our people and our customers are a big part of it. What we try and do is achieve a bit of a balanced scorecard. As such, it won't mean just automatically if the economy improves that executive remuneration improves. It'll be a helpful background. For this company, even more so than most others, it's really not the it won't be the absolute key determinant, and it'll be a much more balanced effect. Hopefully, that helps as an answer. Okay. Thank you. The next question is one that's on the electronic platform from Mr. Anthony Levesley Burton. What is the current status of the proposed new transmission line from Oswestry to Carno in Mid Wales? John, that one's definitely yours. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Burton, for the question. You might be aware actually that last week there was quite a significant publication brought out in the UK, which is called the Holistic Network Design. This is a document that sets out a blueprint of all the infrastructure that may be required to support all the new renewables that will need to be connected for the UK government to achieve its targets by 2030 and beyond. Within that, it includes thoughts around infrastructure needs in Wales, including the project that you referenced. The next step in that process is, of course, to do all the detailed assessment of that to make sure that we understand what is that infrastructure that will connect those generators. As you'd expect, as doing that, we spend a lot of time working with local communities but also with the Welsh government on that. A lot more to come on this over the next few years, actually, as we see increasingly more and more renewable generation connect. We're doing a lot of detailed assessment, including in Wales. Thank you. I think we're back in the room now. Next question is from Mr. Stephen King, I believe. Hello. Good morning, board and my fellow peer shareholders. Just a question for Mr. Palmer. Can you make the screen increase the font size on that bit of paper? I'm squinting at it. 10:00 A.M.'s good for me, but I like to. No, it's not. You talked a bit about broadening out the scope of some of the things you're looking at. You've got a picture of charging, electric car charging. Are you in partnerships with rolling out the car charging availability in this country? I guess in the States as well. Mr. Pettigrew mentioned hydrogen. I wonder if you could talk a bit about that. It's quite good for running trains, and you've got access to excess electricity at night to produce it, I guess. I don't know. Just an open question to get you to talk a little bit more about the future and some of the other things. Sure. Is that okay? Sure. No, look, I think it's one of these things that's very much top of mind. Their level of interest in having electric vehicles has gone up exponentially in an extraordinary way, and the issue that everybody raises is, what's the game plan? There's quite a bit that National Grid's doing, which John can elaborate on. I would just maybe offer that I'm also on the board of BP, which has its charging, not to put a free ad in for BP necessarily, but it is this issue of there are many players, and it's not just National Grid. It's the service stations, the forecourt owners and so on. It's true here, it's even more true in the U.S. Many, many players all working to try to increase charging and other technologies as well. Yeah. All yours. Thank you for the question. I'm gonna try and just give you some examples 'cause we're doing so much in this area, which wouldn't be a surprise to you. In the U.S. we're spending a lot of time with companies and partners and actually just our domestic customers as well to make sure that we can meet their needs. We've actually got with our Massachusetts regulator at the moment a proposal to connect 300,000 charging ports, which is over $300 million of investment. We've also been looking at the opportunity in the U.S., and I referenced it in my remarks. There's some funding available from federal government in the U.S. As part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and one of the things we're looking at is whether we can create a fast-charging network across the Northeast that will support medium and heavy-duty vehicles. We've been working very closely on that. In the UK, now that WPD is part of National Grid, we've just put our business plan into the regulator. As part of that business plan, over the next five- years, we're looking to make sure that the network is capable of supporting 1.5 million additional EVs on that network. Currently, it's in the hundreds of thousands, so that's a massive step up. We don't do the physical charging connections, as you know, but we need to make sure that the network is ready for that. Finally on charging, a couple of years ago, National Grid did a very detailed study with the UK government and key stakeholders looking at what an ultra-fast charging network would look like around the UK. Effectively what we proposed was extending the network to service stations on motorways. If you did that, you could create a network where you're never more than 50 miles away from a charging station. The UK government set aside about GBP 900 million to start that