 Gwadodd gweithio, pofnwys. My name is Dean Lockhart. I'm the convener of the Net and Zero Energy and Transport Committee at the Scottish Parliament. I welcome everyone to this special online edition of Festival of Politics 2021, which is running in partnership with the Parliament's think tank, Scotland's Future Forum. The title of this evening's panel is What Will Power My Home in 2045, and is held in partnership with the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh. Felly, mae'n fawr i'r ymgwrth yw'n gweithio gydig iawn o'r ffordd goswm yn ddigonol yma i'r cyfnodol. Felly, mae'n gweithio gydig iawn o'r ffordd goswm yn gweithio gydig iawn o'r ffordd goswm yn gweithio gydig iawn o'r ffordd goswm. Yn gyfyrdd ymlaen, Oes Cymru yn gweithio'r cerddol Cymru yn cael unig oherwydd yn cyfliwyr yn cael ei feddwl. Ond bydd yna gan unrhyw gyffredig sy'n eto gan gweithio'r cyfnodol. How do we overcome the resource, commercial and behavioural barriers to achieve this potential? How and when will renewable energy power our homes and workplaces? What can we learn from other nations? How will households with fuel poverty and those in social housing be affected by the transition to a low-carbon environment? This evening, the panel will address all of those issues and any other issues that the audience may have. I'm very pleased to introduce our panel this evening. Dr Niall Kerr is an interdisciplinary energy researcher with a background in social and political science and economics at the University of Edinburgh. Stuart Patten is chair of H2 Green, a Scottish-based company focused on the development of green hydrogen hubs for heavy good vehicles and trains. Dr Catherine Bale is an associate professor at the University of Leeds, working across engineering, economics and social science. Dr Claudia Aravina is an assistant professor in economics at the University of Edinburgh. As I said, there will be an opportunity for our online audience to post questions in the chat box throughout this session. I look forward to taking your questions later on. If you do have a question, it would be really good if you could put down your first name in the chat box where you are in Scotland and we'll get through as many of those questions as we can. However, let me begin by asking each of our panellists to summarise in their view what renewable energy sources are currently on offer and are we now getting close to a tipping point for using renewable energy as an energy source for heating? Let me first put that question to Dr Kerr, then to be followed by Dr Catherine Bale, then Stuart Patten and finally Dr Claudia Aravina. Over to you, Dr Kerr. Thank you very much. The renewable heating technologies that are available to different households partly depend on their location. Heat pumps receive a lot of attention and they are suitable in a lot of properties. Perhaps individual heat pumps are not suitable for flats or smaller properties, which are space constrained. In those properties, there are other electric heating options such as new generation electric storage heaters. In rural areas, biomass boilers are an option, but there are less of an option in urban areas due to air pollution concerns. In the near future, if you live in a heat dense urban area, you may have access to or you may be offered a connection to a heat network, a low carbon heat network. In the longer term, there is a chance that there may be low carbon gases such as hydrogen, which are available in the gas grid, but that is a bit longer term and a bit more uncertain. Whether it is a tipping point, it is hard to say maybe in the future that we might look back at this point with the heat and building strategies in the UK and in Scotland, and it might seem it isn't tipping point in the future. I was looking at data earlier today that suggests that the number of heat pumps that have gone in the UK has risen from about 30,000 last year to about 70,000 already this year. An increase is an uptake and a lot of that is driven by new buildings. It may seem that when we look back at the future of 2021, there may be some tipping point. Thank you for that. I will hand over to you now, Stuart. Dean, thank you very much for the introduction. I should point out that I decided at a late stage to put the doctor on a loan, a doctor of geology. I thought that I better keep up with the rest of the panelist here and have the doctor in front of the title. I think that it is interesting. I have spent my whole career in oil and gas until recently, chairing company all the H2G. We work in green hydrogen specifically mainly for transport, because we see that as the niche area where green hydrogen has a niche over alternatives, for example, batteries for vehicles. The real tipping point has come just because I see a huge change in the nature of the discussion about climate change and decarbonisation in the last two years. I think that one of the big changes that we have seen recently is the huge increase in gas price. Maybe that sort of macro issue will be what causes the tipping point here, because I am sure that we will come back to it later on. I am not sure that members of the public are ready to go out and decide to change because they just fancy decarbonising their homes, changing to heat pumps or whatever, but I think that the big changes are those much that much bigger awareness of decarbonisation and pressures like gas. Historically, electricity is a relatively expensive method of heating your home. Gas is relatively expensive now. What that will mean longer term is very hard to say, but I think that big pressures like that will be what drives the changes. I do not think that there is a huge range of technical solutions to that. I think that the challenges are much more about the economic and the behavioural changes that I am sure we will come back to it later on. Thank you very much, Stuart. Claudia, over to you next. Thank you very much, Dean. I think that Naya has made a very good description of how we are in terms of heating this. I am going to say a bit of the sources in terms of that we have on one side the gas in the 80% of the UK house and then a lot of electricity. Now, this electricity is now produced a lot with renewables. Now, the tipping point I see this, I feel like saying like, yes, it is happening with a process that is mainly driven by the targets and the policies announced by the government in which we know that Britain's electricity will come from renewables by 2035. We are aiming to hit net zero by 2050. We can say that this tipping point is there and maybe possible. Now, that IE supports what I say, Stuart, is not only the increasing renewables and the heat pumps that we