 Good afternoon, and I'm delighted to welcome you to this webinar, which is part of the 2020 ESB IIEA lecture series, entitled Rethink Energy. And I'd like to thank, first of all, the ESB for their kind sponsorship of this event, and we'll hear from Paddy Hayes in a moment. My name is Alex White, and I'm pleased to have been asked to chair this webinar this afternoon on behalf of the energy group here at the IIEA. And we're really delighted to be joined this afternoon by two really outstanding speakers, Dr. Christina Demsky, who's the deputy director of the Center for Climate Change and Social Transformations, and a distinguished lecturer in psychology at Cardiff University. And also, Neve Boyle, who's the founder and managing director of the Reputations Agency, a strategic reputation and communications consultancy. I'd like to thank both of them for being so generous with their time to speak to us this afternoon. Dr. Demsky will speak initially for about 20 minutes or so on the topic of changing values and public perceptions of the energy transition and the role of trust. Following this, Neve Boyle will present for about 10 minutes or so on the role of reputation, risk, and return on investment. After both of those presentations, we'll have an opportunity then to go to a Q&A session with you, our audience. You'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, and you should see that hopefully on your screen there. Feel free to send in your questions throughout the session just as they occur to you. You don't have to wait until the presentations have finished. You can do it as soon as you're inspired by a question. Please compose it and send it through. I would ask that in line with our normal kind of convention that you would identify yourself briefly and your affiliation if you have one when you're asking the question. A reminder as well that both the presentations and the Q&A sessions are on the record. Also a reminder that we're delighted if you, in the course of the webinar, would like to use Twitter if you're minded to do so, and our handle is at IIEA. So there are just a couple of brief words by way of introduction. I'm looking forward, as I'm sure you are, to hear from our two speakers. But before we do that, I'm delighted to introduce to you to say a few words by way of introduction. Paddy Hayes, who's the managing director of ESP Networks at ESP Paddy. Thank you very much, Alex, and I'd like to add my welcome on behalf of ESP to everybody to the session this afternoon. I think it's a wonderful series in conjunction with the IIEA, this rethink energy series. So as Alex said, I work at ESP Networks, and a key part of our mandate is that transition to the low carbon future, where we're trying to make sure that more renewables can get connected to the network, and then that we can develop the network so that that new clean electricity can be used to drive the carbon out of heat transport and society generally. And Ireland has been making great progress in this area over the last many years. So despite a really strong increase in electricity demand over the last few years. I just checked the SEA website this morning and in the first half of 2020, 38% of Ireland's electricity came from renewable sources. But of course, between now and 2030, where our target is to get to 70%, the journey is probably going to be a little bit different. So rather than companies like ESP Networks and AirGrid working with generators and developers of renewable projects. It's also likely to involve a different coalition, a coalition of supply companies, of aggregators, of innovators, of customers, consumers and communities. And I think our perspective on that is that trust and public opinion, which is always paramount, is going to become increasingly significant and increasingly relevant for the clean electricity transition. At ESP Networks, we have three particular innovation projects going on at the moment, one in Dingle, another in the Arran Islands, and a third in Nimrick City, where we're looking not only at new technologies, but significantly and consciously we're involving community and listening to the voice of the customer and the experience of the customer as part of that innovation process. I'm really delighted that ESP can be associated with this lecture this afternoon, looking forward to listening to Neve Boyle from the Reputations Agency later on. But first of all, I'd like to pass the mic over to Dr Christina Dempsky, and I'm really excited to hear her perspectives on trust and public attitude in the energy transition. Thanks Christina. Thank you very much. I'll just load up my presentation. So yes, thank you very much for having me. It's great to be part of this lecture series, as everyone else has said already as well. Yeah, so I am here to talk about public values and perceptions of energy transitions. And today I am presenting particularly on a research project that looks at how we might pay for energy transitions and what that brought up in terms of values around energy justice and fairness, and how they underpin trust in the energy transition and different actors involved in that. I should say that, as has been said before, I'm the Deputy Director of Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations, or CAST for short. But actually this research was funded as part of the UK Energy Research Centre. So I'm also here representing that centre. And before I go on to talk about the specific empirical research that I'd like to share with you, I thought I'd just say a couple of things about each of these centres because I'm representing them both. So in CAST, it's very much people focused and focused on social transformations in line with achieving climate change targets. And it's only just started. So we're right at the beginning. And some of the questions that we're asking are listed here. We've got four research themes. We're looking at what low carbon transform features could look like, how they have occurred in the past, how we can accelerate those transformations and how we can embed them better in society. And