investment, and they're currently looking at how they're going to deliver that, and we're continuing to support that. A host of things going on on the electric vehicle side. With regards to hydrogen, again, we've got a lot going on in both the UK and in the U.S. A couple of months ago, National Grid launched what's called its Clean Energy Vision. Part of that was to really think about how we continue to repurpose our gas networks in the northeast of the U.S., to move off fossil fuels, but to continue to provide benefit and heat to customers. What that vision set out was actually using a mixture of hydrogen and natural renewable gas, you could continue to provide heat to a significant number of our customers at a cost which is significantly lower than going for full electrification. In fact, it's about $800-1,000 lower. We're spending a lot of time working with people who are producing hydrogen to see whether we can partner with them to provide that hydrogen to our customers to repurpose our networks. The final thing I'll say is that we're also doing some work with the states in the U.S. and with the federal government on creating what's called a hydrogen hub, which is linking offshore wind when there's surplus electricity to produce hydrogen through electrolysis and then use that either for transport or for industry or indeed for heating. An awful lot going on across National Grid around these new technologies and a lot more to come. That's great. Thank you very much. That's really encouraging. I wish you all well. Thank you. Yeah, it's a journey, but we are very much in the heart of everything going on and, trying to make sure that nobody can ever look and say we didn't do our part and in some cases trying to lead and trying to bring others along. It's an interesting backdrop right now where all of a sudden there's a surge in interest around electrification. It's not that we're unprepared. We've been working on this for years, and in some ways, we're having our moment right now. Yeah. Another couple of questions in the room from Mr. Alan Mundey. Mr. Mundey, if you'd like to go ahead, please. Good morning, Madam Chair, and good morning, everybody here. First question, can we appoint some trade unionists to the board to represent the workers on the ground as well as all the accountants? My second question is to support what my fellow shareholder said and suggest that we do have AGMs in Birmingham from time to time and perhaps other places as well. We are National Grid, not London Grid. Thank you. Okay. With respect to your first question about should we appoint trade unionists to the board and I think, you know, sort of other expertise, you know, we've just started through a board refresh, and in that board refresh we've tried to say, "What are the urgent issues of the time that we need to have the subject matter expertise to address?" We're constantly going through that refresh as to whether or not we need to take on different expertise. If it appears that we need to specifically have collective bargaining experience and have it represented as a trade unionist, you know, we would certainly consider it. It hasn't seemed to have been the critical issue for us. We have excellent collective bargaining relationships with all of our unions in both countries, and it doesn't seem to have been the urgent issue. I would say, and I think it's, you know, in the annual report, we are doing much more as a board than we ever did before in terms of employee engagement. Part of it is governments on both sides of the Atlantic have said that boards need to have much more authentic interaction with their people. Our board members are out in our field facilities in both countries. They are talking to our colleagues in both countries at the very front line all the way up. While we really trust our top executives, we don't take all of our information from them. We take it directly from employees. We have different ways that we are pulling information from them, of front line surveys of them and so on. We haven't felt the need for a specific trade unionist type of representative on the board. Always, if matters change, we would consider it. As to this issue of being the National Grid and being around the country, I'm very sensitive to this. It's been a funny two years. I mean, this issue of how big the room should be, we have an extra room on the other side if we needed it. We really felt that opening the aperture through the online would be a way to get at more, more shareholders to have it more available. Certainly, if we could just get past this past pandemic situation and understanding that we were in a more normal situation, I think we'd certainly go back to looking at trying to hold the AGM in multiple locations because we would have the online option available with it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is actually online. I think you've largely covered many of the answers, Paula, but I'll just repeat it again. Refers to your chair letter in the annual report referring to the ethos of our people and engagement with our workforce and businesses. You've given a comprehensive answer, but is there anything more you wanted to say? Yeah. Maybe I'll just make one more quick