 Welcome Jonathan and Peter to launch this new piece of work. Thank you very much, David, for that introduction. So I'm Peter Sims. I'm just going to take you through a bit of a tour of this report. We have paper copies at the back, so if you haven't already picked one up, there's paper copies at the back. It's also available to download online. There's the web links and all the details are on the back of the report. So rethinking demand for energy. So this is rethinking demand in general, but this report specifically focuses on energy in the sense of energy that we use day to day. Not energy embedded in products, but energy that we use on a day to day basis, direct energy consumption. So this report has three answers myself and Jonathan and also the Dean who presented at the online event in Brussels that isn't here in Ireland today. I'm just going to give you a little overview of the project methodology and how we came to produce this report. And then we're going to take you on a little tour of some of the key findings and the key points within it. And hopefully this will stimulate some interesting, interesting reflections from you, interesting questions and we can have a bit of discussion. So as I said, this is a focus on direct energy demand, not wide resource use. We had to limit the scope because there's a huge amount to engage with here. And we thought it was really interesting to just focus on energy for now. We've interviewed over the course of this project 30 leading academics and political elected greens and candidates and various other people. And we've got a range of different views that have fed into this piece of work. We've been told in two roundtable discussions, the report is published today, and the forward by this report is by Philip Lambert, who's an MEP in the Green European in the European Parliament. So that's sort of an overview of how this report came to be. I think it's important to give a bit of context about what we mean by rethinking demand for energy. We're talking here about deliberately reducing the demand for energy. And we're talking about, therefore, changing the demand for energy services, not just changing how they're provided. So this isn't about swapping one technology for another in order to deliver the same energy services. It's about rethinking what energy services actually matter to us, how important they are, what we want to prioritise and what we actually need and what benefits are well being. And doing that requires engaging with two pieces of academic research that we've done for part of this. One of them is called social practice theory, but it's basically about daily practices. It's around the way businesses and individuals go about their lives today. And the other one's about systems of provision. So this is the things that determine, the things beyond our own control that determine what demand there is. So this is things like infrastructure, the layout of our public spaces. What's available in terms of shops and services, the relative pricing and different things. All of these things come together to influence and shape what decisions we make about demand and what decisions companies make about demand. So this is what we mean by rethinking demand for energy. We're going beyond just nudge and behaviour change and just tweaking, swapping one technology for another, which Jonathan's going to come on to a bit later. So rethinking demand is necessary. One of the things that we did as part of the research on this is we interviewed people from the University of Cambridge and they've recently published a report called absolute zero. And this report makes clear that there is only a limited amount of renewable energy, sustainable energy available. There is a limit to how fast you can build renewable energy. There's a limit to how much land we have. There's a limit around resources and material stuff, which I'm sure will get picked up later in terms of the circular economy. So we ultimately have a choice. We either reduce demand for energy or we overshoot our carbon budget and risk going beyond 1.5 degrees. And the consequences that come with that. And I think it's important to frame the situation we're in as a choice. It's not a fate of complete. If we do nothing effectively, business as usual, the status quo will continue. We have to, if we want to change direction, if we want to limit climate change, we have to, we think, we pros and cons fraud, actively choose to rethink demand for energy. And this is a collective choice our society must make. And I think in a lot of senses it's a choice that we haven't necessarily made yet. So we, this almost means we have a choice between the status quo and disruption because rapid change to our ways of our daily practices to our, the ways of business operating business practices. All of this will, it will be disruptive in the short term, it has, you know, by definition changes disruption. So we have to make that choice. And we also feel, and this is the one of things we touch on this report is, it's also a choice between redistribution. It's a choice for a distribution because if we don't choose to redistribute the limited amount of energy that we will then have. We don't think we think the inequality will become unacceptable and certainly the inequality that we've already got will be baked in further but you know to get the political mandate to get the public mandate and public support for this sort of disruptive change. There has to be redistributive in nature. And so that's one of the points that we explore more in the report. And so on the hand of Jonathan now who's perhaps going to pick up a few more bits on this and then he's going to take you through some of the, the governance section of the report and then the policy section report and then I'm going to come back at the end of that. So, over to you Jonathan. I just want to touch on two things. Firstly, how we need to change the governance and then how we need to change the policies that respond to that and why in that order. Well, we started this research thinking it was the policies that needed to change but increasingly we found that it's the wider governance that blocks the policy change that's needed. We found that many places have declared a climate emergency, but it's not just about declaring it it's about then transforming