can bring in. We need first together with this to introduce society without the society here and the behavioural change. No matter how good the technology is, we may be not able to get that. That is the main point that I would say in terms of and also introduce not only the normal sources like wind or solar but also storage is another point to take into account. Claudia Beam, you mentioned, in fact, everyone so far has mentioned behavioural change and I do have a question about that later on because it seems to be one of the essential components of the transition to net zero, but let me put my first question to Catherine. Catherine, thank you. Hi, thanks, Dean. Just to give a bit of context, I went to look at some numbers from one of the pathways that the Committee on Climate Change have outlined as to how we will get to net zero commitment by 2050 and looking at where we are now with heating technologies and where we need to be. At the moment, as Claudia mentioned, we currently have gas boilers in around 85% of homes and that needs to be down to less than 15 if we are talking about 2045, which is the date we are thinking about for this discussion, which is only, of course, five years before we need to get to net zero. That shows the scale of the challenge. I think that is around 17 million homes. We need to go into each and every one of those homes. It is not going to be as easy as decarbonising the power grid where actually pretty much everybody in their own homes has not had to change that much and we have done a good job of bringing down the carbon intensity of the grid. This challenge requires going into every single person's home. We have got gas boilers. Currently, 85% needs to be less than 15, and that tipping point needs to be in the next few years before 2030. Heat networks now mention that there is an option for urban areas. They are currently supplying about 2% to 3% of UK homes, and that needs to grow to around 20%. There is a huge challenge there with those big infrastructure projects. Then heat pumps have been mentioned and they are obviously a big focus at the moment because of the heat and building strategy. They are currently in around 1% to 2% of homes, and that needs to rapidly increase up to around 75% in this one scenario. That is where we need to see the tipping point really soon. Those things need to be happening in the next few years. Then there are the smaller options. How is it that the rough of the gas grid will have different solutions, solar, thermal or biomass boilers? Those kinds of things could come into play there. Hopefully, that gives us a sort of scale of the challenge that we are thinking about. It does actually, and it is a great context. Thanks to each of you for providing that context. Frankly, the sense of scale of the challenge brings me on to the question of behavioural change, because fundamental change is going to be required. I wonder if the panel could talk about what their view is in terms of the public appetite to make the change. Is there evidence to show that people are willing to give up their gas boilers to pay for the new energy sources, be it district heating, heat pumps or hydrogen? How is that going to be financed? We have heard announcements from the Scottish Government and the UK Government in terms of partial financing or heat pumps or hydrogen boiler, but, obviously, from what I can see, it will not cover all the costs of doing so. I wonder if the panel could address this point, or I guess there are two points, connective points, behavioural change, how to drive that and the related point of how that is going to be financed. Sure, maybe I could ask you first to do or to address that issue, and then Neil, Catherine and Claudia. Thank you. Thanks, Dean. Those are really good questions. I can speak for a very personal experience here to maybe think about the behavioural issue that we recently looked at changing to heat pumps. We are in a rural location in Perthshire. We have oil fire central heating, so we are off-grid, and usually that is a more expensive option than gas—probably it is not going to be soon—and we look at heat pumps. At the moment, it is still really challenging, because it is retrofitting to a house—somebody mentioned earlier a lot of the heat pumps that we have put in at the moment are probably going into new bills, and that is easier. However, retrofitting into a house, and it sounds trivial, but it is stuff that everybody will think about. Your radiator runs at lower temperatures. That probably means that you need more radiators in your house, so you have not just got the heat pump, but you have to think about the rest of the system in the house. We all get used to probably a nice, cosier than we should houses. If you have a heat pump, you are not going to get that, potentially to back up with electricity. There are a lot of things that come down to really quite specific behavioural changes. Yes, it will come in time and heat pumps will improve, and all those sorts of things in time. Personally, we just could not make the decision. We decided not. The time is not yet for us. As a principle, we could have afford you. The time is not yet, and I think that is a real shame. It will come, but I think that if that is us, we are usually knowledgeable about the situation. Most people will not make the decision yet, so I think that there is still a lot of work to be done on the behavioural side. If it can be overly simplistic, possibly on the cost front, I think that what we need is a carbon tax, because at the moment, of course, one of the principle reasons why heat pumps and the electricity is more expensive is because gas is frankly too cheap. We do not tax gas for the CO2 emissions of the gas, and that is a huge change. That is not just the British Government having to do that, but that would need to be a much bigger factor. However, as we will come back to that, if that happens in every discussion on net zero and decarbonisation, carbon tax is the way to solve a lot of those problems, but that is obviously going to look at a lot of times. It is a very difficult bridge for us to cross economically. That is right, Stuart. With COP26 coming up, it strikes me that this is, with the profile of COP26, a good opportunity to raise that public awareness. However, raising public awareness is one thing, but having the financial support and having the right incentives in place, both to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and to increase reliance on renewables, is another fundamental factor in that, and it is something for policymakers to really take into account. Niall, you would welcome your thoughts on that question. On the point