comment, which is, you know, to my earlier comment, we find lots of ways to engage at the front line. The thing for me that has been so powerful in coming into National Grid, I come with fresh eyes, and the fact that people who work for National Grid truly want to work for National Grid, they really believe in what we do, the service that we provide to customers in both countries. That's what I mean by ethos, is it's a service-oriented, trying to get it right, for the customer, for the community, for the country. I think it's being tested right now where we are trying to site transmission across the U.K. that's very large scale to bring in power from the East Coast and the West Coast. That really raises the bar on us in terms of community engagement. As John mentioned in his opening remarks, you know, we've spent well over a year already on conferring with communities around the East Coast. We'll start conferring on the West Coast. In New York, we have a North-South transmission line that we've built in a partnership that has required conferring with the public. That is part of our challenge going forward in a world in which so many people don't come to a local meeting anymore. The issue of how do we make sure that we get the local authentic voice of the community and the commitment that we have to build a resilient network that will work for society for decades to come. There's plenty for us to do, but I think we have the right sense in our organization of the people that we have that we can do it. The bar is being raised all the time on the quality of engagement. J.P., if you wanna add to that. I've kind of gotten a little on my high horse here on this one, I'm afraid. No, just to reinforce, I think, Paula, more than anything, which is, you know, I said in my remarks, we truly do appreciate it when local communities come out and tell us what they're feeling about the proposals we have. We genuinely take those into account as we move through the process. We have quite rigid rules that are set by the U.K. government about how we approach these things. We're very sensitive to make sure that we do listen to people in whatever part of the country we're working to make sure that their views are reflected, and ultimately we get a balanced solution that meets the needs of the country, but also hopefully meets the needs of local communities as well. Okay. Thank you. We've got another question in the room, I believe, from Dr. Karl Marker. Oh, good morning, Chairman, and good morning, all shareholders. My name is Dr. Mohan Karmarkar. My two questions. First, you talked about EV chargers. You are looking at ensuring there is enough capacity. You mentioned there are several different players in this field of providing EV chargers. I'll just remind everyone in terms of mobiles and the charging and the number of different connectors that are involved. I don't want to find that you have an electric car and you have to carry five different connectors to charge. There should be somebody looking at standardization such that people can easily charge without having to resort to where is the connector, because there will be trouble for people. Is there a responsibility on National Grid about it, or would you be taking part in the standardization process? First of all, I wholeheartedly agree. I think it's fair to say that, you know, electric vehicles is at the early stage of industry development. As you'd expect, at the early stage, different people have proposed different ways. I mean, if you go back far enough, you remember Betamax and VHS videos, I'm sure, and video recorders and examples like that. We certainly are advocating for standardization, and I think that is a momentum that's building. I'm not sure of the details at the moment, but I'm pretty sure that there's a lot of car manufacturers also coming together and promoting standardization. We don't have a specific role because we don't actually do the charging, as I said, but certainly as a sensible proposal going forward, we certainly are advocates for it. My second question concerns gas supply security, particularly with war going on in Ukraine now, the Russian supply is in danger. If Nicola Sturgeon goes ahead and gets independence in the future, if it happens, how are you going to ensure the network can supply electricity, gas, whatever generation may be? That's the second question. Do you want me to go ahead? Yes, a great question again. I mean, it's something that's, as you can imagine, foremost in all our minds. Probably just a little bit of context. You know, obviously, with the terrible things going on in Ukraine with Russia, the U.K. gets around 4% of its gas from Russia, so it's not hugely dependent on it. We're not in the same position as countries like Germany and Italy, who are closer to 40%. We are fortunate that we do have diversity of supply. We have the gas from the North Sea, we have gas from Norway, as well as the interconnection to Europe, and we have quite significant LNG liquefied natural gas facilities, both in West Wales and our own Grain facility in Kent. National Grid spends a lot of time looking at security supply in that context, and particularly looking at the coming winter. As you can imagine, we