The boss of SSE said “business is tough” but “it’s a time of change”.

Speaking to ELN at the Energy Live 2015 conference, Alistair Phillips-Davies added: “There’s a lot of excitement in the industry and I still think there’s a lot for us to do.”

He said: “I think business is tough, there’s no doubt about that…but I think you’ve got to be positive. The next few months are critical [with] the government Spending Review to be set – but we’ve got to work with a grain of that, work with the CMA and take it forward.”

He went on to say SSE has “done some great things” and “there’s still a lot of ‘green shoots’ out there despite the U-turn”.

He told ELN SSE is bringing new onshore and offshore wind online. He said: “We’ve got around 500MW of projects, we’ll still be building between now and 2018 [and we’re] still employing a lot of youngsters [and] bringing them into our renewables business.”

Mr Phillips-Davies added: “There’s a lot to be interested and excited about and at the end of the day we’d like to think we play our part in powering the UK and looking after [it].”

In regards to “the bad press”, he said: “Well, if they’ve got something bad to say we’ve got to prove them wrong.”