the action completely that follows. It's an opportunity now to address the cost of living crisis through redistribution of energy resources in ways that frame and direct that emergency response to the climate science we need to take that on. Now it's a challenge for emergency governance changes now not at some point in the future to be planned for what and what would that look like what would a change of governance look like that eliminated fossil fuel use globally. We have to avoid those global oil companies and others at corrupting the roles of governments that that are that need to enact the policies that we need to limit the demand for energy in the first place, as well as phasing out fossil fuel supply and unless we do that the chances are that renewable energy that we install will be in addition to rather than instead of the fossil fuel use we currently use globally. There's a strong motivation now as we know for a drastic reduction in demand that reduces our reliance on imports of Russian oil and gas not just here, not just across Europe but across the world, and that really shouldn't mean that now is as important as ever to radically rethink how much energy we use as a better way to improve energy security than securing energy security and somehow in terms of reliance on on imports from elsewhere we need to deal with the cost of living on the energy crisis together. That means we need to deal with excessive consumption alongside fuel poverty, isolation alongside hypermobility jet setting lifestyles but but how do we do that. What will firstly what came through on the interviews is we need to address the vested interest the fossil fuel companies that sit behind the current government system and hold hostage our governments to their demands. We need to change that so that we have transparency that's essential for building trust for politicians to be able to make the right decisions in all of our interest. So let's let's let's just step back from it and really accept that that is where politics is now it's holding back the scale and the speed of change that's needed. We've got greenwash greenwash I used to think was something that was the that the polder of BP or shall oil company claiming to have the future all cleverly wrapped up in their advertising campaigns but increasingly it's also a tool of government that's papering over the cracks. The chasms, if you like, between the talk and the action. I'll just give you one example from the UK, as that's what I know best, the UK government has just passed a new aviation policy is called jet zero. I imagine it may be started as a ministerial joke of someone who likes to sit on have I got news for you because it rhymes with net zero. But what it does is allow the aviation industry to have plans to expand every single airport in the UK and expand the scale, the distance of freight and passengers around the world, driving airport expansion there as well as here. At the time when we should be acting on climate change with the promise that somehow the some technical solutions will fly in or some biofuels will be grown elsewhere around the world to somehow bias out of trouble later. And then we have this mythical idea of hydrogen and an electric planes which really only will work on the short haul which at best will cover something like three or 4% of the emissions of flight. So there's a growing integrity gap that's papered over needs to be addressed we need an honesty. And that means we also need to move away from a financial focus of politics to to have such as a ministry of investment which was suggested to us as a way to oversee and deliberate and arbitrate between government departments on climate grounds. We need to establish the state of emergency. More like that we have within in in the COVID pandemic that allows us to act and react quickly. We need to develop a real mandate to sustain that over a period of time, such as through direct direct democracy and real empowerment at the citizen level. Because I think we really need to localize government and bring government such that it's held by and held to account by individual people. Next, I think on the side we're talking about this idea of disruption. I think that's really, really important we need to accept the rethinking energy demand means changing the status quo. Not blindly hoping that renewable energy will some somehow power a continuation of our current lifestyles, our current scale of energy and material use. That's what the size of the economy is all about. Simply is not possible. We need to drastically reduce the scale of our material and energy use to deal with the climate and connected biodiversity emergencies. That requires change, and that means that the future is going to be different. Disruption will be inherent, but we can work through that through things like a just transition to provide the security and the new jobs we need across all the different sectors. We need to share the burdens, but it will mean that some businesses will decline, they will need to shift, they will need to pivot, and they've got currently their hands on our governments and we need to address that. But crucially, disruption shouldn't just be about helping people through jobs, it should be about helping the most vulnerable to be supported through that change. Those with the greatest need, those in fuel poverty. And if we don't do that, it won't be just a failure of justice, it simply won't work. Just think of what happened to Macron when he proposed changes in fuel prices in France without any measures to address the inequality. The yellow vests came out, we need to take everyone with us. And that means we need to have a change of our current lifestyles, we need to plan support across our economy. We need governments to intervene in a planned approach to universal basic incomes, but really extending that to universal basic services that extend far beyond the NHS into transport, into energy, into other areas. That's the kind of future we really need. And what does that mean? That means we need to think about changes not just in terms of individual sectors in transport, in energy and health and so on, but also across the whole economy. We need to shift from growth being the focus of our economy to post growth being our accepted reality of where economics is. And that means we