we're focusing in particular on sort of hard to reach or hard to decarbonise areas like food and diet and mobility, heating and cooling and material consumption. And a lot of the research that I'm presenting today sort of was used to build the application for CAST and we're delighted to be able to take this research forward. The UK Energy Research Centre or UCORC for short is a much longer running centre. I think it's in its fourth round of funding. It's therefore much broader in terms of the university's involves and I've just listed some of the key things here, but it's much more focused on energy. And particularly in this latest round of funding, we're looking at the transition to net zero, which is the UK target of late. So that's just a little bit about CAST and UCORC, which I'm representing today. But I will now continue to talk a little bit about the role of public trust and energy transitions and particularly this research was part of a series that UCORC published on energy and equity. And you can see some of the publications here. Some of the things that were looked at around fairness and retail energy markets, justice in energy efficiency and also how you fund the low carbon energy transitions and how you make that fair. So our research sort of formed part of this series and looking particularly at public trust and public perceptions around this issue. I should say that the research obviously focused on the UK, but I think some of the issues are quite similar in Ireland and other countries around the world. So hopefully we can we can generalize them a little bit. A little bit around the project background. I've listed my co researchers up at the top. But essentially we start, we always start our research project from sort of the premise that people are deeply implicated in how energy systems are run and how they how they how they produce energy and how they use. And it's not just as consumers but people are increasing the producers of energy as well. They're also communities that host infrastructure and ultimately we pay for a lot of the changes through taxes and bills. And while there's a lot of focus on creating a low carbon energy transition in the sort of the least cost way. Our previous projects have shown that people care about more than just least cost and one of the projects that we did was look at public values for energy transitions, which is the report on the left here, which showed a variety of values that are important to people in terms of thinking what the future energy system might look like and what kind of role people might play within that. So, in this particular project we went a little bit more specific and particularly because the previous project looked at the different values that came out and justice and fairness became particularly important around views around how we pay for energy transitions. So the aims for this particular projects were trying to understand that a little bit more in more depth. So we looked at how people describe roles and responsibilities for funding energy transitions. And particularly we looked at sort of different actors within the energy system. And we focused on the government or government actors and energy companies in particular because other aspects of the energy systems are not particularly well known by the general public. We're also looking at whether people are personally willing to accept costs associated with low carbon energy transitions and how some of that is related to considerations on justice and fairness, and particularly how these aspects underpin the distrust that we find repeatedly over and over again in various of our projects around energy companies and governments leading a low carbon transition. I won't say too much about methods and data at the moment, but feel free to ask me or follow up if you want to know any of the specifics or look at look it up in this publications as well. But essentially I'm presenting data from two stages. One was a nationally representative survey, which looks at public thoughts about responsibility for and costs of energy transitions. And essentially we're trying to figure out what perceptions are and why they are the way that they, they are. It was done online it was informed by an advisory panel as all our service are, but we then also followed this up with qualitative focus groups to get a better in depth understanding of why people hold the perceptions that they do and particularly how trust is important. And we did various focus groups across the country and tried to get diverse spread of participants to to get some in depth views on these issues. So I'm going to go through a series of findings and I'd like to start with a really positive one and again this isn't the only project in which we find this, but essentially people strongly support energy system change towards sort of low carbon targets. And there's just one set of data. So, if you can, if you ask people how important these different aspects are, you can see that people find all of them important essentially, they're small differences but generally, it's important to people that energy is affordable, but also that it's low They, the idea of sort of not wasting or reducing energy use is a positive one for people as well. And naturally, they would like the energy system to produce reliable energy. So these are all important things and people spontaneously will mention that these things are what the energy system should be providing or should be aiming for. But then obviously we wanted to discuss with people. Well, how do we make sure that energy transition delivers on all of these different aspects and who has the responsibility for financing these because ultimately, a lot of this will cost money. One thing that we asked in the survey is just who they think has responsibility for ensuring these four different goals. And we can look across the different goals here because ultimately there's not that much difference. But what we can see is that most responsibility is assigned to energy companies, followed by the UK government. But there is also