about public willingness to change, in those kinds of discussions, it is often highlighted that there is an overwhelming majority of people when surveyed in the UK or when data is gathered on, are concerned or very concerned about climate change, and they appreciate that emission reductions are necessary in a very high majority in response to those sorts of questions. Then, when you pull people on the impact or the role of their heating systems, at least until recently, this might be changing the amount of attention that the area is getting, but at least until recently, there was a large amount of people who did not really associate their gas boiler with their heating system as being a major contributor to emissions. As I said, with the headlines that have been generated this week and by COP, awareness is probably changing, and that heating is a really big contributor. All the options that are available, and the options that I was listening earlier, and there are different options for different types of properties, they all have pretty major challenges associated with them, and, often, they all have major costs associated with them. There is a new grant available in England and Wales. There is a different kind of grant available in Scotland, which is to be more generous, and there is an interest free loan alongside that. However, there will have to be some sort of contribution probably from households as well. The degree that the Government is willing to put public money into subsidising things is a bit of an open question, but there is public money available at the moment, whether how much will be available in the future remains to be seen. The hope is that the cost will be able to be driven down on things like heat pumps. Some of the ambitions in the UK Government strategy are pretty optimistic, I think that it is fair to say. I think that it is suggesting that it could possibly drive down the cost of a heat pump that is placed by half by 2025. Most of the evidence suggests that that will be very, very challenging. The cost of transitioning to low-carbon heat is something that we might need to get used to a little bit and try to work out how we are going to pay for it, where the money is going to come from. Costs are going to be an issue for possibly the generation of the transition. I will ask Catherine to come in now. Catherine, I know that you have done a lot of work across central and local Government. One additional factor that you could perhaps give your views on is the role of local Government as a delivery partner in all of this. District heating as well as heating buildings. The strategy announced a couple of weeks ago by the Scottish Government. It seems to me that there is quite a considerable responsibility being placed on local government to deliver these targets. You have the UK Government, the Scottish Government, obviously with central governmental responsibilities, but the on-the-ground impact will, to a large extent, be for local government. Sorry about that, but two questions for you. One is on behavioural change and the other is the role of local government. I will leave you to deal with that as you like. Thank you. No problem. Just picking up the behavioural thing first. I think we need to slightly reframe it, so I do not think that it is a case that people do want a boil or a heat pump or do not like one or the other. What people want is warm, comfortable homes that they can affordably heat or cool. Nobody has mentioned cooling yet, but that is the fact that we need to consider at some point. I think it is the familiarity of gas boilers that mean that people are comfortable with them. It is the familiarity that you think it might be reliable. It is not necessarily that you want a combi boiler when you are covered. Maybe you would be happy with a heat pump, but it is much less familiar. We do not know people that have them. I think what we will see is changes. We have seen a little bit with electric vehicles. You start to get to know, oh, such and such down the road has got a heat pump now. They say it is really great, bills have come down. I think that can be really powerful. I think what we need to do is a better job of explaining what the benefits could be, but couch that in how people live their lives. It is not just about how much it costs and how much carbon emissions it might save, but it is things like how much space does it take up? What does it look like? How does it fit into your routine? How would you actually use things? We see when we start to understand people's lived experiences with technologies, we can start to see how we can overcome some of these barriers. It might be things like my teenagers keep switching on the heating and I want to have a thermostat control. It is all those family dimensions that we need to really understand. I think there is a real role for more research around how people not only perceive and use these technologies. We are actually running a study of colleagues at the University of Leeds who are doing some work with residents in a tile block in Leeds. They have just been switched over to a shared ground source heat network. The early results are that people are favourable to it. They have seen bills come down. I think it is about sharing that evidence to show what the benefits could be to the people. I was going to pick up on the local authority angle. Previous work, we have done understanding perceptions of more scale energy storage, so batteries in homes. We did focus groups and survey work with people to understand perceptions around possibly putting those into homes. One of the things that really came through was who was running that scheme. If they had previously had some engagement with the local authority, so often these people were in homes that had had solar panels installed by the local authority. However, they viewed that experience of the solar panel installation really affected how they were going to think about possibly having a battery storage. That shows how much these trusted relationships really matter. If we are thinking about local authorities delivering heat networks, delivering community scale heating, maybe supplying heat pumps in council owned properties, it is really the sort of relationship that the local authority already has with those residents is really important. Often that is good because local authorities are trusted actors, especially as compared with other actors in the market. People are less trusting of their energy supplier as compared with public authorities. That is where local authorities have got a real opportunity. To your point about what local authorities can do and why, there are real benefits to local