 Welcome. My name is Alex White, I'm Director General of the Institute of International and European Affairs. It's my great pleasure to welcome you to the first in our new Rethink Energy Series, which we are doing in collaboration with the ESB. And as always, we're absolutely delighted to be working with the ESB as we have before on what I know is going to be a really stimulating and interesting and insightful and indeed important series and make a huge contribution as it has in the past. It has in the past to the public discussion and understanding of these critical questions. So I'm going to get out of the way very fast. My role really is just to welcome you on behalf of the IIA to say how much we look forward to the series working with the ESB and to hand over to Marguerite Serres, who's the Deputy Chief Executive of the ESB who's going to introduce this afternoon's webinar. So over to you Marguerite. Thank you very much, Alex, and it's a great pleasure for me to be here on behalf of ESB as well because as you said it's it's nearly a decade or over a decade now I think that ESB and IIA have been working together bringing these expert speakers from around the world to share their insights on the future of the energy sector. And therefore I suppose given the amount of focus that there has been on energy in the last number of months particularly this lecture today is very, very timely, and we're delighted to have a speaker of the caliber of Professor David Newbury with us to discuss the current landscape of the electricity sector. I suppose we live our perspectives in Ireland, but right throughout the world as well there are, you know, aims to transition to net zero and lots of opportunities and lots of challenges in that. It's really interesting to get Professor Newbury's thoughts on that because I know it's an area he's worked in for a considerable period of time. There's a lot of stuff we used to do in the electricity industry and particularly I suppose the electricity market that used to happen kind of behind the scenes or under the radar for a long time. The markets kind of function they functioned effectively without people being overly aware of them but because of what's happened in the past 18 months, electricity and everything to do with energy is getting a much stronger focus. And we know that the traditional electricity market that we've had on the island has served us very well, and it has supported economic development and protected customers so it has done what it's set out to do really really well. But I suppose that was largely when we had predominantly fossil fuels system, and that's changing. And one of the things that has highlighted that is in the past 18 months the gas market volatility and we don't know what we're going into this winter either even though Europe is in the better place. We still know that we're very, very reliant on gas prices, and they're still very far in excess of historic norms, and that in turn has had a big impact on households and indeed on businesses. So we know we can't fix the market overnight and there's lots of geopolitical issues, but what we can do I suppose is to try all of us to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels in the drive to become net zero and a net zero society. So in ESP we're very focused on that and our strategy for our company outlines a clear roadmap for ESP to achieve that. But we're very reliant on the electricity market to help us as well as other factors. And what we really need is a market that yes supports investments in renewable technologies both the new and the existing investments. And it needs to look I suppose at the demand side management so not just the supply of new investment but how we use the infrastructure we have and encourage customers to use electricity at the right time when it's available whether that's at night or very windy or very sunny days. We need support for security of supply and resilience of our system as we more and more electrify people will have less and less patients for interruptions and electricity so that security of supply and resilience is really important. And of that must happen while making sure that we deliver best value for customers which again is the tricky part of all of this. So lots of people on the call I know are engaged in the EU's market design proposals. And that's something that we definitely hope will deliver on some of those above mentioned requirements and the outcome of the current process that the EU are going through combined with whatever changes we have over locally in terms of policy changes for the single elect electricity market that will have a profound impact on all of us on our lives and on that transition to net zero. So with all of that in mind and there's a lot of wicked problems in there and I'm really looking forward to hearing from Professor Newbury later on today and hearing his insights and his perspectives and like I said ESB is delighted to be part of this series. And we're going to end over now for a proper proper introduction for Professor Newbury to our chair for this evening Professor Lisa Ryan. It's over to you Lisa. Thank you. Thank you Marguerite. Hello everybody. I'm delighted to be here and welcome you to this IIA webinar. We are very lucky to be joined today by Professor David Newbury, Meredith Professor and Director of the Energy Policy Research Group at the University of Cambridge, who has been very generous with this time and is going to give us a seminar today on electricity in Ireland, transition and the energy crisis. So as Marguerite has already outlined, you know, Ireland really stands at a critical juncture on the path towards a cleaner greener economy, and we're striving as was all of us together but really policymakers in particular are trying to simultaneously meet climate commitments for trying to protect energy security and we've seen that especially this year, while delivering a just transition for consumers. So as Alex White has already said, this is the first lecture of the 2023 rethink