responsibility assigned to sort of members of the public, so people now, but also future UK residents, because they will be using the energy system as well. And if we look at some of the some of the findings from our focus groups, what we can find is reasons for why the responsibility is described the way that it is. And essentially energy companies are given our scribe responsibility because they currently run the system or belong large parts of it, and they profit from it and they have interest in making sure it continues in the future. The government is a scribe responsibility because it's their role to provide leadership and also they receive taxes and they have the ability to like overly overall strategize over the direction that the energy system should be going. And then the public is a scribe responsibility because they use the system and they benefit from it and therefore they should have an interest in producing the best low carbon energy system that we that we can have. And so, ultimately, people as scribe responsibility to various actors that have roles in the energy system. But we also wanted to look at people's personal willingness to contribute to its energy transition costs. As I said, things will will cost money. So one of the things that we tried to do to get at this is not necessarily a kind of a willingness to pay study because they have limitations in this regard but whether people would be willing to accept costs on the energy bills, which is essentially how a lot of things are paid for in the UK at the moment. And I wouldn't worry about this graph in too much detail. But just to say that essentially people are willing to accept about nine to 13% of their energy bills going towards some sort of levies that pay for things and that ensure low carbon energy and helping vulnerable and disadvantaged groups and so on. However, and this is a very big however I would be cautious about interpreting these findings in too much detail or at face value because there is a lot of conditions attached to this and I'll go into this in the next two slides of, you know, people aren't just willing to accept costs without these conditions being met. And at the same time, I would say we ran a different survey where we asked the question slightly differently, and the numbers end up different. So the way that the question is framed and the way that you ask it, and particularly whether you ask in percentages or pounds for example, changes how much people are willing to accept. So I would just use this kind of data to indicate that people are willing to accept some costs. So I would be reticent to draw conclusions about exactly how much cost. And rather what this project looked at was, if people are willing to accept some of the cost, what are the conditions attached to having some of this cost attached to the energy bill. What we find is that actually issues around energy, what we would call energy justice seem to be really important, perhaps over and above financial constraints that people have in their own personal lives. So, what we found in an analysis of the some of the survey data is that if we try to predict how much cost people are willing to accept on their energy bills. We found that beliefs about procedural justice and beliefs about distributional justice were more important than people sort of financial circumstances so how much they pay currently, whether they're concerned about the energy costs or what their income is. And what I so you might be familiar with these terms but again procedural justice of things like whether people feel like there's open openness and honesty and decision making around energy transitions and the cost associated with them, whether they feel like their voices are heard or they're respected in that process. And then also the equitable cost sharing across society so making sure that everyone pays or does their bit. And this isn't just sort of everyone in terms of every member of the public but also different societal actors that have a role to play. So for example, energy companies or government. One aspect then that or one final aspect that I wanted to go into in a little bit more detail is the idea of trust and particularly the strong distrust that exists around particularly energy companies and their motives, particularly around low carbon energy transitions which is a repeated finding that we have and understanding how or how that distrust manifests and what might underpin it. And that's particularly important because obviously people pay the energy bills through the energy companies or to the energy companies and a lot of changes that are required for low carbon transitions will be delivered through energy companies. For example, if you think about the smart meter roll out in the UK is being delivered through energy companies, even though it might not be funded by them. So there's three themes that came up when we looked at issues around distrust profits transparency and collusion and I'll go into them in a little bit more detail now. So, sort of this sense of injustice and unfairness that emerged in in people's discussions were particularly around or seem particularly prominent around perceptions of profits. And I would say that it's not that people don't accept profits energy companies might make, but their views were quite nuanced and conditional some people were obviously okay with profits and they thought it was it was just fair part of the privatised of the market, the market system that we have, but most of the people had conditions attached to energy companies making profits. And one aspect was the level of profit relative to affordability of energy so people very strongly felt that if there are people in the UK who cannot afford to heat their home which was considered to be kind of a basic right. Then it's not okay to make a large profit of of the back of that. Another condition was what the profit was used for. So, the money that energy companies make people obviously didn't necessarily know how much money was being made and what was it what it was being used for but there was