 Good afternoon and welcome. My name is Alex White, Chair of the IIEA's Climate and Energy Working Group, and I'm delighted to welcome you to today's event, which is part of the Rethink Energy Series, organized, co-organized by the IIEA and the ESB. And I'd like to acknowledge and thank ESB for their sponsorship of this series, and we'll hear from their Gerry O'Sullivan in a few moments. Today we are delighted to be joined by Tim Gould, who's Chief Energy Economist of the International Energy Agency. And I'd like to thank Tim in advance for being so generous with his time to join us today. Tim Gould was appointed Chief Energy Economist of the International Energy Agency, the IIEA, in 2021. In this role, he provides strategic advice on energy economics as a wide range of IIEA activities and analysis. Mr. Gould is also Head of the Division for Energy Supply and Investment Outlooks, in which capacity he co-leads the World Energy Outlook, the IIEA's flagship publication. At the IIEA, he oversees the agency's work on investment and finance, including the World Energy Investment Report. In the IIEA in 2008, initially as a specialist on Russian and Caspian energy, and prior to joining the organization, he worked on European and Eurasian energy issues in Brussels and has 10 years of experience in Eastern Europe, primarily of note for us today in Ukraine. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has caused a grave humanitarian crisis and has also had far-reaching impacts on the global energy system, disrupting supply and demand patterns and fracturing long-standing trade relationships. In his talk today, Tim will examine the implications of this conflict for energy markets and prices and will consider whether today's crisis will help or hinder efforts to tackle the world's critical challenge of reducing global greenhouse emissions quickly enough to avoid catastrophic climate change. Tim will speak to us for 15 to 20 minutes or so after which we'll move to a Q&A session and you'll be able to join that discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see there on your screen and be well used to the stage. Please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you rather than waiting until the rush at the end as it were. Please identify yourself and give us any affiliation that you may have when asking your question. Today's presentation and Q&A session are all on the record. If you're given to using Twitter, please feel free to do that and you might like to use the hashtag RethinkEnergy. First, however, allow me to introduce and welcome Gerry O'Sullivan, who's the Deputy Chief Executive of the ESB, and Gerry will now offer some opening remarks. You're very welcome, Gerry. Thanks, Alex, and good afternoon, everybody. You're welcome. And on behalf of ESB, thanks for joining today to the latest event in our RethinkEnergy lecture series in association with our partner, IOEA. We'd all rather hoped we wouldn't be having this conversation in the geopolitical environment we have today. Sadly, the situation in Ukraine has saddened us all and we think of the tragedy and the pain inflicted on Ukraine people. Their resilience is an inspiration and our thoughts remain with them. The conflict, I suppose, redoubles all of our efforts. If such a thing shouldn't happen again, and I know Tim will talk about that in his discussion. Here in Ireland, the war has had an immediate heart-hitting impact on households, cost of living, disruption to supply chains, and in particular energy bills, which have risen hugely through today skyrocketing policy at energy prices, international prices. That's been unprecedented and the volatility of that in the past 12 months has been unprecedented and sadly set to continue. We cannot fix that overnight, but as a country and certainly we in ESB are committed to reducing our reliance and fossil fuel and to drive to become a net zero society and thus reducing the dependency on those international volatile markets. At ESB, our strategy, driven to make a difference, net zero by 2040, which we launched earlier this year, builds on our previous brighter future strategy, but that strategy places a renewed focus on ESG, UN climate goals, using science-based targets to reduce greenhouse gases, and setting a goal for ESB group to be net zero by 2040. Certainly very challenging, but we think also very exciting and in our company we're really committed to making a difference. So shortly we'll be announcing a very significant recruitment campaign to help us accelerate our strategy. Zero carbon and electricity will play a huge part. We're targeting a five-fold increase in renewable generation to five gigawatts by 2020. This will be done by expanding offshore wind, onshore wind and solar. And of course hydrogen, which we had as a topic in this series before, green hydrogen, battery storage and micro generation will play a pivotal role in helping us to get to a zero carbon society. We need to deploy these strategies and more, and these technologies at a massive scale, and at an urgency not seen before, if we are really serious about making a difference. We simply have to. So I think it's a very different environment for all of us, and I think a fitting background for Tim's discussion today. So eagerly waiting Tim's comments, and on behalf of ESB, I'd like to thank you, Tim, for joining us today and look forward to your comments. What would you, Tim? Nice to have you. Thank you so much, Alex, and thank you very much, Jerry, for those opening words. The IEA, I feel somehow a kinship with the IEA, but just a word on our institution. We were created almost 50 years ago in the midst of another energy shock. So after the first oil shock in 1973, the IEA was created as a way to try and mitigate energy security vulnerabilities. There are some parallels which we can come back to between the energy crisis that we saw in the 1970s and the one that we're having today. I think there are some parallels, but there are some important differences as well. And the shocks in the 1980s were in 1970s, apologies, were really all about oil. I think today we are in the world's first global energy crisis because we're dealing with Russia. And Russia, as I think we're all aware, is not just a huge exporter of oil, but also the world's largest exporter of gas. And indeed, from a European perspective, has been also Europe's largest source of imported coal. So what I'm going to do now is I'm just going to put a few slides up on the screen and where am I? There we are. Can you see all that? Can you see those slides? Okay. Great. And talk you through at least some thoughts from the IEA on how we got here and where we might go from here. So the first thing to have in mind when you're considering the price, the affordability crisis, the cost of living crisis is that markets were tight well before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So