authorities getting involved in schemes like heat networks, because they are not just after the carbon emissions reduction. They are also considering issues around fuel poverty, air pollution issues, warmer homes lead to healthier, happier people in general. That helps with a lot of targets and initiatives that local actors are interested in. There is definitely a lot to go out there. I think there is lots of nuance in how schemes are rolled out and that is where research that we are doing can help with those issues. Thanks very much, Catherine. I completely agree with you. The importance of local authorities and also community councils and community groups can really, when it comes to small scale district heating, can really make a difference. It is almost demystifying some of the technology in doing that it actually cannot work. In my own constituency, I have seen that with broadband, where people have set up their own mini-broadband system a couple of years ago. As soon as they did that, other communities nearby followed suit. It is that kind of community-led experience that I think is really important. Claudia, I know that you have done a lot of work in economic behaviour and incentives. The whole topic of behavioural change has been interesting to get your perspective. Is it a top-down thing that the Government can legislate for? Is it more about public awareness and nudging people to do the right thing? Here, when we talk about behavioural change, or I wouldn't call it really a behavioural change so many times just behaviour in energy, when we talk about change, what change we are talking about in terms of behaviour. So we have two types of changes here, or behavioural issues. Let's say one is adoption and the other one is let's call it energy use. So on the way of adoption and also this affect the energy use, we have a lot of things that influence behaviour. We have incentives, values, attitudes, habits. I would say the first thing before a regulation is people. What are the habits and what is the needs that we need? Do we want them adopting new technology? Do we want them to use the technology or to use the energy in a different way? If that is the way, we talk a lot about reducing energy use, but sometimes probably the reduction is not the optimal, but it's the efficiency. So we all say like, okay, let's reduce energy, let's reduce energy, but if we continue generating this energy in a certain way, probably we are not getting really the target and what is an efficient use. So how we influence the behaviour and here is when the top-down comes through the incentives, designing the right incentives. And then we talk about, for example, carbon taxes. We talk about subsidies. Important here is the social acceptance. Do people really accept and have a good perception of this? So if we know the social acceptance, if we know how people will react to the policy instrument in advance, we know that we are going to be effective and that will work. And also this needs to go together with the engineering part. So there are a lot, you will ask if there is evidence. There is a lot of evidence in the research and actually Scotland was one of the first in doing research of willingness to pay for renewables. So there was a group of researchers here who did energy research for renewables. How much people are willing to pay for that? And there is a huge literature in that, I did that in Chile and I just finished, published this week actually, a work in Chile on willingness to pay of people for energy efficiency. When we realise that actually the behavioural part, the acceptance is important together with the financial instrument. So financial instruments, you get the government, you get help in that, then you have the social situation and the comfort and all those parts. So that's important. And in terms of just trying to be very briefly in your second part of heat pumps, there is incentive that nowadays is £5,000. But we see the same like in electric vehicles. For example, in Ireland there was a €5,000 incentive for adoption of electric vehicles and we get again to the behaviour. So here you have €5,000 and no one, we just had in two years 200 cars sold. So what's going on? I mean, what happened? You have £5,000 for heat pumps but you need to look at the barriers and one of the barriers is the uncertainty, uncertainty on the running cost. This use electricity, which is more expensive because it may include carbon tax. So we go, okay, should we then change to a taxing gas for example? Then they are designed for efficient houses. So if you put a heat pump in a house that is already inefficient, people will fail in getting the comfort that Catherine was talking about. So they will go back. So we have more costs, they will pay more and we go back to the fossil fuel failing to achieve that. Are you actually pre-empting my next question because I completely agree with what you say about, and the title of the session tonight is what will power my home in 2045. What you've just said is that the source of energy is important but what about the fabric of the building? So let me maybe flip the question to the fabric of the building because to what extent should policy focus on retrofitting, to what extent should it focus on renewable sources of energy and to what extent should the priority be making sure the fabric of a house is airtight effectively so that obviously less energy is required to make people comfortable? Catherine, you touched on this as well. It would be fascinating to get your perspective on this because I think this as far as I can see is a live discussion with policy makers in terms of do you run all these policies at the same time in parallel? Maybe do you prioritise one over the other? What would be your view on that Catherine? What should policy makers prioritise and then I'll bring you into this. Yeah, so I think it's a really good question and I absolutely agree that we need to think of fabric first. What I would say is it's as wasteful to have an inefficient home and a gas boiler as it is to have an inefficient home and a heat pump. Neither situation is good but we need to be doing both things in tangent I think so we absolutely need to be bringing housing stock up to better efficiency standards but I don't think it's sensible to say okay wait till we've done all that first before we start thinking about the supply side. We're time constrained to meet the targets that we need to and to tackle the climate crisis that we're facing. We need to be doing both so I think it's not helpful to say let's wait until all the housing stock is brought up standard. We know we've got 90% of our housing stock is still going to