energy lecture series, and that's core, co-organized by the IIA and ESB. So in this one, Professor Newbury is going to look at the state of play of Ireland's electricity sector, and looking at the core challenges really that are facing the electricity market and we see this reflected right across Europe. So we've come to a head a little bit earlier to us in Ireland as our position as an isolated electricity system at the end of the line. So, in terms of how we're going to run this Professor Newbury is going to speak for about 20 minutes and present his views, and then we will go into a Q&A session. During the presentation, what you should send questions as you as you think of them on the Q&A session you can on Zoom you can write them and we will be filtering them and then we will put them to Professor Newbury at the end of his presentation. And both the presentation and the Q&A session will be recorded and on record. And so, I hope that's okay. So formally, I'd like to introduce you to Professor Newbury. He is an emeritus professor of the University of Cambridge, where he also serves as director of the energy policy research group. Along with his academic work on commodity price stabilization, which saw him co author a book with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, and Professor Newbury has specialized in energy economics and he's really written extensively on the regulation of electricity markets. His EV has also includes times found outside of academia as a member of the environmental economics academic panel for the UK government and occasional role as consultant to the World Bank and also a 10 year stint on Ireland single electricity market committee. So he really knows electricity markets, and more specifically he knows the Irish electricity market very well. So Professor Newbury I'd like to hand over to you. Thank you for your presentation in advance. Thank you very much for that kind introduction and I'm very sorry not to be with you in person. I, of course, have very fond memories of Dublin. And I don't know if we can make sure the screen has the presentation on it. I assume it does. And press on. So today, I want to take the brief time have available to highlight something that I think is an underappreciated consequence of a high renewable electricity penetration and as Lisa has already mentioned, Ireland is probably at the forefront of facing this compared to the rest of Europe. Right. So, I'm going to highlight this particular problem and then suggest the challenges it raises and the possible ways of addressing it. So we will know from the national climate and energy plan that the island island published that they have set themselves very challenging renewable electricity targets by 2025 it's supposed to be 50% of energy electricity generated. And the consequence of that is a very large amount of wind and PV which of course has a high peak output, but the peak has to be limited to below 85% of demand. I'll describe this technical term the system, non synchronous penetration, but it means you have to keep the wind and solar below that level. It has taken quite some time to reach 75% I'll illustrate that. But looking ahead to 2030 with 80% renewables that limit has to be raised to 95% if we're going to avoid quite serious problems. And of course the cold and oil has to be replaced with the flexible generation needed. When we reach that limit and their plans for two gigawatts of new gas generation. I'll briefly comment on the rather what I would say a disappointing results of the latest renewables auction. But we'll come to that in a moment now I don't seem to have control over the slides. So I'm going to have to rely on others. What happens as the share of renewables rises so the periods of time in which there's too much on the system to accommodate will also increase. Technically that's called curtailment you can think of it as surplus or wasted energy that we have no other use for the points that I don't think it's fully appreciated is the marginal curtailment that is the curtailment that last amount of wind or solar creates is about three times the average. And that dramatically increases the marginal cost of generation. And I'll suggest in some cases it may even double the cost, but the implication is also cost increases the costs of cutting carbon dioxide which is the whole point of this plan. So clearly we need some ways of reducing this wastage the curtailment and one obvious solution is that there is a planned interconnection to Brittany, there are already links to GB. And we also will have to think more about storage. There are quite ambitious plans but they will probably have to make more use of demand side especially storage and electric vehicles. And we will have to think very carefully about where any new renewables is located because the last thing we want is additional constraints, which will increase the amount of curtailment and wastage. Right, so we will move on and if I have time I'll briefly call a comment on the consequence of the Ukraine war of the high price of gas and the problem. It's more acute in some other countries like GB but the problem is that the gas tends to set the electricity price, whereas the cost of generating from renewables is considerably lower. So we need to find ways of passing the benefits of that lower cost renewables to consumers in a sensible way. Right, if we can press on. This just illustrates the magnitude of the 2030 in particular challenge and doubling compared to what is 15 years of development up to date which has also been quite rapid. I'm surprised that the plan suggests that all of the expansion of wind is going to be offshore and I don't know whether that's because air grid is finding it difficult to accommodate more onshore. But if so, given that onshore is cheaper. That's another problem that could usefully be addressed. Let's press on. So we have the results of the auction and I put on here at constant 2012 prices which is the way our auctions price them, the development in GB and you can