you're looking at a variety of price indices. CF is the main European hub for for traded natural gas. There's the price of EU imported coal. And let's also have in mind that, you know, insofar as gas is moving all over the place that has a very strong implications also then for electricity prices. You can see that correlation there with the with the indices for German power. But only the last of these spikes on the screen is unambiguously related to Russia's invasion. I mean, there have been all sorts of strains on supply chains, well in advance of that. And I think the other thing to say up front is that events are moving quite fast. You know, things that were off the table a few weeks ago are very much on the table now. And we've had the announcement that Russia has stopped gas deliveries to Poland and Bulgaria, because of disputes over payment for gas in rubles. And there's now a Russian presidential decree, the details of which are being put together, which allows Russia to stop the export of products and raw materials to entities deemed unfriendly. And there's a continued discussion, of course, over a new round of EU sanctions. We've had the first signs of disruptions also to the flow of gas in transit through Ukraine. So I think an initial key message is, we are in a new world of energy, we're not going to go back to where to where we were. I don't think there's any need to linger here, but just a reminder of the importance of Russia in global energy. It is a huge player. And so it's not at all simple for the world or for Europe, if supplies of this magnitude are disrupted. And we've seen already some quite significant import bands being put in place. For example, the bands on imported oil from the US from the UK and a few other countries. That's already affecting roughly 13% of Russian oil exports and we've seen that even in advance of formal sanctions from the European Union. The trading houses, shippers, insurers, international players in the oil industry are all backing away from doing business visibly with Russia. And it cannot be taken for granted that energy exports that are displaced from Europe will find a home elsewhere. Iran, of course, rule out also further restrictions from the Russian side as well as from countries elsewhere. So global energy supply is effectively being reduced, and that has significant implications then for global energy security, affordability, trade, and the economy. And I'll come back to the question about what this means for transitions. But just as a sort of headline, in my view, today's disruption, today's energy crisis is very likely to be an accelerant for energy transitions in many parts of Europe. And that's where I think there are a few questions. And it's not completely clear that you'll have the policies in place that can channel today's sort of economic advantages of clean energy into that surge in deployment and it could be in some cases that today's crisis could be a spur for countries to double down on fossil fuels. So we need to be aware of some potential regional variations in the response to today's crisis. So that's on, on oil, and the key question in oil markets is how fast you see a reorientation of international trade, what happens to Russian supply, and what are the implications then for prices and Russia's revenues. And last you've had a very stable relationship between the price of Brent crude oil and the price of oil from the from the Urals region of Russia, and also then if you put on top of this, the margins for producers of diesel in the refining sector, and the margins have typically been, you know, small. That has changed since the Russian invasion so you'd have this real broadening of differentials. And I think one first point if you're an analyst of energy but even if you're not an analyst of energy, you typically look at the crude price as the first indication of where the market is. And I think you need to look at a range of indicators today because some of the tightest markets are in those refined products for diesel in particular, but also for gasoline. And for a change it's actually quite a profitable moment to be in the in the refining business, particularly if your input crude is is heavily discounted Russian crude. Where do we go from here. I think there's a few things to watch. And there are clearly clouds on the horizon for the for the global economy, and high prices will take their toll. And you know incidences of covered in China are also dampening the global demand for oil, but on the other hand, additional EU sanctions could it could accelerate some of the things with we're seeing already accelerate that move from from Russian oil coming into Europe and displacing it in parts to other markets that could force Russian oil companies to shut in more wells. And in our latest oil market reports, we say that by the second half of this year, then Russian oil production could be about 3 million barrels a day below where it was prior to the invasion. The thing I'd like us to watch out for in terms of the near term impact of all of this is that we're heading into the summer. Now the summer in the northern hemisphere is typically when you have a significant uptick in consumption. And that could coincide with a reduction in Russian supply. So if refiners can't keep pace and disruptions to all product exports escalate, and you could see some quite significant strains on product markets this summer, even above the sorts of prices that we're already seeing today. A couple of words on on gas. And I think gas even more than oil is where the most difficult questions lie. And because Russia's ability to switch existing European gas supplies to other markets is much more limited than in the case of oil. But so too is Europe's ability to rapidly find alternative supplies or to reduce demand. And what you're looking at on the screen is something that we came out with within a week of the invasion, what we called a 10 point plan for limiting EU reliance on Russian gas imports So this is roughly what we think could be done within 12 months to bring down that reliance on Russian gas imports. There's a certain amount that can be done on the supply side by switching to alternative suppliers of gas. Real hard yards and the most important tasks I think are on the gas demand side and and I think you'd see along a very strong real alignment with this kind of messaging. And tomorrow, when the European Commission comes out with its repower EU, the details of that repower EU plan. And so I think when, you know, very important parts of this debate in terms of the response from the European side needs to be how quickly can you move to alternative alternatives for for heating homes and industrial heat and how fast can you can you reduce reliance on gas in in the power sector as well. And LNG is a big part of the discussion. And, but I will have a word of caution here about how