a perception that it might just go to bonuses and dividends and rather than being reinvested for example to ensure that the energy system decarbonises. There's also an issue around trustworthiness of information around profits. So, a lot of the time it's people didn't know the level of profits and they were overestimated a lot. But the same time if people are given information about how much profit energy companies in the UK do make people didn't necessarily trust that information and there was a lot of questions around whether the information was accurate. And then finally around profits I should also say that there was a bunch of systemic issues that people recognised and particularly this idea that energy companies operate in a privatised system and that system encourages them to make profits. So people didn't necessarily expect energy companies to have different motives or certainly not be incentivised to do anything towards reaching the goals that people had outlined earlier. So to some extent they was a recognition that profit motives trumped any other types of motives that energy companies might have and that was the broader problem. And the second issue then which was closely related to the issue around profits was the lack of or lack of perceived transparency. So this very much manifested because people felt like they didn't have a good understanding of the costs and the related decision making within the energy system currently. So this related to a whole bunch of different things. You could have different profit levels. People didn't know what they were. They didn't know what profits were being used for. People don't understand the links between wholesale and retail prices. Even energy tariffs often seemed particularly complex to people and people didn't necessarily understand their energy bills. And people are inferred from this lack of understanding that there was also a lack of transparency which was deemed problematic. And as you can see in one of the quotes here, people didn't necessarily, well, some people criticised the system for being privatised. But some people saw some positives in that, that being choice for example. But the one positive thing around choice was then undermined by lack of transparency. As I said before as well, there was an issue with this trust of information regarding current and future costs. And even if people were given information about, for example, the profit level of an energy company, there was a lot of skepticism around that information. And people didn't necessarily trust it, which is clearly a complicated issue around communication. And yeah, some of these quotes show quite nicely how some of our participants felt about that information. This is a little bit problematic because greater transparency was considered a precondition for holding government and energy companies to account, which people thought, you know, was their role a little bit. And they really wanted to know where the money came from and where the money is going, particularly if the energy bills are going to increase in the name of creating a low carbon energy system. So the last point is just around, well, perceived collusion between government and energy companies in particular. This was certainly a theme that emerged. And I wouldn't say that everyone thought that there was major collusion between energy companies and government, but it was a significant enough theme for us to include this. And in particular, while the previous themes talked a lot about energy company motives and distrusting those, this theme is more about distrusting government motives. And there was a perception generally that regulation must be inadequate because there was a close, there was a perceived close connection between government on one hand and she companies on another, particularly individual politicians sitting on boards of energy companies. And the four are after they, they, then they're in politics. I should say to that as well this this question comes up all the time when people talk about energy companies they generally think about retail companies, but they might also think about other companies, like, or producing companies and so on. So to kind of summarize the these findings and sort of three sentences, I would say that there is definitely support for energy system change and there was willingness to help finance it. But to some extent this is undermined by a lot of distrust, or in particular perceived lack of procedural and distributed distributed justice. There was a lack or perceived lack of transparency, as well as there was a distribution, people perceive there needed to be distribution of responsibility and who shoulders the costs and people weren't quite sure whether that would be happening. So I think I would say that placing greater burden on the public to finance energy transitions towards sort of low carbon decarbonization without addressing these issues will likely jeopardize the support and lead to further distrust so there is support. There's also a lot of distrust and we need to be really careful about how we go about changing to a low carbon system that places a lot of financial burdens on the public. So a couple of recommendations and again these are easy for me to make and it's harder to actually sort this out in practice so I understand that they will, we can talk about that in more detail if you're interested. But essentially I think our data shows that there needs to be strong and clear commitments to low carbon energy system change from both government and energy companies and people need to believe that this is a priority for them. We also need to ensure greater transparency and accountability of where money is coming from and where it's going and how it contributes towards these goals. And in that sense there needs to be particular clarity and justification for how money is spent around profits in particular. We might also need some more innovative thinking on fair distributions of costs across system actors. And then finding ways to credibly show how energy companies are not driven by profits alone. We need clear evidence of separation between government and the energy industry. So that's it from me. Thank you very much and I look forward to our discussion later on. Thank you very much Christina for that presentation some really rich data there that I'm sure would be the basis for a lot of very interesting discussion. So I'm going to turn now to our second speaker, Neve Boyle. Neve is the founder and manager director of the Reputations Agency and we're going to hear from Neve now and then we'll have an opportunity for some Q&A. Thank you Neve. Thank you very much. Hopefully you can all see my screen. Just give me a nod. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Okay, so good afternoon. Over the last 15 years or so we've worked very closely with over 50 global and Irish organizations and we've, I suppose, seen how the marriage of very strong brand values, along with a compelling sense of purpose has delivered some of the most powerful reputations and business results for our clients and I hope to bring you some of these learnings today. There's a huge reliance on and expectation that consumers are going to join you in this journey towards taking carbon out of the industry. And the reputation of firms in the energy sector is going to be a very critical variable that needs to be leveraged very carefully if the public are going to accept the changes involved in transitioning to net zero emissions. Now an excellent reputation can both inform public attitudes and it can also shape behaviors to the point where the public will take part in that journey. Alright, so why do we care about reputation? Well, it's important. You know, there is a difference between whether you have a shoddy reputation or an excellent reputation. The reputation is built in three ways. If we just click through there, the direct experience that stakeholders have with you as an organization. So think about what that experience is like. What you communicate through all your various channels, but more importantly and the hardest to influence and the hardest to control is what are others saying about you. So reputation is important because it drives supportive behaviors if we go through to the next piece. It builds trust. It's the benefit of the doubt and the crisis and the propensity to recommend you as an organization to welcome you into the community and to adopt new technologies. All increases exponentially when you have an excellent reputation. And this support allows the company to achieve its business results. If we go to the next one. So reputation drives business support and it moves markets. And we can see from this chart alone how it accelerates sales, how it tracks talent. But if we just click to the next section, we're going to see the impact on trust. And this is what Christina has been talking about, which is hugely important. And we know that for every five point increase in a reputation score for an organization, trust increases by 4.5%. And we know that three out of four members of the public would advocate or recommend an organization that has an excellent reputation. So reputation can really pay off. There's a chief executive or a business leader who doesn't focus on the fundamental drivers of an organizational success. And there are very many ways of measuring businesses. But outstanding leaders will also measure the intangibles that play a part in driving their corporate success. They'll look at things like trust and respect and integrity and ethics, and the respect that they show for their stakeholders and for their environment. And how important reputation is. So what really counts when crises occur, when markets tumble and buying power slows is whether you've earned enough trust and support and respect from your stakeholders to give you the license to continue to operate. And as business leaders, we really need to understand the components that build a reputation because how can you manage your reputation if you don't understand what it's made up of. So if we just click through, we can see that when we're looking at reputation, and I want to give you some results very shortly on the energy sector. We look at firstly the pulse score. So if we click in the next section there, that's great. We look at the pulse score. This is really looking at the emotional connection that people have with you as an organization. And that's based on four factors, the level of trust and respect and admiration and good feeling that people have for you as an organization. But we know that that's driven by seven very rational dimensions of reputation that are the pillars of organizational reputation. So these are the things we need to be looking at how well we're governed in the eyes of the stakeholders. Are you fair? Do you behave ethically? Do people believe that you're open and transparent? And that's speaking to Christina's points. And in fact, governance, this dimension here on the bottom of this wheel actually became the most powerful driver of reputation this year for the first time, both in Ireland when we did our very large study in Ireland in quarter one, but also globally. Up till now, products and services had been the largest driver of reputation globally and in Ireland amongst the thousands of organizations that we study every year. But this year, pre-COVID, it moved to governance as being the most highly weighted and public expectation of organizations. So we're very aligned in what we're saying here about the importance of governance. So 2020 was the 11th year of a huge study that we carry out every year. It's called the Ireland Reptract study. And it's a study of the reputation of the 100 largest and most familiar and most important organizations in Ireland. And we carry out this study with over 7,000 members of the public. It was carried out in quarter one just before COVID started to really impact our society and our economy. And it's only six or seven months ago, but it feels like a lifetime ago when our economy was amongst the strongest in the world. When employment was at an almost all time high. And we had just had a