see a dramatic fall, especially on onshore but also offshore wind. It's the rather high prices in current prices, $98 a euro is a megawatt hour, but about 70% more than the most recent auction cleared in GB. So clearly introducing more competition or confidence or whatever it is to get those auction prices down is a very high priority in terms of the cost of the transition. Now the implication, as I've said, when you've got wind, the peak capacity is typically about three times the average output and the average outputs in produced per year are shown in this graph. And the peak, as I say, is very substantially higher than the average, and you can see the average demand is considerably less than the peak demand. So they're clearly going to be periods when there's too much renewable energy and that becomes much more acute in 2030. So spelling out the implications of that, we have, as I've said, you've got about three to one on wind, but rather more on PV, which is only running about 10% of the time. Now, if, and this is a prediction for business as usual without doing sensible things by 2026, if the average curtailment is 15%. If it's three and a half times as high as that, then the last megawatt you offer is only going to be able to offer 50% of its potential output. So when the wind is blowing, it's only going to be feeding into the grid 50% of the time, which doubles the cost of delivering the electricity and reduces to half the amount of carbon it displaces. So high priority is to reduce this curtailment. Excuse me. One way to do it is to increase when you've used up domestic demand increase exports, providing other countries can take it because the wind may be at the same level elsewhere. Storage providing it isn't already full and the demand side response which will become increasingly important. So pressing on. Now, this, this is the techie bit. This is the problem that has to be addressed. The system has to retain and maintain its frequency in a very narrow band. And the way that's done at the moment is the spinning turbines, all synchronized together, provide a considerable amount of inertia and as there are fluctuations. So for instance, supposing you lose a bit of supply, then the inertia energy is available to gradually feed into the system. But as it does so, the frequency drops and there are very strict limits on how fast that frequency should drop. And in order to avoid this problem. I'm saying that the wind and solar doesn't provide any inertia and it's non synchronous it's converted into from DC to AC synchronous electricity. That penetration has to be kept. And at the moment, it's kept to below 75% but there are plans to increase this. So when you reach above that that you have to curtail or waste the surplus, and I can illustrate that in the next slide, which shows the recent developments of the non synchronous generation, otherwise mainly wind. And there were moments when it has reached that limit of 75%. And more clearly those those moments of increase of hitting it will increase. So let's continue to the next slide. Now this graph shows the amount that at the peak or the most amount that will be curtailed or shed. And the proportion of the year in which there will be at least some shedding so that there'll be a very few hours in which a high amount is shed. And as you come down fewer and fewer and fewer megawatts need to be shared until finally you get to the point where nothing is wasted. And the area under this graph is the total amount that's curtailed. And if we do nothing by 2026 and keep in particular the limits on wind at 75%, then a very substantial amount and a large fraction of the time, will it be curtailed. But if we increase the penetration to 85%, if we build the interconnector and commission it in time and if we also add some additional battery storage, then we can lower this quite substantially and you can see the area underneath. It's quite substantially dropped, but it's still some of the time 25% of the time there may be serious problems. Right, let's press on to the schematic of what this implies. And this, this is just drawing a very simple sketch of that curve. So the total curtailment is the area around here and the average when you divide the total megawatt hours by the number of megawatts of wind is just the triangle here. But when you add an extra megawatt, you push this whole thing up. And you can see that the area of that is very substantially greater than the area of the average. And that's what I mean by the marginal curtailment the amount that the last megawatt is curtailed. So move to the next slide. And just to summarize, it's about three times when I do a careful calculation for the simulated 2026 system. On top of that, if there are transmission constraints, then there may be additional curtailment even though the rest of the system could in principle take it, but it can't be exported from those areas. And that will happen even before the limit the SNSP limit is reached. So pressing down. So one thing is to avoid these transmission constraints and that means locating any new connections efficiently. And I would suggest proactively building the transmission and identifying where those new renewables should be located. And as a matter of urgency, and it has taken many years to reach 75%, some very clever management and electronics will be needed to raise the target to the ambitious 2030 level of 95%. A bit more. Clearly one can export storing batteries, but of course, increasingly electric vehicles will through smart charging offer the ability to absorb that extra when available. And you can export the surplus to increasingly to France. It's worth bearing in mind that Britain is also reforming its electricity markets and is very concerned about locational signals. And if it as it increasingly looks as though it might introduces locational prices, the price in Scotland to which oil is connected, and the price in Wales in which EWIC is connected are likely to be different. And that opens the possibility that there will be quite