much flexibility there really is in the international gas market I mean LNG is inherently flexible. But we know roughly how much additional LNG capacity there's going to be over the coming years these are big projects they take a long time from the investment decision to the start of LNG production. And so the amount of additional LNG that's coming into the market over the next few years is already pretty clear. And if you look in the early 20s, and there's a couple of follow years it's only really in the middle of this decade. And when you get big new additional volumes coming to market from North America but also from Qatar. A couple of words on the patterns of European gas consumption because Europe's gas infrastructure comprises an annual delivery capacity, which is nearly twice that of the electricity grid on an energy equivalent or the peak in winter of gas demand is roughly twice that of the summer, and it's even higher in more temperate parts of the EU. And if I click through here you can start to see the composition of that and then all of that seasonal variability then comes from the residential sector. And that points to some of the challenges that Europe will face in reducing its gas demand. One of the key elements here is to get efficiency in play so you can reduce some of those winter peaks and that also reduces strains on the gas storage system which allows you to meet those seasonal variations in demand. And let's also be aware that when it comes to moving away from gas, you can move away from gas in aggregate, but the nature of our energy system is such that you can reduce your overall gas demand. But when you need it, you really need it. In our projections that look out to say 2030, even in systems that are changing rapidly, you get a reduction in overall demand. But in terms of your peak needs for gas in systems that are retiring coal and installing evermore solar and wind, those peak needs continue to rise. And I think that has important implications for the way that we think about gas and gas security. So we are not going to quickly delink gas security from electricity security. And in these concluding slides, I'd like to just set up a slightly broader set of sort of bits of context about the discussion on energy markets, emissions and investments and also some of the changing sort of energy security and geopolitical considerations that we might see through transitions. And just to introduce a little bit where we see emissions going, and that's roughly where emissions were heading prior to the Paris Agreement, but we've already had quite a significant reduction in that kind of baseline set of assumptions because technologies have got cheaper policies have become stronger since the Paris Agreement in 2015. And then in Glasgow last year we got a further round of new commitments from governments. And if you take governments at their word, and imagine that they will implement all of those commitments including net zero commitments, then you start to see quite a significant reduction in global energy compared to emissions to 2050. That though is still not enough to get us to that sort of 1.5 degrees stabilization that net zero by 2050 goal, and that we wrote about in a roadmap which is published almost exactly one year ago. So that's a little bit the overall framing for the climate challenge. And within that, there's a very important message from our side about investment, because we are simply not putting enough capital globally into the energy sector in order to shift us onto a new trajectory. And we're also not spending enough to maintain current patterns of consumption. So if we look at oil and gas upstream investment worldwide that's come down by half since 2014. And it's one of the very few indicators that actually consistent with that net zero scenario. And but if we look worldwide at the amounts going into clean energy. We're not spending nearly enough on building up efficient clean energy sources and infrastructure, and in ways that would allow us to meet rising demand for energy services in a sustainable way. And this mismatch is a real risk factor for the future because it points to the potential for future price spikes and volatility in addition to the things that we're seeing today. And a final set of considerations is around international trade. And I think as we're all aware, international energy trade is dominated at the moment by oil. But if we click through some of the things that happen during energy transitions, especially when we think through the implications of a net zero scenario, then the role of hydrocarbons in international trade, obviously diminishes. The overall volume of trade comes down, but you see a new set of characters emerging and the critical minerals that we need for a variety of clean energy technologies so that's the lithium the cobalt the nickel, and the rare earth elements that go into the water that we need and the batteries that we're going to need, and they all become an important part of the picture. And so we shouldn't imagine that sort of the geopolitical concerns or about concentration of supply disappear completely as we move away from fossil and the other element here which I think is very important is the idea that we won't simply be producing hydrogen at home. We will also be at be importing it hydrogen and hydrogen rich fuels from countries that have advantages in on the production side because of abundant renewables or in some cases, because they are producing hydrogen from natural gas with carbon capture utilization and storage. So there's a general message about the clean energy economy and the size of the opportunities that might arise. If you think through five types of equipment that are associated with clean energy transitions, and you can see them on the right at the screen, and you see what the market opportunity in those sectors looks like over the coming years and you can see that by 2050. That's well over a trillion dollars each year in terms of the size of that market, and that's roughly equivalent to where the oil market was in 2020. So there are huge opportunities here for countries and for companies that are well positioned in those clean energy value chains, and where those chains are, and how countries managed to capture different bits of value, and how they compete for that market, I think is going to be an increasingly important element in the geopolitics of energy, both wise worth worldwide, and of course, in Europe as well. And with that, I think I would I would leave it there and look forward very much to hearing your reactions and questions. Thank you very much Tim that that's just fascinating and just to put us in the picture. If I may say so so efficiently, and to summarize the kind of the big questions that we're facing. As you said, we'll find out a little bit more tomorrow, and about what the commission is proposing and more