spend a lot of that time working with the U.K. government and with other stakeholders. As I said in my remarks, today there is sufficient gas to meet demand. Having said that, gas is a worldwide price, and we are all experiencing, you know, huge increases in the gas price in the U.K. as a result of that worldwide market. At the end of this month, you will see a report coming out from National Grid's electricity and system operator and our gas system operator, which is an early view as to how we see the winter. That will be formalized at the end of September. As you can imagine, we're spending a lot of time thinking about what-if scenarios. You may have seen in the press recently, for example, that our electricity system operator has just recently contracted with some coal generating stations, which is a partial insurance policy against potentially some of the gas generating stations not being available in the winter. At the moment, we have very good security of supply, but as you'd expect, we will continue to monitor the situation, both in terms of Ukraine, Russia, but also the diversity of supply we have in the UK. My understanding is that there has always been a shortage of storage capacity for gas. Is that still true? The UK, relative to other European countries, has less long-term storage. One of the things that has come to the fore, I think, as part of the sort of discussion of the Ukraine-Russian crisis is whether we have sufficient long-term storage in the UK. Again, you may have seen in the press that there was a facility that was opened a few years ago that closed, called Rough, which is owned by Centrica, and there have been discussions going on around whether that is going to come back as a form of long-term storage for the UK. It's a good observation. It's a strategic question that UK Government is thinking about, and I'm sure they'll come to a, you know, sensible conclusion over time. My last question is about electricity generation. You are involved in distribution, and you're looking at wind power, solar power, et cetera. Are you also looking at electrolyzers for hydrogen production, et cetera, and its innovation in it? As I said, we're spending quite a lot of time at the moment thinking around the future of hydrogen, and how potentially that could play an important role in the energy transition. In the U.S. in particular, as I said, we've set out a vision for a fossil-free gas network, which is a mixture of hydrogen, renewable natural gas. We do think there is an opportunity to increase the supply of hydrogen through regulated utilities in the U.S., like National Grid, actually using hydrogen to support customer needs for heat. As we do that, as demand increases, we would expect supply to increase and prices for electrolysis to come down. The U.S. government has set a target of $1 per kilogram of hydrogen. It's significantly higher than that, but they've set themselves a target to try and do that over the next few years. Thank you. Next question is from Michael Koo, who's also in the room, I believe. Lady Chairman, members of the board and fellow shareholders. I am happy today, and I cannot help sharing it with you all. I'm happy about the composition of the board. 50% of members of the board are ladies. I think that is wonderful. The icing on the cake is the ladies come across as lovely, and this is why I think this meeting has been so pleasant so far. Not every AGM I attend is conducted as peaceful as this one. I'm also happy, but not equally happy, to see an ethnic minority board member. Perhaps this does not truly represent your customer base. I would therefore make a request. Perhaps you could look into this with a view for improving it. Perhaps more than one ethnic minority member is warranted on the board. I plan to ask a few more things, but the problem is I have forgotten them. On that note, thank you very much for your time. All the best. Well, thank you very much, and if the thought comes to mind, I'll be glad to see you out in the reception area, and we can chat further. Pretty clearly it has been a goal of both the board and the leadership to increase the diversity of our organization. We have continued to make progress in this area. We appreciate your acknowledging it, and we will continue to make more progress. I mean, we are really in a situation where we're trying to do a refreshment of the board, and we've gone quite quickly, and it becomes quite challenging after a certain amount, where every board member is in an orientation in a different place in terms of the knowledge base. We have tried to take just a little bit of a breather for the next few months, at least, before we introduce additional board members. Absolutely committed there. Equally, if you looked at the composition of the executive leadership, you would see significant progress being made and more progress in the future. What I think John and I have agreed is, you know, at the beginning of these processes, where you start to try to create this change, you know, it's not easy to make change. You know, I'm a little counter-cultural to National Grid in some ways, but the fact is we now have a wonderful working relationship here and a board that's really trying to