complicated flows, maybe out of Northern Ireland into Scotland down to Wales, back out of Wales and back into the Republic, all the other way around. But that requires cross border cooperation, which of course Brexit has complicated, and I hope, at least between the two islands, something more sensible can be done. Continue. Now this is just looking at the cost of the carbon displaced. When you install renewables, one of the reasons you're doing it is to displace carbon from the fossil generation and renewables costs something so it has a cost to replace the carbon. So this is starting from the 2026 position and asking, as you increase the capacity compared to 2026. How does the marginal cost of displacing that fossil carbon rise from what is quite a high level at already 90 euros comparable to the present EU or EU allowance price, but you can see it rapidly rises to more than 10 times that under the business as usual case. But if you have the ambitious targets of commissioning interconnectors, trebling storage of batteries, and managing the curtailment by raising the limits on SNSP. That's considerably lower that and more to the point, flatten the curve. So you're more resilient against a future expansion of the system. Right, press on. And finally, let me just say a few things. This is a topic of burning interest in Britain for obvious reasons, but also on the continent, and clearly in the island of Ireland, because certainly in the same gas prices set the electricity price, more than 60% of the time. The implications of that at one stage the gas price reached 200 euros a megawatt of thermal capacity, which means if you double that for the price of generating electricity. The forward price for the 2023 calendar year was 400 euros a megawatt base load. The new renewal was coming on the system with long term contracts that you auction in Britain. We've got that down to 55 euros a megawatt hour for offshore wind, and it should be cheaper onshore but for some reason we're resistant to that. And you can see that the price in the Republic 98 euros is considerably above that. Nevertheless, it's a lot less than 400 euros. So what you would like to do is to say the benefits to the electricity system of that cheaper renewables need to be passed through to the consumers, but without discouraging them from economizing on the very expensive additional electricity they might use. In GB we gave everybody a price cap, and that reduced the incentive to economize. In Germany they were more intelligent and they said well you get 80% of what you consumed last year at a low price but everything above that you can pay the market price and that gives you every incentive to reduce your demand. So we want marginal pricing for the final consumption, but you want average prices which transfer the rents to consumers. I think this brings me to my conclusions. So, I think everybody accepts that the wind and PV targets are challenging what I think has been overlooked, certainly by those who are less technically closely connected to the electrical economics or the engineering and electricity aspects are that the marginal curtailment is three or four times the average and it could easily reach 50%. So 50% of your last megawatt of wind is essentially not available for useful purposes and reducing that reducing the amount of curtailment by exporting and storing and demand side management, it is clearly a high priority. And the implication of this is that you can rapidly reach the point where the cost of reducing carbon dioxide by more renewable electricity may be much higher than the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions elsewhere in the economy. And that may need a revision of the targets you've set, depending on how cheaply you can reduce carbon dioxide elsewhere. And just to mention the implications of a high gas price and much lower renewable prices is we have to find an efficient way of passing the benefits of renewables, which by the way will encourage people to support climate change to those consumers. And that concludes my talk and I look forward to hearing questions and comments. Thank you very much, Professor Newbury. Very insightful, as always, and I like that you're highlighting the nuances around curtailment, which I don't think maybe are discussed quite enough outside of the engineering community in particular. So we've had we do have some questions. I would be quite interested in asking one of my own, if you wouldn't mind to begin with, and this is around the proposed market reforms that are coming out of the European Commission. In particular, they're talking about protecting consumers reducing volatility and they suggest that one way to do this is to have much more fixed contracts with suppliers so less reliant on the wholesale electricity market and more power purchase agreements or other kind of fixed contracts I suppose to reflect the pricing mechanism for renewables intermittent renewable electricity. I'll be interested in hearing what you think about that. Well, the first point to make is that almost all new generation investment now is low carbon so it's mostly wind and PV in GB it's nuclear power, although that's very slow and coming. And all of that now, at least in most countries is on long term contracts long term fixed price contracts you set the price in the auction, and then you enjoy that for the next 15 years or so. So, the question you're raising is well how do we pass the benefits back to consumers. Now of course, the flexible part of the system the load following part is probably still going to be largely gas. And that is going to set the signal. Some of the time there'll be surplus wind and then the price will be almost zero. But a lot of the time you would really like to discourage people to shift their demand to the cheap periods away from the expensive periods. So I think long term contracts fine. But for people who can vary their demand in other words demand side response, you do want them responding at the margin. A contract for a fixed amount of electricity great. Everything above that at the market price. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So it's a combination really that I don't think we'll do away with our markets, certainly not in the near future. So I, there's some questions that I'd like to read out to you so we have a question from Eva Barrett. Could you ask Professor Newbury his opinion on science mood emergency interventions like the infomercial energy cap, the proposed Irish windfall tax, and whether the introduction could have a negative impact on the Irish renewable power purchase market. Well, let me take the last one first because Britain also had a windfall tax. And I'm a great enthusiast for that because if we look back the noticeably nuclear but that's not the problem in the same, but the early wind had a very generous arrangement where they got a premium on top of the wholesale market price. So if you've got a wholesale market price of 400 euros and you have a 50 euro premium on top of that. You're making out like bandits. Now at the time that they signed that contract their expectations was a market price for about 50 euros. And so everything above that is an unexpected windfall game. And it's clearly asymmetric in that they were through the virtue of the premium guaranteed not to lose money. So I am the same thing goes obviously for gas producers who are getting an unexpected windfall game. So windfall taxes seem to me a great deal of sense. Now when it comes to does that undermine the incentive to invest. The answer in an auction is providing the contract that the auction signs and I think in GB there's no question that people expect the low carbon counterpart credit company to honor those contracts. And I'm sure the same is true in the same. Providing you've priced it properly you're perfectly happy with that revenue and that shouldn't have changed as a result of extracting windfall taxes from people who were collecting money like bandits much earlier on. And I'm not too concerned about that. Of course if you're an investor and you could frighten the government into giving you all sorts of extra upside and guarantees and higher compensation they'll ask for it. The test is will they show up to the auction. Yeah, I suppose one other related issue is what that threat of what that cap should be set out I noticed in Europe which was 180 in Ireland it's 120 there's quite a difference there between the two. And, you know, what are the implications of that. So, I don't know if you want to respond. Yes, if you ask upon whom is it mostly going to fall the answer is going to be renewable generators. And if you look back and say, was there any period of time when they could have reasonably expected an average revenue for their sales of more than 120 euros. I find that rather hard to believe. Obviously if they can argue for a higher amount they will. It doesn't seem to be wholly unjust. To some extent it does depend on what the tax rate is. But yes, I find it very difficult to feel sorry for the people who have been enjoying these windfall profits. Yeah, that's a good point. The next question is from Terry Neil who's an IIA board member. And today's air good reports shows that renewables over the past month have delivered 17.3% of Ireland's energy I guess electricity with colon gas at 60% and imports at 17.3% and renewables today are 13.4% should we be concerned and I guess in the context. Yesterday we had an amber alert or a system-wide alert on the electricity system because we had such low wind for most of the day. What do you think about numbers like this when they're really quite so low and they could be sustained over a longer period? Well that's always been known and the problem. And what is it called the Germans describe it as the dunkelflut, the period of cold weather and gloomy skies and little wind. And the reason that you have reserve capacity and the reason why we've been very anxiously running capacity auctions and so has the SEM is to make sure there's enough flexible, highly responsive capacity to meet those periods of low variable availability. The interconnections can help. It wasn't particularly helpful that half of the nuclear power fleet in France was offline last year just when the gas price was reaching its highest. But one hopes that that problem gets resolved and that we can share across when if the wind isn't blowing in the island of Ireland it may perhaps be blowing somewhere else. There will be periods when the whole of continental Europe and its islands will have this problem and we have to be aware of that. And the implication is of course the backup that's needed for those periods is not going to run very much. And it still has to be paid for and the capacity markets I think are going to be increasingly important and will probably have to clear at higher prices given that they won't earn so much money from the energy market. Yeah, that's right. So the next question is from Emma Burns and building a business case for interconnections is challenging currently as it's generally based on day ahead price differentials. And there's not much scope yet for them to capture the wider system benefits that they could provide. How should we be looking to incentivize new interconnector build, and should they be TSO led or developer led. Well that's a really important question. And it's one that certainly GB is also facing so the GB solution is essentially to look not just at the business case but the social case, and to say we'll give you a cap and the floor regime if it's going to be privately financed developer So that we guarantee that in the worst case, when you didn't earn as much money as you thought you might, your minimum will still cover the costs of financing the whole investment. And the upside of course is that if you make out to profitably will cap the surplus you can earn from the interconnector. That's one solution. The other problem, which I think is peculiar to the same and I know is already being addressed is that in periods of scarcity. They're supposed to be