be here in 2050 so we do need to be thinking about retrofitting and I think that retrofitting needs to be energy efficiency and the heating technology itself. I think on the slightly tying in with the cost issue as well I think it's important to distinguish between those who are able to pay and those who aren't so where we need to be prioritising funding is I think more for those who are not able to pay for these upgrades themselves and if we're thinking about those who are able to pay what we need to be doing is tying it into other renovations that they're doing so for example you imagine well in fact this has happened to me your gas boiler goes it always goes in the winter it always feels like it's the coldest week of the winter whether it is or not and you have to frantically scrabble about to get a replacement you don't have time to look at different options there's absolutely no way you can wait for a heat pump or something more complicated so you get a replacement boiler because you're basically tied to it. For those households that have funds available for things like this we need to be looking at incentives to piggyback on to for example when they're doing an extension, when they're getting a new kitchen, we need to be offering loans to tie in to doing those big works so it's not a case of our boiler's broken I've got no option I'm getting another combi we need it needs to be sort of more strategic and it needs to tie into people wanting to do it you know nobody wants to spend their savings on insulation it's boring but if you're doing it ripping out your kitchen or whatever that's the time to be doing it that's a different situation offering funding to those who are in poor quality building stock and are probably in fuel poverty and need funding to be able to do these things and I think there needs to be a distinction and notice that in the new heating building strategy there's no distinction that Claudia mentioned that the 5k available for heat pumps I don't think there's any distinction in that that's been proposed yet about distinguishing between income and that I think that's possibly a mistake because we need to piggyback on people who can afford to do these things to do it for other reasons but as I said in my answer to my last question really outlining the benefits why you would do these things in some of our to think about the the situation of energy efficiency and larger infrastructure projects like heat networks and some research that we did when we were thinking about how local authorities plan heat networks very often they'd go to heat demand data which gives you a sense of how financially viable a heat network would be as in where there's high heat demand you're going to get the financial return to put in a heat network but that actually is the wrong waste think about it because what you're doing there is overlooking those areas which are perhaps in fuel poverty have a suppressed heat demand don't obviously look like the place where you would want to put in a network for biggest financial gain but those are absolutely the places that you would want to put in a heat network to bring down the cost of heat for those people alleviate the fuel poverty situation reap the health and well-being benefits from that so we have to be a bit careful about how we measure where we're going to put things and it's not necessarily so also in that case if we were looking at heat demand data you might put a heat network in where there's least energy efficiency because they're using lots of heat and again that might not be the best answer might want to put a heat network where there is high energy efficiency so we need to be careful about how I think it's absolutely right that we need to think about both things together we need to think about the efficiency of the housing stock in conjunction with the supply side get the best the best options brought forward Thanks very much Catherine and Niall I'll bring you in but after that I want to turn to Stuart to talk about the wider question of finance because Catherine mentioned the heat in buildings strategy announced by the Scottish Government a couple of weeks ago which I think off the top of my head estimated the cost of about £33 billion to to bring all of the buildings in Scotland up to energy efficiency levels with I believe the majority of that to come from private sector investment private sector finance and Stuart given your background with some of the private sector companies I'd be interested in the question of how can the private sector be incentivised to invest and provide that capital because it seems to me you know quite a considerable sum of money but Niall let me bring you in first about this question about fabric of buildings because I know you've done a lot of work in other countries including the Netherlands and I wonder if there's lessons to we can learn from other countries Netherlands the Nordic countries in terms of this policy prioritisation between the fabric of buildings and the heat sources renewable sources so yeah that there will be lessons to learn but I think it's fair to say that the UK is often characterised as having the oldest building stock in in Europe it certainly has the most buildings that were built prior to 1940 and so as a particularly old and a particularly energy and efficient stock so it is starting from a different position to a lot of other countries we have been implementing policy support for energy efficiency retrofit for for many years so well over a decade there's been a government supported cavity wall installation loft installation a lot of cavity walls and lofts been insulated on the back of that there's still plenty that can be done and should be done energy energy efficiency is kind of universally accepted as the you know a sensible thing to do your energy efficiency improvements to our building stock for supporting technologies like heat pumps but also another really important factor that's been touched on a couple of times is fuel poverty and fuel poverty targets alongside our emission reduction targets which are very challenging and very ambitious there are very challenging and very ambitious fuel poverty targets so about a quarter of Scottish households are considered to be in fuel poverty and they're trying to drive that down to very low levels at the same time as implementing what are potentially quite expensive low carbon heat systems so there might need to be some consideration of how the whole thing is financed especially with regards to lower income families who are already in fuel poverty energy efficiency makes extra sense in that context because it's something that can help to keep bills down it's