specifically perhaps then we have to date. So do you think just as a start off question. I mean the EU has pledged to reduce Russian gas imports by two thirds I think it is by the end of this year 2022 which is a big, a big ask, how feasible how realistic does that feel to you. It's clearly very challenging. There's no, there's no two ways about that. And, you know, if you compare our 10 point plan with the initial repower communication announcement and the elements in play are basically the same. You know you have to either reduce demand for gas, or you have to find non Russian supply. So gas is, I mean simple conceptually, but just quite difficult to manage in practice because it means scaling up all sorts of things that are by nature, quite difficult to do home insulation, you know retrofitting homes, bringing in heat pumps instead of gas fired boilers. And in industry there is also quite limited flexibility at least in the in the short term. I'm on the supply side. I think there are a couple of elements here that we would wish to emphasize that perhaps haven't found their way into the debate, as much as they could have done. We focused on suppliers, you know, suppliers of lng supplies of pipeline gas, but let's not forget, there are huge volumes of gas around the world that are currently being flared. The World Bank just recently came out with numbers nearly 150 billion cubic meters of gases flared each year. And that happens to be roughly equivalent or only just shy of the amount of gas that Russia exports to the European Union. On top of that. There is a lot of gas that just simply leaks to the atmosphere in the form of methane, and that has very damaging effects on near term warming as we see from the IPCC scenarios. So we feel that you could start to look at some of those sources of gas, not just from a waste perspective offer an environmental perspective, but through an energy security lens as well. Let's really go after some of that gas which is currently being produced, but it's simply being wasted. And then, you know, there may be opportunities there for for additional gas to be brought to market in different parts of the world. I was very taken by what you said about this mismatch in terms of investment so we've seen a really dramatic fall investment in oil and gas but as you said not anything like the kind of investment that would be needed to satisfy the you know the replacement that's required to happen. And it was kind of linked to another thing that I felt was was was sort of on my mind in relation to gas infrastructure, particularly in Europe, and it's a debate that we have here in Ireland as well but obviously a lot of the political kind of the political pushback has been against new infrastructure we say from you know from, I don't say from the left but I mean from those who think that we should be moving more quickly towards decarbonisation that the conventional kind of wisdom now is that if that's what you're for well then you should be for the phasing out of infrastructure and certainly not the building of new infrastructure. But how do you reconcile that with what seems to be what you're saying is that look, no matter what way we look at this we're going to need, we are going to need some new infrastructure. The LNG is obviously a critical element to what we need to do given the Russian, the Ukrainian situation so is there, I'm just wondering how do we reconcile I mean it's a big question, how do we reconcile the need for new infrastructure with the imperative to phase out infrastructure. That's a great, it's really a great question. And, and it comes to us a lot in large part also because in the analysis on our net zero roadmap by 2050 that we produced a year ago. The reductions in oil and gas demand that are required to hit that 1.5 degree stabilization, a sufficiently steep. You know you need to scale up efficiency scale up alternative ways of meeting, you know the mad demand for mobility and for heat and everything else. And that has such large implications then for oil and gas demand that in that scenario, and you could meet the residual oil and gas demand just from continued investment in existing fields so we don't have any new fields approved in that scenario after the end of 2021. Now, two qualifiers there, I mean we're clearly not yet in that scenario. Many people would like us to get there but you know look at the energy trends, we had record CO2 emissions in 2021, you know cold demand was buoyant last year. So we're not yet on that on track for that scenario. And, but in addition now we have the Russia invasion of Ukraine, which could mean that some Russian resources in Western Siberia in the Yamal Peninsula that would normally have come to Europe are going to stay there, because there's no other markets that they can reach. So even in, in that kind of scenario where people are switching out of existing resource, you know, in a net zero world you would still need some additional investment. And so the executive director wrote in a, in a post at the end of last week, you can see it on LinkedIn. So we tried to address that dilemma so how do you, how do you get it, how do you, what do you invest in under those circumstances. And in our view, you know that if you need to invest then there's a number of sort of short cycle options that you can, that you can look at, and they might be shale, and they might be some tie ins to existing fields. And there might be some other things that bring oil and gas to market relatively quickly. However, where you have to be much more wary, especially in a world that's heading for that's aiming for net zero by 2050 is over very long term long lived infrastructure. Because if you're investing in that now, that implies one of two things, either it's going to be used, and we're going to break through the carbon budget consistent with climate ambitions, or, you know, eventually we we get to grips with our climate challenge and demand comes down, and that is those assets are at risk of not returning their original investment. So I think we have to make a distinction between different types of response to the current, to the current crisis, but in any case, the emphasis from our side would be, let's, let's not just look at the supply side of this let's really focus on the things that we need to do in order to tackle the demand for fuels. So I think we have Maguire and from the Sunday are from the business post. I, they stopped calling it the Sunday business post quite a while ago, I better be careful it's the business post. And Sarah asks, why is it that we are not putting enough capital globally into the renewable energy sector. Why do you think that is, and what can be done about it. One thing to say is that, you know, that slide. I mean the mismatch there is not just about renewables it's about all sorts of things that we need for energy transition so it could be