a price support that increases the wholesale price, which the interconnectors are trading up essentially to something close to the value of last load. And those will be periods, short periods of extremely profitable interconnector revenue streams. But at the moment, as I understand it this support price for when you have system alert is hardly rising above the option price of about 600 euros megawatt hour. So that's one aspect of it. If the worst comes to the worst and better management of the interconnectors in real time and properly pricing the ancillary services that flexibility service to avoid those peak problems will become more important. And again, it comes back to, and this has always been a longstanding and slowly resolved problem in continental Europe is how do you get agreement across, not unfortunately just GB Ireland and GB France but the whole of the city and getting 47 system operators to agree anything is hard work, but it's going to become increasingly important. And it's a win win for everybody if they can make more efficient use of those interconnectors. So just the last part of that question I'm guessing you think they should be TSO led rather than developer led, our state led and some well know the option solution is say developer led is fine. We appreciate that you're not getting necessarily the full benefit out of it. So we'll underwrite the minimum that you're going to get if we think this is a good idea. So you're going to at least cover your costs and you stand the upside of making a reasonable profit. I mean, I have nothing against TSO led ones I worked in the Netherlands where the state owned grid company built the interconnection to Norway. And the people with the early GB France interconnectors were CGB and a week is so. No, I've no philosophical arguments against it but most countries are rather keen for other people to pay for these things. Yes, yes. Okay, then next question is from Nisha Kenny, who's an IE energy researcher, given that Ireland will be importing nuclear generated energy through the Celtic interconnector. Is it time for Irish government to reconsider the legislative ban on the domestic production of nuclear energy. And this is certainly one that pops up I think nearly every webinar I've attended on electricity markets or electricity in Ireland. If we look at Hinkley point C and size will see they reckon 3200 megawatts is the economic size of a modern nuclear power station. And the peak demand in the same is what about 5000 megawatts. So you have to think, and this is a serious constraint on system operation. You have to have emergency response reserve fast response for 1600 megawatts per reactor. Now, if somebody comes up with a viable commercially sound, small modular reactor, then I would say great. The SEM system compared to the minimum economic size, which is probably pushing 1000 megawatts makes the cost of having the backup to keep this whole system secure, pretty high. So I guess that that I mean that argument was made a long time ago so it's really the advent of smaller modular reactors that might change. I don't know if the ban is justified anymore. Would you agree with that? Might. Wait, I mean the big problem with a small modular reactor is you have to build a giga factory to make it. And somebody has to believe that there will be a huge queue of people because the whole point is economies of scale and selling large numbers of them. This is a non trivial speculative investment given that we haven't yet demonstrated that they work and go on working. Yeah, that's right. At an economic price. I mean you could you can get a nuclear power submarine reactor. But the cost of that is horrendous and top secret anyway so a commercial one. I think there's something yet to be put on the market. Yeah, yeah. Okay, then our next question is from Robert Byrne water professor new breeze views on the capital efficiency on a longer term horizon of storage methodologies so I guess the hydrogen battery or other other types of storage longer term storage. Unfortunately they're horrible. Some storage is pretty expensive. And unfortunately, and most of the countries I know have used up most of the sites in Scotland, there are a few still to be developed and are being developed, and they will double our medium 10 meaning 24 hours to 36 hours storage. Obviously lithium ion batteries are good for between half an hour and four hours. So when you're talking about seasonal storage, it really comes down to hydrogen. The end to end use efficiency of generating electricity, turning it through an electrolysis into hydrogen, using energy to pump it up to pressure and store it underground and then releasing it and burning it at best at 50% efficiency in the turbine. The end to end you're pushing 20% at most to which the cost of the electrolyzer is about the same as a gas turbine. And then you need the gas turbine as well. So, if we may have to go there. It's going to be extraordinarily expensive. And any other way through demand shifting, or even storing hot water and I gather you can store hot water as a nice length for very long periods of time. That has problems as well. So it's a problem we don't have to address just yet we probably will have to think about it in the 2040s. And let's hope there's some cheaper solutions. Well, yeah, that's right. Okay, and then the next question is from Bob Hannah who's Chief Technical Officer at the Department of Environment and Climate, who served on the panel who that appointed you as an independent member on the same committee. And he is wondering, you know, what could we have done better in designing the same and what would you propose in any upcoming market reform. That's a bit of a, that's a big question. Okay, and this was never a jurisdictional problem at the same because building transmission is a is a devolved decision. But everywhere you look in Europe people are pointing out that the delays in building new transmission line. And I only need to mention the North South interconnector as an example are totally