an investment it has a return a lot of them will be able to a lot of the energy efficiency retrofit will be able to pay for themselves on whether you should do whether you should do you should focus on energy efficiency and the end of low carbon heat I think I completely agree with Catherine that you should be doing both at the same time partly because of the targets a lot of the subsidies that are available at the moment require you to implement energy efficiency first so you can get the renewable heat incentive unless you have implemented the cost effective energy efficiency improvements first and that applies to the subsidy scheme in in Scotland as well that seems like a sensible approach that there are for obvious energy efficiency improvements that you can make you should make them at the same time as getting the the new heating system sold on the 33 billion point I think that's 33 billion for energy efficiency improvements and low carbon heat systems I think it's the two so it's kind of getting everything and it's not just improving the fabric but it's also implementing heating systems at the same time I think you're there thank you much now and even if it's both it's still quite a big number and I'm now going to ask Stuart where that money's going to come from which is a very unfair question but Stuart if I mean the UK climate change committee has estimated that on a UK wide basis you know from 2030 the 50 billion pounds extra is going to be required in terms of capital investment in the transition to net zero across all sectors and as Nile said you know 33 billion in Scotland alone for to achieve a number of those objectives those are you know we're used to hearing big numbers but but but in any context those are massive numbers and if we do expect the majority I don't know what the exact percentage is but if we expect the majority of this to come from private investment do you have a sense of you know where that might come from in terms of you know pension schemes there could be local authority pension schemes it could be obviously insurance companies is there you know maybe this is a wider question is there do you think there's a dialogue out there happening already is there a sufficient dialogue happening about public private cooperation partnership to make sure that private capital is incentivised in the right way because it strikes me that there's just not enough public budget around especially with the Covid inspired economic crisis there's insufficient public budget available to do all this so I appreciate that's quite a challenging and wide-ranging question but any thoughts would be appreciated. Yeah a large check wait for 33 billion pounds would be a good start and I think I think if I can answer you don't come directly to the question I think we've got to try and do two things I think first that the governments need to front up and say this is going to be expensive you know I heard the business secretary been interviewed in the today programme yesterday morning was explicitly asked the question of this is going to be very expensive he's sort of skirted round it and said well actually the economy is going to grow so we'll be able to be able to increase size of the economy now I think that's overly simplistic and disingenuous I think we need the politicians of all stripes need to front up and say this this is going to be expensive yet longer term we will see the benefits of this and we will see you know hopefully with better heating systems and cheaper heat pumps in time cheaper electricity in time we will see costs coming down but in the short term this is going to cost a lot of money I think we just need to we need to front up on that I think to answer your your question on financing again I think this is where there's been a real sea change in the last couple of years and you've seen an announcement some very big funds like black rock explicitly talking about putting money into a whole plethora of decarbonisation projects so I think the monies they are clearly people this is going to only going to invest if they think they're going to get a return on capital so probably a lot of up front has got to be alongside the sort of financial incentives that have been discussed already through subsidies from from governments but I think there's real there's a huge amount a huge dread or huge wall of investment money waiting there to to get invested in a whole range of opportunities you know whether that is you know improved heat pumps it's improved electrolyzers it's a small modular nuclear reactors it's everything you know and I think speaking very personally you know the company work for HG Green we're backed by a company called GTEC we raised money on the market early on this year now we've historically been the non-gas company we're small 10 million pound market capitalisation we raised six and a half million to move into the energy transition from our shareholders who are a mixture of private retail investors and bigger institutions in the UK and we're a very small scale that's six a week would not 33 billion pounds but there's a real appetite from a whole range of investors to invest in this sort of opportunity in the energy transition. Thanks very much. Yeah I don't know literally I was about to say that that's actually yeah that's good that it shows that actually that there is a the potential there and I think it's then yeah and I think the other thing and just sort of beating the drum with this you know you know people will maybe rightly be sceptical about oil and gas companies being involved in investing in the energy transition there's a huge decline in upstream oil and gas investment in the last two or three years and huge investments by Shell total in particular VP even people like Exxon Mobile now are investing in the energy transition and these are companies that are used to investing very large sums of money they've got a huge amount of experience of running big complicated projects and they're used to be comforting for their customer casing as well so there's that there's money coming from big organisations like that investing in all these range of opportunities as well. That's great sure I really appreciate the feedback in that that is an optimistic answer which is which is great to hear. I'm just now going to turn to questions that the audience have submitted and we've had quite a lot so thank you very much. Gary and Glasgow has been asking about the role of solar thermal technology in the transition to net zero and in fact it's been raised by quite a few people I wonder if and there's also a question about incentives for community renewable energy co-ops now perhaps I could ask you