infrastructure could be grids, could be all sorts of investments in energy efficiency as well as low carbon fuels and renewables. Are we not putting enough money into them. I think most of the barriers are really non market. So, I'm right now with fossil fuel prices where they are. Even things that were considered to be, you know, quite expensive clean options a year or two ago and now I'm looking much more attractive, and the ones that were already cost competitive before that today's crisis are looking even more cost competitive. We're not putting enough capital into it I think because many countries still lack the vision that would enable them to put in place the policies that would then attract capital into those sectors. And, you know that the barriers could be very different in different parts of the world, but typically if you're talking about utility scale renewables, and then there's often questions about permitting. There's often questions about the remuneration of those investments and how much confidence the investors have in it over time and it's particularly true in many emerging and developing economies. The other point is that the gap that needs to be filled is smaller in a in a part of the world like Europe, but it is much larger in many developing economies and let's remember that these economies are also facing a debt crisis that facing a public health crisis facing an economic crisis. And, and in many parts of the world they're also facing now a very severe energy crisis I mean just look at what's happening in Pakistan in Sri Lanka and some other parts of South Asia, where countries are really struggling with the import crisis. In a way, the current crisis reinforces the arguments in favor of transition, but also come somehow saps the resources and the political attention that is necessary in order to to deal with it in a structured and sustainable way. And actually you made that point in the presentation that you know the crisis will be an accelerant for the transition perhaps in Europe and other parts of the world but there will be there will be significant regional variations in that and you seem to imply, or I think you said that it might even cause a reversal and some in some conditions around the world in some countries around the world. I think we are worried about that. And if you look at some of the things that happened in the 1970s. So in the 1970s the political policy response to high energy prices was a period of huge innovation. You saw a great push for higher efficiency in many areas I mean, for example, the average fuel efficiency of a of a new car sold in the United States at the beginning of the 1970s was around 18 liters for 100 kilometers by the end of that decade. It was much closer to 10 liters so you had a response from manufacturers yet a response from policy. And but one of the other things you saw in the 1970s was a big build out of coal in many in many economies and some of that coal is still operating today. And so we need to be very wary of, you know, a repeat performance today, particularly for countries that have a large indigenous resources that can be tapped into relatively easily. Okay, Paul Dean, who's a research fellow at University College Cork says wonderful insightful presentation he thanks you for that. And he's wondering what are what are Tim's views on an EU wide gas price cap. There's a lot of ideas around about how we can, in a sense, manage this gas price crisis and let's let's remember that it is a gas crisis it's not an electricity crisis it's not renewable crisis. But for the, you know, for most of Europe you're feeling the effects of those extremely high prices in natural gas. And I think that there are some interesting arguments about the way that you could you could manage that. But I think we need to be wary of some contradictions here between different policy aims. And because if you're capping the price of gas within Europe. And you're also probably capping Europe's ability to bring in alternative support supplies of gas from other sources and move away quickly from from Russia. So you need to find a way to square various circles. I think there's also, you know, various proposals for for amending the design of Europe the operation of European electricity markets, and because, you know, the high price of gas is feeding through into very high wholesale prices for for electricity as well. And there I have some sympathy with the arguments put forward by ASA which is an agency for cooperation amongst European regulators based in Slovenia. Well, there is a risk of hasty decision making here. And we need to try and think through solutions that are that are sustainable and also meet Europe's own decarbonization needs. One of the things that gas does in the European energy system is it provides flexibility. And one of the things that you need to do in order to succeed in transitions is to bring forward additional sustainable ways of managing those seasonal variations in electricity demand. And some of those are relatively expensive at the moment. And so if you're capping the price of gas you're also potentially removing some of the incentives for people to come in with alternative ways of managing that flexibility so there's a couple of thoughts there. And but it's a it's a it's a fast moving field that one. Jane Massey, who's an IEA member we need to be careful of the IEA is here because we've just there's only just one little letter between us and you so we're the IEA you're the IEA. Jane Massey who's one of our members asks, what about nuclear a commendably pity question. IEA really is on the same question what role will nuclear play in the future fission and fusion. That's John Feely of the lead from Labor Party. And I'm just wondering, just to tie that up. I mean, the obviously the decision that the Germans made some some years ago. How does that decision look now I don't know if the IEA makes comment on specific decisions made by individual governments but it just it, you know, put it this way it's it's to look at that decision with it from from a radically as necessary to look at that decision from a radically different perspective today. So I think nuclear is a really interesting one and it's a it's a question that we focus a lot on at here at IEA headquarters. So, first thing to say is that a lot of the nuclear 40% of the nuclear facilities that are in operation today were built after the real shocks in the 1970s as part of that policy response to, to the to the high prices. So, let's have in mind the ways in which high prices can also, you know, create a surge in deployment of new technologies. The thing is, because the 70s are, you know, nearly 50 years ago, and those reactors are getting old. So there are discussions underway in many countries about that that that wave of reactors are facing retirement many of the reactors that were built in advanced