incompatible with setting a target for high renewable penetration. So something has to give and it's probably going to be a combination of proactive building, thinking ahead where the renewable connections are best located and that includes offshore as well. I'm not sure in GB is quite well planned because the crown estates identifies the sites, and then it proceeds from there but if you identified a site in advance, secured all the consent, so that the moment the auction clears. He never knows that he has an assured grid connection by the time he's built that he has already the environmental consents in place, and he can start ordering the kit as opposed to spending a year and a half negotiating all of those things. When I come back to 2030 is really, really close. And the speed with which the necessary steps have been taken in the past has been really, really leisurely, and something dramatic has to be changed. So, although I used to argue on the same that a better locational price signals on the transmission system would have been good, and might have helped that was, that was never really a responsibility of the same that's up to the CRU and Yeah, so I actually I have a couple of questions here on locational margin marginal pricing one from Emma Burns and other from Fergal McNamara on, you know, you know, are there any credible alternatives it seems in the in Great Britain often and national grid are very keen. So we do all agree that constraint costs are a problem industry seems to be mainly against it. And are there other things like network charging or balancing services could they work instead. And will there be an issue now that you've raised in the interconnect on the interconnectors the various interconnectors if we have different pricing coming across so I guess it's a two part thing one is whether the locational pricing is marginal pricing is good for Ireland. And how will it affect us if she be going ahead of this. Well, the most important part of the locational signals are like, are giving instructions or incentives to locate new investment at particular places and not in others, because once you've made that connection, you're stuck with it for the lifetime of the plant. The locational marginal pricing is a spot price. I mean, you can guide the long term contract prices that mean that locating in one place rather than another is cheaper. But the spot price is mainly about dispatching the conventional generation, the wind will run. And so we'll run if it can and there's capacity on the system. So you mentioned the balancing market that clearly moving that to locational prices looks like a much simpler thing. But then you have to ask, well, is the day ahead market consistent with those predictable marginal prices that will show up in the balancing market. So you have to ask, is it all going to collapse backwards into all of the earlier markets. But I think the thing that has changed my view, much more strongly in favor of locational pricing is that. And I think it's true in the same as certainly true in GB is you want the interconnectors in different places to have different prices. And as I say, surplus wind in Scotland exporting to Norway, while deficient or excess demand in the south of the country around London importing cheap nuclear power over the interconnectors from France is a no brainer. But if you have a single price for the whole of GB, then you're probably doing neither of those actions sensibly. And we're talking very rapidly getting up to something like 15 gigawatts of swing capacity on the system, which compared to 45 big demand. You think the 30 swing is very large. So managing that in real time to respond to the real time fluctuations in wind and solar is going to be increasingly important. Now maybe there are some fudges you can get round through the interconnector management, but there's no obvious simple solution which locational prices would deliver. Right. Yeah. And the SEM with its moille and EWIC, which at the moment the moille is used because it's cheaper and the EWIC is not used because it's a very lossy interconnector. And you can't export north south easily because of the lack of the north south interconnector, but you can imagine using GB as an interconnector from the north to the south, providing you can have those interconnectors going in different directions. But with a single price, that's difficult. You will help by having different prices. Yeah. Okay. And so then I have a question from John Watt from ESB. What are your views on the dual fossil or renewable market model that's being discussed in GB and would it be suitable for Ireland? Absolutely not. Now the reason I say that is because we have a dual contract market in the sense that we have 15 year contracts for difference for renewables. We're proposing something like a 30, 35 year contract for difference for size will see when it's built, which won't be for quite some time. And by annual contracts for difference for fossil generation. So there are different contracts for different kinds of generation struck at very different prices. Now, the whole point of a spot market is at any point there should be a single price and the idea that you should bring up somebody and say I'd like some wind to how much have you got. And to make up the difference by ringing up somebody else and getting some fossil generation to make up the difference is a complete abnegation of the whole benefit of a single market, which is you don't have to have individual people handling over their bilateral trades. I mean we got past that a couple of millennia ago. So it'll be a step backwards really. Do you have any thoughts is from Nick bar wise, whose department of enterprise trade and employment. Do you have any thoughts on the idea of a new European super grid connecting potential countries with excess wind in western north Europe with those in the south and Mediterranean and lots of potential for solar is this high and sky or is this realistic. Well, when we could actually build the interconnection