be, you know, the proper kind of advisor, and we're seeing that interaction start to take place with the leadership. Similarly, John has made many changes in his leadership team over the last couple of years, and it takes a while to make it gel, but it's what gives you the ambition, the willingness to change, the opportunity to innovate. I can assure you that we see the benefit of becoming more diverse as an organization and that will continue to increase over time. You know, there is always this, "It's good for business" sort of statement about it, but we see the genuine impact of how it changes our thinking, makes us more holistic, allows us to challenge one another rather than be in a groupthink. We totally embrace what you've asked us to embrace. We do have another question in the room. Good. Thank you. I was going to check. Good morning, everybody. Peter Arbon, Private Shareholder. The two questions I wanted to ask have been already asked by fellow shareholders, including John Farmer, so I don't think I'm gonna mention the F word anymore, Freedom Pass. Although I've got one, and if the board would like to have a look at one and see what they actually look like, I'm very happy to show you mine. I've actually already seen one. Oh, yes, of course we have. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lie. I do beg your pardon. Yes. It's a lie. I couldn't see you. You've seen mine, haven't you? Yes. Good. My question is this. By the way, sorry, let's go back. I believe we received on those two questions that I was going to ask that the other shareholders have asked, we've received a positive response from the board. That's my view. Yes. Now, my next question is the Board considering reinstating the shareholder visits to transmission stations? Well, I wasn't aware that we had shareholder visits to transmission statements, so I'm gonna turn that to the CEO. Does this happen on your watch? Yes. Historically, we've. We actually ran a ballot, where people could put a card into a bin, and then we would select a small number of people who could go and visit a site. Can we take that away in consideration and have a think about whether that's something we can do going forward? Yes, please do. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, we have Mr. Peter Tory, would you like to go ahead? Sorry to come back with a supplementary. Just to comment, I've been on one of these visits, and they're very, very informative. It was an overnight stay somewhere in Slough. It was so interesting to go and see the sharp end where the transmission actually takes place and the control room with the armed guards. They took us up the gasometer at near Heathrow. That was quite an experience. I wasn't expecting that. Marvelous view of the planes landing at Heathrow. It was very good. I would strongly recommend that you do bring it back and put the ballot in. For those who've never been on it, please, it's very, very informative. It's very technical, of course, but that's part of it. Thank you. It was good. By the way, Madam Chair, as I'm here, the Freedom Pass not only lets us travel on the buses and the Tube, but it takes us out to zone six, which is like East Croydon, Heathrow Airport, High Barnet, my part of the world, et cetera. The bonus is, you're probably not aware of this, we're allowed to travel on any bus, local buses within the United Kingdom. I can go to Birmingham, and I can use the bus there with my Freedom Pass. That's what people don't realize. The youngsters who are working till they're seventy, before they get this probably, they're not aware of this. I just thought I'd give you the final definition of the Freedom Pass. It's not only for London, the greater area, but all the local buses within the United Kingdom. It's all part of our National Health Service that we contributed to, something you haven't got in America. Thank you very much. Thank you for that advertisement on behalf of the Freedom Pass, and I'm sure that if this were broadcast, we could definitely increase the take-up. Yeah. Tom's back. Chairman, could I say I too have been on one of these visits and would thoroughly endorse the previous comments. Very good. One engaging feature of it was, I think on that occasion, you actually had a dinner with members of the board, and you circulated between courses. We actually got the opportunity to talk to several individuals. Very good. I was interested to see as an aside that the supposedly secret location of your electricity control room, which I won't now mention, was actually mentioned in the press recently, so perhaps be careful. Yeah. We agree. I would say I have traveled extensively through both countries to see our facilities over my first year as board chair and actually in the months that preceded that. I think that it is a great reminder of the extraordinary investment over a long- period of time in technology that has created this absolutely reliable system and people would benefit. I think it's easy to criticize if you haven't seen it, but once you see it up close, very much, it's the case that, it does improve understanding. That's really, at the end of the day, that's what it's all about, is our having a mutual understanding and an agreement on