economies are now facing decisions about lifetime extensions or retirement. And so the IEA position is, let's not ignore the possibilities to safely extend the lifetimes of some of those facilities because it seems to us that if you can do it safely, then you have a very large source of low emissions generation that can also help with some of today's energy security work. And indeed, this was part of our analysis, part of our 10 point plan, and, you know, the decisions that were taken in Belgium, for example, to revisit the timetable for facing out some of those plants in our view seemed to be reasoned and reasonable ways of proceeding. Now the other big question for us is, it takes us to the other side of the world. And because if you're looking at the balance in LNG markets, and one of the big variables then is how quickly do some of the Japanese reactors that have received sort of regulatory approval how how quickly the they move back into operation, because indeed if they can move back into operation relatively quickly, that could be very significant, also in easing strains on LNG markets. And when we talk about the future of nuclear, and you see that coming back into the conversation in many countries, although of course not in all, and that seems to us to be a very interesting phenomenon. I'm also from a technology perspective, because there's all sorts of quite creative ideas now about how new wave of nuclear investment can be made more compatible with the sort of electricity markets that we're likely to see in future. So big new large scale capital intensive nuclear projects that need to run at very high levels of utilization, and that's not necessarily a good match for systems that are going to be very rich in onshore and offshore wind and solar. But smaller, as they put it modular reactors, and could be a much better fit for those kinds of systems and there's all sorts of interesting thinking going on about how we can start to deploy a different model of nuclear power for the future. And indeed in a few months time, we'll be coming out with our own thoughts on this with some new analysis from the IAEA. Thanks for that. Three sort of quick comments, stroke questions which are more probably peculiar to Ireland, so I'll put them to you, but there may be more general insights that you might have that, you know, applying to countries that are relatively speaking peripheral location-wise. Brigadier General Ahern, Jerry Herne, who's a member of the IAEA, he said the Republic of Ireland imports 65% of its gas needs through two pipelines originating the United Kingdom. If these two pipelines were to become unserviceable for any of a variety of possible disruptive events, what alternatives do we have for replacing these imports? I think it's a question, but it's perhaps somewhat rhetorical as well. Then Barry O'Dowd, I suppose similar, as an Ireland economy, how exposed is Ireland to market vagaries? And then the third one, looking at the new global energy economy, Bill Boucher asks, how or where does biomethane sit as an option and particularly given Ireland's potential position in this field? So I'll just put those three and do the best you can perhaps address some of those thoughts and some of those points. Well, I personally feel that the third question provides a partial answer to the first two, in a sense that one of the things that countries can do to increase their gas security is to look at building up low-carbon gas supply. And Ireland is a country that clearly has a significant potential in that area and indeed is putting policies in place to take advantage of that. But it's clear that if you're a country that is heavily reliant on imports of gas and those imports are disrupted, then in the near term you don't have a huge degree of flexibility. And indeed, we very much hope that Europe doesn't face a similar dilemma in the period up to next winter. But it's true that if it does, then your options are indeed quite limited because gas markets are not built for flexibility. There is no spare reserve of gas in which you can tap into. It's quite expensive to store. It's quite expensive to transport. So by and large, any gas delivery system is sort of sized for the market need. It doesn't have much room for contingencies in that. And of course that's why gas is traditionally being quite a strategic and indeed sort of political commodity in some ways. So I think the, you know, as an island nation, I'm aware of course of the debates about the potential for an LNG import facility and many countries are looking at that as a way of giving themselves additional flexibility. Either as a sort of permanent onshore facility or a floating offshore facility. But again, you know, we bring people back to the discussion around, you know, your long-term goals. In our view, there are plenty of ways in which you can, you know, react to the current energy security crisis that move you also in the direction and that you need to go anyway to meet the climate crisis. And so we are very much encouraging countries to think through that alignment as they consider their responses to the current crisis. Thank you for that. So Emmanuel Ferrari asks how the projected increase in energy hungry data centers is going to play out against the need to reduce fossil fuel demand and the transition towards renewable for a carbon neutral economy. Sorry, my, there we are. Yeah, data is, I mean, it's true that energy data centers are now on the map as a, as a source of electricity demand as a significant source of electricity demand in some countries in the world. And again, Ireland's one of those. And I think that what there's two things that I think are quite important. One is that there's been a huge increase in the efficiency of some of these, many of these operations. And so some of the charts that you could see a few years ago that showed data center electricity consumption just skyrocketing I mean they simply haven't come to pass. And because of the efficiency measures that have been implemented. I think the other consideration is that, you know, data digitalization. That's, that's going to be a big part of our, of our societies of our economies but also of our energy system in the future. You know, we are moving towards a more electrified and so in some sense data driven way of managing our energy affairs. And so I don't feel that we have necessarily, you know, a choice whether to move in that direction or not. I mean I have views on, on the use of large amounts of electricity for Bitcoin mining but I mean that that's a slightly separate issue here. And, you know, we are going to be heading in that direction and I think we need to find ways to, you know, mitigate any potential downsides through efficiency and through the use of clean electricity. Other than thinking that we, you know, the way that we have a reasonable choice not to go in that direction as a