we know we need within countries, then I would be more interested in the idea that we could imagine rather more ambitious projects between countries. Clearly, state grid in China has this wonderful plan of going all the way across a very high tension 1200 kilovolts to Western Europe said as the sun moves across the sky so the electricity moves along the wires. The problem with the Sahara quite apart from the fact that they seem to be extremely fractious and contentious and tend to blow things up is that it's the same time zone so the sun shines there at the same time as it does here. Yeah, suspect it's easier for them to use the solar to displace the oil and the gas which they can then release to other countries. Well, this is going back to a previous question but from Eliza Fancy, you mentioned the need for better cross border cooperation. Could you please expand on this what can we do to improve the cross border cooperation. I'm guessing they're both Britain, GB and Ireland, North South lots of borders there to think about. Yes, so I spent, I suppose the last almost well certainly about five years on the same committee, moving to the integrated European electricity market from what I thought was an actually rather well designed for the island. The central dispatch bull model. So to all that time to get it and then Brexit meant that we could no longer couple day ahead on the interconnectors. And you could do it intraday. I don't know for how long but the arbitrage possibilities suggested that the day ahead was being used very inefficiently. And it's raised as costs because you're having to commit plants that may not have been needed. If you could have used plant in other countries. Now I could never quite understand why to hell with the EU, the same and GB couldn't have got together and said well look, let's sort this out and day ahead. The way in which a Norway which isn't well it's it's in the common European market has coupled and proposes to couple with GB. So those, I mean, the benefits of doing that and not absolutely outrageously large I mean they're probably at the order of 30 to 40 million euros a year adult prices probably higher at current market prices. But it's money worth having. And I don't know whether it was purely political obstinacy that got in the way if the electricians or the electrical engineers had had their way it could have been sorted out over a weekend I suspect. Or may still be done or you know that relationship is one that's evolving I think I have a question here on from from the UK actually Karen Kotlin head of strategy as UK power networks. Really interesting presentation in the context of delivering the net zero transition energy security what can GB government or businesses learn from the Irish market and vice versa of course. Well it's very interesting. When Australia had big power cuts because of, I think it was lightning storms on their grid with a lot of renewable electricity suddenly disconnected. They came visiting Ireland to find out how did they manage such a high degree of renewables on the system. The answer was a lot of work was done on raising the rate of change of frequency standards and raising the system on synchronous penetration levels that the system could accommodate and managing that. I think Ireland already has, I think it's now one Hertz per second GB I think it's still that only a half a Hertz per second. That is something that clearly the same has demonstrated can be done, and will be I suspect, necessary in other jurisdictions. Okay, and I think we have time for just one more question probably. Given someone from donor bullet on from I I a member, given the gas fire generation is going to be needed for seven for a foreseeable future and the absence of gas storage on the island of Ireland should the Irish state invest in bringing on the new gas field, if reports are true at Barry row. I know nothing about the economics of the new gas fields but I always worry about the lack of storage and backup for gas generation in particular but gas generally, given that you're so dependent upon two interconnectors to lines to GB. I mean, sure you can do fire. But if you work out the amount of fuel you have to move daily to keep a combined cycle gas turbine running. It's horrendous. So, anything that increases resilience against any gas disruptions I would have thought needs very careful investigation. And diplomatic. And, okay, well actually I think I'll squeeze in one more. We have a question from Dara Lawler who's an eye researcher. The New York Times reported yesterday that transmission capacity in the US would have to double by 2035 if renewable targets are to be met. Are there compare comparable challenges in Ireland when it comes to our transmission infrastructure. And I think a short answer is almost certainly yes. If I look at GB, the transmission expenditure. I think even just to handle the offshore winders of the order of 70 million 70 billion pounds over the next 12 years. It's something. Well, Britain has expanded its high voltage network by 2% since privatization. And we're talking now about a really massive increase. So this is an order of magnitude larger than has been done in the past. Matt, I would imagine even to handle offshore wind is going to have to be comparably large investments on the island. Yeah. I think that's a challenging spot to leave it out but give us lots of food for thought. And so I think we are really out of time. But I would really like to thank you very much for your interesting presentation and also to all the participants for their engagement and the great questions that have come in. I think we've all learned a lot. I would also like to thank the IA and ESP of course for sponsoring this seminar, and especially to our speaker Professor David Newbury, and we look forward to seeing you all again at the next webinar in the series. So thank you very much, Professor Newbury, and we look forward to interacting again with you and hopefully resolving some of these questions in the future. Thank you.