the question about solar thermal technology how significant do you think that might be in terms of the mix and Catherine maybe the question on community renewable energy co-ops I can I can bring to you so Nile solar solar technology how how big a role is that going to play so on solar thermal rather than on solar PV I mean there's plenty of sort of PV out there at the moment and then you know there could be more on solar thermal that there's a there's a role in there's a variety of different house types and you know there's a variety of you know if you look across the UK's different you know types of climate as well so there's a role for a variety of different technologies definitely it's not all about heat pumps really the solar thermal I guess there's some reservations as that will only provide your hot water it won't provide your your space heating as well so you could have a solar thermal system but you would need to have an additional system alongside that and it might be the case that in your particular circumstances that it makes sense to have a solar thermal it may be cost effective to do that to provide your hot water that way but as I say you'll need an additional system to provide the space heating in our kind of climate that may be different if you're in different latitudes but yeah as I say there's a wide variety of technologies and there's a wide variety of contexts and circumstances so there is a role for all these different technologies um but uh yeah there are some limitations to solar thermal check way in someone like Scotland I appreciate that thanks Nile and Catherine perhaps I can there's a my chat bar is quite busy with questions which is great thank you to the audience for these questions there's a couple of questions one is the incentives for community renewable energy co-ops and the second question which will bring other panel members into is what heating options are going to be most affordable affordable for for people on lower incomes we've heard about a range of different energy sources but I guess the the question for a lot of people is what's going to be most affordable so perhaps I can start with you Catherine and then bring in Claudia in terms of the the affordability of different options yeah so on the community side I think we've seen some really lots of really nice examples of where community initiatives have worked or owning electricity infrastructure so community investment in small scale wind turbines community investment in solar farms those kind of things I think one of the barriers for heaters it's harder to see how it works because often you've got as I said before infrastructure in people's homes so there isn't sort of a community asset to see necessarily and then a lot of the sort of larger shared infrastructure like heat networks are just they're such big infrastructure projects such big upfront investment costs that it would be hard to see how a community would even start with that so I think it's sort of appreciating that it is harder for community groups to get into heating schemes but that's not to say that there isn't example so there is a community owned heat network in biker a biker community trust own that own and operate that heat network so there are examples of where this has been a success think for community groups I mean there I don't there was a community energy strategy a good number of years ago now I'm not sure if there's been any additional incentives provided I think a lot of a lot of the issue is learning if every community group has to learn how to do it themselves then that's a huge amount of people's resource and social capital and time whereas if you can get some shared learning between community groups that's probably going to be really helpful it makes me wonder if the pandemic is going to affect sort of involvement in community energy groups just because everybody's you know at their limits of what they're coping with um in a lot of instances and community groups need people with the drive and energy to get out there and do something I mean I'm hopeful that community initiatives still come through um I think that the other thing is under for heat as well it's understanding shared models of ownership where say you might have some shared thermal storage and maybe a small scale shared ground source heat network there are options where you can see a community scheme getting together and I think it's also this links to a little bit the financing question where we need to see new business models coming through so things like heat as a service is is an interesting avenue to explore I think where um you're sort of looking for the other benefits it's not a you know not necessarily all about the financial return on investment it's about securing the other benefits that you get from community owned infrastructure I mean I think there's a lot of potential I think it's just a little bit harder than on the electricity side but it would be great to see more more things come through. Thanks very much Catherine um and Ronnie Cloddy I'll bring you into this question Ronnie in Dumfries is asking the question which I think is is you know cuts through you know to to the one of the most important questions you know what what heating options do you expect to be most affordable for people on lower incomes which I think is a question a lot of people will be asking do you have a do you have a view on that or is it kind of too early to tell does it does it depend in part on on government incentives and government subsidy yes it a lot depends on the government support on this at the moment most of it is based on gas so and is is cheaper than electricity but thinking about our targets and the carbonisation we have especially for 2035 and 2050 we should think about for low income if we get the renewables in with the reduction of cost and then the right carbon taxes in for example gas and the other sources and if we manage to get this 100% electricity renewables generation electricity could be a good future options together with with heat pumps and especially if they are used in a community way so because we have a lot of this low income housing actually in that in that way now the the support from the government with is key in this is the support in terms of subsidies and also the support in terms of investment in energy in energy with a fee. Thank you very much Claudia. Now I'm going to ask each of the panel members to provide a one minute summary of what I guess their key asks would be in terms of policy priorities or whatever else you think might be most important to highlight before before I do that and perhaps Niall I'll start with you on that but let me ask a very