society. Okay, I'm going to combine two questions here which I think are probably belong may well belong together but anyway you might think differently David Kelly, what technology solution do you expect to provide backup for intermittent renewables 15 to 20 years when the decarbonization agenda has got to be mature in order for us to reach net zero and he comments battery technology seems to be high cost high in terms of demand for natural resources and doesn't offer long term utility power, despite sectoral development and perhaps not quite on the same point but with the same sorts of issues in mind and Sarah that fully from gas networks Ireland wonders whether you have a view on what would be the least cost option for Europe to reach decarbonization goals, but also ensuring security of supply and affordability for end users, which is a general question that touches on many of the issues you've been, you've been considering. So the general principle for in answer to the second question is that you know you need to get clean electricity into as many parts of your energy system as you can. I mean that seems to be at least a cost option. Alongside improvements in efficiency for large parts of the of the energy system. However, there are limits to what clean electricity can do or there are limits to what it can do directly. There are some parts of the energy economy, where you simply need to find alternative solutions. So in our net zero roadmap. If you look at the nature of the energy system in 2050, roughly half of final consumption so the consumption that comes from consumers themselves or industrial consumers, roughly half of that consumption is in the form of electricity, but half is still in the form of fuels of different kinds and mostly low carbon fuels. So we need to be thinking also about what the solutions are in that space that is occupied by fuels. Now some of that is in a way clean electricity appearing in disguise so you turn that clean electricity into molecules, mostly clean that then is used in various end use sectors, particularly long distance transportation or bits of industry, and where, and where that's a suitable suitable way of managing the needs of those sectors. And there are also openings for biofuels and there's openings for biogases of different kinds and we can we can discuss the precise composition of which bits fit best in different parts of the energy sector if needs be. But one of the implications of moving to a system that's more reliant on clean electricity is that the demand for flexibility goes up. And that's both short term flexibility of the sort that can be provided by batteries but also longer term flexibility seasonal flexibility of the source of the sort that as the question I mentioned, and batteries may not be suitable for. So we need to bring into play all sorts of technologies that help you manage different bits of that flexibility need batteries are good for short term for short term needs. And, but I think there is going to be a lot of premium on sort of dispatchable low emissions generation, by which I mean things like hydropower geothermal bioenergy used flexibly. And various other technologies and ideas that are in play. There's also going to be a premium on ways that you can store energy, a long term. And hydrogen again could be an answer for some of that because it allows you to store chemically rather than in batteries, and then you can, you can use that energy when you need it. And I think we're going to need to come up with a variety of new ways to manage that flexibility on the supply side. And but let's not ignore also the potential for flexibility on energy demand, and because increasingly we will be called upon as consumers to respond to signals or to allow other people to respond on our behalf, and to manage aspects of our own electricity consumption in particular, in ways that meet the needs of the grid. Now that's a question of trust, and that trust is going to be, you know, difficult to gain and easy to lose. And but I think we should we should be aware that that's going to be an important element of tomorrow's energy system as well. And Karen Murphy. Now let's go to the name Karen Murphy but then it says Neil O'Leary from Kodema Dublin's energy agency. It was mentioned that critical minerals will play a pivotal role in reaching that zero by 2050. The vast majority of these minerals come from countries outside of Europe, many which pose a supply risk to the European Union, is there a strategy to increase domestic production of these minerals and decrease this supply risk, which could destabilize our goals. And actually on the same point Emily Binchie, who's a researcher here at the IIA justice researcher. So where do you see the geopolitical landscape shifting in light of the increase in demand for critical minerals needed to meet the net zero target. Could this tilt the balance of power at towards China in the US China energy competition duality. So the geopolitical question and then whether we could start producing some of these critical minerals ourselves. I mean those two questions are clearly linked in the sense that there is, there are geopolitical concerns these concerns are real. And if you look at the supply chains for many of the minerals and metals that we need for clean energy technologies, and there is a very significant degree of concentration. I'm much higher than we have in today's oil and gas industry for example. And particularly in the midstream area so the refining and processing of many of these minerals and metals of China has an extremely powerful position. And, and let's not be, let's not misunderstand why it has such a powerful position. And, you know, it has a powerful position because it has a very large domestic clean energy manufacturing. The infrastructure that that needs supply and so China is invested heavily in those midstream assets and also invested in the extractive side in many parts of the world. But if you look at the extractive areas then, you know, typically, there is more than 50% of production comes from a handful of producers. There is a big debate underway as to how countries can diversify their supply and how much of that can be brought back to, in a sense, as a discussion about French shoring so to brought back to countries which are, in a sense, geopolitical allies, in the IA family, there are certainly countries that have significant mineral resources, just like Australia, Canada, the United States, among others. I think what's needed is a number of things. We haven't, we're not yet used to the idea that we may need to sort of mine our way to a clean energy future. There's a resistance to the idea that the extractive industries will be part of the solution. And also many of these processing and midstream assets. I'm one of the reasons why they don't happen in Europe or in North America is because they are by their