Yes. There is a lot of truth in that. I keep coming back to a parallel that somebody gave me a long time ago about the aviation industry. The point—I would argue—is that in wave and tidal but particularly the wave industry we are quite close to where the Wright brothers were when they got heavier-than-air flight working for the first time. At that point people had been trying to aviate for hundreds and hundreds of years, and eventually they got it right.
The fundamental principles that the Wright brothers used in terms of the lift and the controlling processes are in every aircraft that flies today, so they got bits of it right. However, we certainly would not regard the Wright Flyer as a commercial aircraft now. The Wright brothers sold their second and third aircraft, which led to a whole industry being created. However, there have been energy changes and levels within that that were largely driven by wars and strategic imperatives to get things sorted out.
We can escalate the scale of wave and tidal, but we need to be able to do it when we are technically ready—and the need is here. The need is becoming more pressing given that a few weeks ago we passed the level of 400ppm for carbon dioxide for the first time in human history. Therefore, the pressing need is definitely here but the technology is not quite right yet. As Stephen Wyatt said, the critical thing is to make sure that we innovate and develop at a scale that we can afford, get good at what we can do at that scale and then be ready to blossom when we get it absolutely right.
I would draw a parallel to what happened in the past when we got it badly wrong in Orkney with wind. We had a test centre in Orkney at Burgar Hill, with the most innovative wind turbines around. We went for a jump from a 300kW machine to a 3MW machine but there were some technical issues. It worked and it was fine, but people were not quite comfortable with it. As a result, we gave up our wind industry. The Danes, on the other hand, stayed with it and have had a huge success. Now, turbines have passed the 3MW mark and are heading towards bigger megawatt machines—for example, an 8MW turbine has just gone up.
We stalled on wind and we did so because we pushed a little too hard and too fast at a critical moment. We need to get really good at what we are doing, use the technologies and facilities that we have to make sure that we understand them, and then build up when we are ready. We should not force people to go to the water too early.