need to change the metrics, the objectives of our economy. And what happens if we move from a growthist approach to an acceptance that we are beyond that growth stage in the history of humanity. It means that to address the growing inequalities of today, we need to redistribute through the economics that we have. So a post growth economics, we would argue, and it's come out so strongly in interviews, I cannot emphasise them up this enough. A post growth economics is an economics of redistribution. And yeah, and that means we really need to overhaul our systems of governance. Everything needs to change. It isn't a question of somehow delivering on the climate emergency, reducing our scale of energy use by having a set of individual policies within our current governance systems. It won't work. We need to declare a state of emergency. We need to involve people far more actively participating, deliberating, holding our politicians to account, understanding and evaluating what works and really making sure we continue to evolve and adapt our politics going forward. So what do those policies mean so this slide comes directly out of this year's IPCC climate mitigation report chapter five which is about changing demands within society focuses on a void shift improve as a policy framework to to reduce the scale of energy use to address climate change across our society. So so avoid shift improve what it is about. It's like the energy equivalent of reduce reuse recycle, if you like, we need to avoid the need for energy in the first place, before we shift to more efficient production and sorry, more efficient consumption so that will be things like public transport. We don't have shared services rather than individual consumption so there's a cultural change is a huge cultural change in the shift, and then improve is is about using technologies to deal with what's left. It's about renewable energy supply. It might be electric vehicles, but the status quo is very much based on the improve stage it's all about electric vehicles solar panels and wind turbines that's what we hear from our politicians. We don't so much here about the need for the cultural shift. We don't so much here about the needs to stop our dash for growth or dash for evermore infrastructure and resource use in the first place. So let me elaborate slightly more more on that. So avoiding energy use will means will mean things like that things like you know banning private jets, it'll mean stopping airport expansion. It'll also mean reducing amount of energy use in the home. And what one thing that struck me from from a conversation with a leading sociologist is, you know, 18 to 21 degrees the average temperature in in in a house. Why is that that's because that's the design, the temperature for comfort, based on a male wearing a suit all the around indoors. Sometimes people wear less in the summer. Sometimes people wear more in the winter. And there's a much more diversity of people than than that research suggests. But that is locked into building regulations that's been promulgated around the world. We need to address that demand we need to challenge some of those embedded rules that get locked into what we think of as acceptable and normal. Shifting. I mean, I think the big shifts are things like public transports. It's about retrofitting all of our buildings. It's the cultural shift that you don't see in in the energy security strategies of the UK which solely focuses on on energy supply. And what's the benefits also this avoid and shift before improve it means we can do it faster avoid and shift to things. It's far quicker to change culture believe it or not than it is to build wind turbine. And if you do those two first at scale and at speed, then the amount of renewable energy the amount of technology investment the amount of lithium and cobalt to be mined to go into batteries is one huge amount less. Let me move on. We need to join up policies. We need to think of packages of policies rather than individual policies. We need to bring together the the enforcement sticks with the the carrots of incentives at a economic level but we also need to link together supply and demand so for example in the food sector. Yes we need to move away from an industrial agriculture at the consumption and which can be about incentivising shifts in terms of what we buy but the same time we need a just transition of agriculture to sport it we need to join up the supply with the demand. And we'll find that in all of these policy areas that there's a spectrum of policies you can have from the fairly soft nudges all the way through to progressive pricing and then rationing and then outright bands. What's acceptable at any moment in time in any sector is going to be different in any place. But what we found in our research was that participation involvement of people in decision making will will shift the bars to what's acceptable in any one of those areas so if we want rapid change. If we want transformational change we need to bring people with us and we need to involve them actively in the decision making pro process now I think that's that's absolutely crucial I think finally what I like to say is. And I think it's really to emphasize a point that Peter made earlier on is that involvement in participation. Is also about not just involving people to increase what's possible, but it's also to better inform government of the impacts of policies that's having and the need for these policies to be redistributed me universal basic services shared public transport. That that's going to require public sector investment and public leadership and stronger regulations to direct where we want private sector to go. And that's a really big ask for policy makers of today. And that's why I think it is that transformation of governance that passes a pastry approach that's moving the moving away invest in interest that I think is going to be the really big thing that we need to unblock to allow this kind of thing to happen back over to you piece of. Thank you very much, Jonathan. Now there's a lot to digest that there's a lot of different things in terms of you know this report tries to capture a very broad range of different angles on really thinking to my friends in, you know, give an overview to frame the whole debate. So, you know, Jonathan's