nature they are quite polluting they're quite dirty a lot of that stuff has been outsourced to other parts of the world. And if we're going to bring them back, we need to have a debate about how we can ensure high standards of environmental governance as well as all the social implications of bringing potentially dirty sectors back into our home economies, but I think there is a security of supply imperative to think these things through, and to try and ensure that we have sufficient diversity and security amongst these value chains. And because any calculation that you do about demand for lithium for nickel for for all of the elements that go into batteries and to electric motors and to various other bits of magnets that you need for wind turbines and so on. Whichever way you look at the future if we are serious about meeting our climate goals, demand for those minerals and metals will go up very substantially. We produce some analysis last year if you take everything together you get a sort of six times higher but value by the by the 90 by the 2040s. And but for some for lithium in particular, you know that they you have sort of 30 or 40 times today's demand from the energy sector. So one final element on this is that we shouldn't confuse the security around those critical mineral value with the sort of worries that we have today about oil security. It's a different phenomenon. If you're short of lithium if you're short of battery great nickel as you are at the moment because a lot of that comes from Russia. And you know that affects the cost of building new stuff. It doesn't affect the cost of me running my electric car today. So it's a very different sort of category from the idea of an oil supply shop, which doesn't just affect new buyers of internal combustion engine vehicles it affects everyone running a vehicle relying on that technology. Okay, we're coming very close to the end we might just take an extra two or three minutes. Dan O'Brien is the chief economist here at the IEA brings it back to I suppose basics and we think about next winter. If it comes to rationing next winter, which high energy consuming sectors or industries in Europe could be slowed or shut down with least impact for the rest of the economy. It's an extremely good question. And I mean, I think it's important that, you know, countries will need to look carefully at their, you know, their large gas consumers and think through, you know, some of the economic considerations some of the social considerations about potential shortfalls in supply and the recent experience in there has has been a bit salutary in terms of the way that you can think that through. And because you can have all sorts of knock on effects from a shortage of gas that are really non intuitive. One of the things that we saw last year. When there was a first sort of set of gas price, you know, high gas prices in the UK. And you had gas, a few fertilizer manufacturers and reduce their production. And one of the byproducts of that was that they stopped producing CO2 that CO2 was then used in food processing. And you had a sort of series of non intuitive knock on effects of a shortage of gas. And so thinking those through is extremely important but it's also quite difficult. So we're encouraging countries to to think these things through in advance so we need to be we need to be ready for a range of eventualities, even as we hope for for the best outcomes. And we're not going to get to them all. And just word of advice for questioners the shorter they are the better because the easier they are to read and to turn around. But anyway, the questions are excellent. It's just some of them, perhaps, if they were a little bit tighter that have a better chance of getting on. Andrew McGeady. And this is again as much of a sort of a statement, perhaps expressing frustration as it is a question although he ends with a question on the supply side this week the Guardian newspaper reported that quote the dozen biggest oil companies are on track to spend $103 million a day for the rest of the decade, exploiting new fields of oil and gas that cannot be burned, if global heating is to be limited to well under two degrees centigrade. So how can we stop this, which is, I suppose, a cry in terms of, you know, how, how can this be stopped. And will it be stopped. Should it be stopped from our perspective, and the most effective solutions lie on the demand side. I cannot personally see that there is a very convincing theory of change around transitions that relies on shortages and very high fuel prices in order to force change through the system. And those high fuel prices as we can see today are regressive they hit the vulnerable very hard. And that has all sorts of implications then for the also for the political economy of transitions. And so my, my answer to that question is how can you stop these decisions, and you can. I mean we have in our power as consumers and as governments to make those decisions and economic. You know, we can, we can move away from those fields. And we have the technologies to do so. And I think that would that for me is is the most effective and lasting response to, to do things like that. Listen, we're going to wrap it up there, although there are so many more questions and so many things we could discuss has been absolutely fascinating are and thank you so much for the presentation. And first of all, looking at the 10 point plan as well and people can look at that, presumably on the website that can certainly get get access to us as we have, and it's, it's, it really is it's, it repays study because it does show a series of measures and decisions that can realistically be taken that will actually address the immediate crisis that that's there. And but you've also, you know, ranged across a whole load of much broader questions and thank you for being willing to do that and and fielding all of the questions from, from all sorts of perspectives has been extremely interesting and I think it just demonstrates again how complex the transition is and will be and this sort of long glide path to 2050, and you know that it's, it's just full of complexity. And also the, I was minister for energy here up to May 2016. That's six years ago around about this week. If I look forward six years will just be just hitting 2030. We all have different ways of just working out time and timelines and, you know, how quickly things have to happen now. And I know that the IEA will be at the center of all of that debate and all of that decision making, and it's been just terrific to have you here and to take us through the, you know, the work that you're doing and to, and to answer the questions so once again, thanks very much to Tim Gould for being with us. And thank you all for your attendance and for your interest and for your questions. And we look forward to seeing you all soon. Have a good day.