quick question of Stuart because when from Sterling has asked about what additional information can be given to householders or house builders about what different options they can use to increase energy efficiency in their house or have a renewable energy source and the reason I'm asking for example digital information the reason I'm asking you Stuart is you've been through that personally by the sounds of it in your you know your own home as well as professionally dealing with this any quick ideas in terms of how we can get the best information out there to the public. There's a huge amount of information online so there's loads of green energy groups and there's people I had probably within a week half a dozen different people coming around and selling their systems in the house so actually you know the information is out there there's a lot of people how you try and decide who are the good one rather than the let's say slightly less scripturalist people is probably is a difficult judgment as it is with lots of different trades you might want to get in your house but actually I was remarkably pleased as to how easy it is actually to get the information to get people to come out look at your house measure up your house tell you what you need to do and actually run the models for you in Excel spreadsheet if you're a sad geek in spreadsheet it's not actually show you how much this is going to cost so getting information actually isn't a difficult bit it's the next stage of saying right is this actually right right for me now with the costs involved. Rowan okay well that that's good to know Stuart and thank you everyone in the audience who submitted questions I'm very very sorry if we didn't get to your individual question it's just we've covered a huge amount of ground and it's now time just to sum up a minute at the most if I could ask our panel members just to as I said highlight what for them is going to be some of the most important issues to address in the the months and years ahead. Nile then Catherine please. The most important issue probably public awareness and acceptance and engagement with the with the changes that are necessary in heat so I think it's all everyone would accept it's very difficult that potentially could be quite expensive but I also think that as I pointed out earlier the vast majority of people accept the reason for change and so once we kind of recognise that then we need to well think of the most effective way of doing something that will be very definitely potentially quite expensive. Rowan Catherine. For me I think it's about highlighting the multiple benefits of doing these things. I think the climate crisis is urgent and we know what the targets are around that that doesn't necessarily mobilize people on a day to day basis but what does is thinking about energy savings, health benefits, reduction in fuel poverty, reduction in air pollution, we've not mentioned air pollution but that does come into it when we're thinking about things like wood stoves which are terribly bad for air pollution but the IEA did a really excellent piece of work on one of the multiple benefits of energy efficiency alone and put that into actual numbers of cost savings and they're phenomenal when you start to look across sectors so when you start to say if we invest in energy how much might we save on the health budget those numbers start to add up and be huge and I think that really focuses people's mind not just on the urgency of the climate crisis but why we should be doing these things anyway. Energy efficiency we need to be doing it anyway it's it's a no regret option. Some of the other things around changing heating systems can be more difficult but again I think it's about if you're thinking about local actors what are the reasons for doing it regeneration, fuel poverty, community groups all those things be really powerful messages I think it's drawing it all together. Thanks very much Catherine, Claudia and finally Stuart please. Okay I think there is a mix here awareness is one of the things continue the support of renewables so we meet the carbonisation plus the efficiency support and efficiency of energy use and this together with good information so really we get people and engage people with the policy and the right policy instruments well accepted by people so they can really be implemented and make a real impact and effect in the process. Thank you Claudia and finally Stuart. I'm really positive but I think you could be looking at 15 years time of a very different situation where we all are living in much better insulated houses we're allowing largely electricity to run heat bumps and we've got electric cars on the drive I'm actually really positive that you can get to that point and we can actually end up in a situation where we're all heating our houses cheaper than we are today the challenge is how you get from here to there and do it in a way that doesn't cost too much money and as everybody said I think really value support the most disadvantaged people in society to make those really difficult changes as well but I'm really optimistic they come 15 years time we could be in a very different position a much much better position in terms of decarbonising or heating in our homes. Well thank you very much everyone Stuart that's a fantastic way to end and end we must because we are up against the clock thank you everyone for joining us this evening I'd like to thank the audience members for your questions again I'm sorry if we didn't quite get to them like to thank our panel members for a wide-ranging very insightful dialogue and contribution to these events. This event this evening was brought to you in partnership with the School of Social and Political Science University of Edinburgh I hope you've enjoyed it there's been as I said a huge number of topics raised topics of massive significance so let me thank once again our panel Dr Catherine Bale Dr Stuart Patton Dr Claudia Aravena and Dr Nile Kerr for giving up your valuable time this evening very much appreciated and finally let me just take a very brief opportunity to remind everyone that over the next three days there will be a number of other discussions in terms of the transition to net zero we have a session on fast fashion to the just transition a fashion on diversity in politics and climate activism and we have an in conversation session with the world renowned scientist Dr Suzanne Simard whose life and book about the world of trees is about to be made into a Hollywood film so please stay tuned and please join the other sessions when you can and on that note thank you again everyone have enjoyed the rest of your evening thank you