to look talked about the governance challenge, the challenge that our current governance systems aren't up to scratch and he's talked about the, you know what the policies look like and what the interventions might look like and how they might need to fit together. I'm now going to talk very briefly to wrap up about how we talk about this, what the narratives, what's the role of narratives, what's the role of communication, how do we, you know, you know, take this message forward. And I think to start that we need to step back a bit we need to not go so therefore I need to, you know, work out what the sound bite is to communicate this we've got to step back a little bit because actually if we're talking about changing culture we've got to look at what influences culture as a whole it's not about, you know, what we message from our organisation or any other organisation or political party or otherwise. What influences cultural influences values what influences the way we people understand the world is huge range of things from advertising to to you know, even the layout of, you know, of the way services are provided has all sorts of influences on how people understand the world and how people process things. Rather than looking at narratives from the this specific narrative here we have to look at the the narratives overall that are portrayed and permeated and propagated by society and you know that might mean think restricting certain vested interests and incumbent industries ability to influence cultural narratives do things like advertising, as well as making space for alternative narratives and crafting alternative narratives. So, I think the other it's also important to recognise the limitations of messaging, you know, we, if you think in terms of, you know, COVID and you know a lot of governments had, you know, public information campaigns which often bought people think about in terms of well how can we get communicate all this rethinking to our message well maybe we need public information campaigns, but there's a real limit to what you can do with public information campaigns and there's some research about that and reference in the report to do with too often public information campaigns or any sort of top down one way messaging focuses on the what the instructions and glosses over the why it's much harder to to build understanding comprehension around the why we need to do things and why is we thinking about an important one. What are the dynamics of that choice we have to make through one way messaging and this again comes back to that point that this has to be a collective choice. Even if not everyone can be involved in every part of it. There has to be have to build a sense of agency we have to build a sense of control appear sense of people. You know, have some agency to shape what this looks like and that we all have some great be part of a collective choice and that requires look at these deliberative forms of democracy. I matters not just what and and we also have to stop this tendency to sort of. Well, because we've got to get it through to one way soundbite we've got to simplify all of this complexity but you know 36 page report down to you know to sentence soundbite and unfortunately you know that just obscures it means that we will never really get to grips with the real debate that needs to happen so we have to trust people with the reality and the complexity and we have to. Not shy away from having those difficult conversations and so there's a role for deliberation. So, the report as well as having that sort of general conversation about what the role of narratives is it also. You know it does say that you know here are some things where we need to build consistent narratives so we need to have a consistent narrative that what we're aiming for is perhaps well being for all. You know energy security for all it's not economic growth that might be a means it might not be a means the economy is a tool it's not a destination in its own right. We maybe need to have consistent messages about what humanities place in the world, you know that we are interdependent with other life on earth with the planetary systems and that we have an intergenerational dependency as well. We have to convey and reinforce values like empathy and honesty and we, you know, we're if we're going to take that redistributive approach Jonathan mentioned we need to, you know, proactively be thinking about well what's the impact of XYZ intervention on this community and that community and therefore how can we mitigate against that how can we, you know, build into the universal resources, ways of compensating ways of both redistribution isn't just economic it's also, for instance, universal basic energy allowances to show if energy prices go up everyone can afford their basic energy needs like that. So narratives need to be differentiated, as well as they're being need to be consistency in some areas they also need to be differentiated in some sense they need to be sensitive to different cultural areas and different geographic areas, and they need to evolve with time there's no, you know, here's the five narratives that are going to communicate all of this to every audience in Europe that just doesn't exist we don't, you know, we, we have to accept that there's a degree of complexity there and work with that. So let's end with this quote from the report. There's no time left we need a metamorphosis not a transition or a transformation we need to change everything. And I think that brings to mind a number of key points and the one that stands out for me is this idea that we can't possibly know what the end results going to look like what they're not the destination going for until we've started the the change that we're is going to be required in order to think rethink energy demand you know if we're going to make that choice to rethink energy demand and limit global temperature rise rather than shoe the status quo. We're going to have to have a leap of faith almost we're going to have to make some decisions and head in a certain direction and we won't know exactly what the society we're going to create school looks like until we've got that. And we just have to accept that and we have to, you know, perhaps talk about that too. So thank you very much David I will hand back to you.