the way forward. We really will take the suggestions that you've offered, and try to see if we can incorporate them appropriately. Let me also say, you do have a number of board members here on either side of me who will be in the reception afterwards, and really encourage all of you to interact with our board members because, again, we've learned from you this morning and continue to benefit from the colloquy that we establish with you. I think we have one final question. One more. The gentleman here. Yeah, good morning to you all and to my fellow shareholders. John Quigley, been with you since the conception. We've heard a lot about electricity, electric cars. There's hydrogen trains being developed here and in Germany, and also for lorries. Now we'll throw the curved ball. There is a synthetic fuel being developed, so conventional cars can use synthetic fuel which produces no, nothing to the atmosphere. At the moment, the limitation is due to price. Is there any possibility that we could be involved in that at all? Thank you. Do you wanna take that one, John? Yes, thank you for the question. I'm very conscious there's a lot of work going on actually around synthetic fuels, particularly for aviation. National Grid has been in a number of industry forums thinking through, you know, the potential opportunity and how it might interact with our networks. For us, it's more about having an awareness of how those fuels are gonna develop and how they could interact with our networks. It's not something we would invest directly in, given that we're a networks business predominantly, but certainly something that we need to be aware of and to follow the trends as they move forward. I think that might be. Is there one more question or is that the last one? We have one more. Okay. Good morning, board. Very kind of you to invite us to this AGM. I have been to many AGMs, and as my friends both on my right and one on my left requested you to hold the meeting in London and Birmingham. I have been to both. There used to be. I'm going to support what my friend said that he visited the Slough gas tank. I call it tank, storage tank. Yes. Now, there is a little history about that, if he has remembered or not, but in 1948 or so, 42, there was an airplane which came to London, and because of the light, the red light on the tank, the pilot thought that was Heathrow Airport. I don't know if many people remember that. There is too much talk about the Freedom Pass and, since we have so many shareholders here who take advantage of it or are benefiting out of it, may I please suggest to you, chairperson, could you please write to our mayor to reinstate the Freedom Pass as it was before the pandemic, which is 24 hours? We would have solved a problem of not coming here earlier, or many shareholders have missed out. My suggestion on behalf of all shareholders, millions of it, would be considered by Mayor and can be reinstated. Recently, I went to the London Mayor's debate. I wanted to ask the question, but unfortunately, there are very limited questions to be allowed to be asked. Mm-hmm. I have put a question to the mayor, but he has not replied to me. Maybe Paula Rosput Reynolds, your existence and weight would carry a long way. Yes. which would help us all, especially my friend who I went to the invitation of National Grid at Reading Hotel. We were given and provided accommodation and took us by the coach to the National Grid operational unit and also to the storage tank at Slough. It was fantastic. I think that used to be called Shareholders Club. Mm-hmm. Right? Shareholders Club? Thank you very much. If you can reinstate that president and secretary and the board, that would be fantastic. Yes. Not many members or shareholders know about this. It should be included in your letters to invite people to join this club. Thank you very much and pleasant afternoon and look forward to your lunch. Thank you. Very quick comment about the plane at Heathrow. It was a 707, apparently. The pilot's first attempt at coming into London, and he mistook going into Heathrow and landed at Northolt, RAF Northolt. He complained it was a very, very short runway when landing. He just managed to get it on the ground. He was then informed it was not Heathrow, it was Northolt. They got the plane off the ground eventually after they stripped it out of everything. They had a big arrow put on that gasometer. That's the word, sir, sorry. Gasometer. Future pilots would know where to go and not land at Northolt. That's basically the story. Thank you so much for that bit of history. That's right. Thank you. Okay. I think with that, there are no more questions. There are no more that have come in online. I think we've done it. We will be available, as I said, during the reception so that I think that, we can close the voting and bring this meeting to a close. I therefore declare the 2022 AGM closed. Again, the final results of the voting will be available on our website, announced at the LSE in due course. Please remember to leave your handset when you leave the room. Thank you so much for joining us, for engaging with us, and we'll look forward to seeing you next year, either online or in person, at a time to be announced.