very contentious general election. So that does seem like a lifetime ago, but at that stage we measured seven organizations in the energy sector in Ireland. And I'm going to show you the power of the energy sector's reputation just before COVID struck. But just to give you a little bit of context for the sector, I'm going to start by showing you how the reputation pulse score for the 100 organizations that we've been studying for 12 years, rose for the fourth year in a row to an average score of 68.5. So what we found was for the first time four out of 10 firms actually improved the reputation score. And these were all pre COVID indicators of the level of trust and respect and admiration that people have for these organizations. But moving into the recession we don't expect to see those high scores. And here we can see what happened with the energy sector since 2010. So the energy sector scores improved significantly in 2020 so that's very good news for the sector. And the sector moved into the strong tier with a score of 70.5 so anything between 70 and 80 would be considered to be strong for the first time. You can see how it dipped in 2012 13 and has been rising ever since. Now there's a risk here as well because the sector has moved up reputation has moved up and I'm going to show you how support has moved up at the same time but we've now moved into a recession. And in that time, reputation becomes at risk, because people's confidence in the economy people's confidence in organizations can drop at these times because their own confidence levels are falling. So we have to keep a very close eye on that. So what I'm reporting on at the moment is quarter one. And if we go to the next slide we can show how that increase in reputation impacted on support. So if we look at one of the indicators that we study, which is the propensity to recommend an organization, we can see how reputation really impacted support. The propensity to recommend one of the organizations in this sector trended upwards over the last few years, and it increased 85% from a low of just one in four people being willing to recommend an energy company back in 2012 to close to one and two in 2020. So this corrects very strongly with reputation scores that we're seeing. And we can see the trend line that should have continued to rise. But we now have COVID we need to deal with. And if we go to the next slide again we're going to look at how supportive the public are the energy sector, and this supportive behavior was about the propensity to welcome you to their community. So what does that mean for the sector. It inevitably means welcoming infrastructure. In the past that might have met coal trains gas oil pipelines, moving to power plants, moving to electricity transmission lines and more recently solar infrastructures wind farms offshore and onshore advanced electrical measuring smart buildings etc and that support has been growing, not to the same extent as recommend your company, and but it has been growing and it's increased by about a third, moving from 40% in 2016 to 53% in 2021. So again support is following reputation. Next slide and just click through yep to one. Thank you. And if we just stay here for the moment we can see that amongst the public when we look at the energy sector. 10% of the public believe that the sector has a poor reputation and by poor. That's a score of between zero and 39 out of 100. And if you look at the level of support that those people are willing to give the sector, only 11% of those people would actually support you recommend you give you the benefit of the doubt in a crisis purchase your products, etc. So it's very low levels of support for those who believe you have a poor reputation and don't trust you. We can see how this expands then if we go from weak to average to strong. We can see how the percentage of support and the willingness to support you moves. But if we go to one more click there which is looking at the 40% of people who believe that the energy sector has an excellent reputation. 72% of those people would support you so seven times as many as those who would give you a poor reputation score. We can look to adopt new technologies such as vehicles, smart meters, electric heat pumps to consume electricity at different times the day to welcome energy sector infrastructure into their community. The sector is going to need to retain and build on that strong reputation, but in a quite a challenging time coming up. So this brings me on to purpose and how important purpose is going to be for the energy sector. We all need a sense of purpose in our lives. And as marketers we rely very heavily on understanding brand we talk about brand a lot. That's the way we project ourselves to the world and reputation. How are we perceived by the society, but it's just not enough. We need to know that organizations exist for something more than just profit. More and more we're being asked as organizations to justify our existence by how we contribute to society to community to the environment and the economy. So rethinking purpose can be usually beneficial to organizations to sectors to employees. Right now is a very important time for the energy sector to look at this. They're asking organizations all around the world who have been really deeply reflecting on this. And they're asking what part they can play in the current crisis and beyond in a way that really reflects their purpose. Some organizations and sectors really struggle to define their purpose. They can appear to be tone deaf to the times. And we must remember that the needs and the values and beliefs of the public, most of whom are really suffering financially right now have changed dramatically in the last few months. So it's important that your sector really understands what those change values are, and then your purpose resonates at this time. So understanding how important carbon emissions are going to be to the public over the next six months or nine months in a very changed environment is going to be important. We move to the next slide. Thank you very much. So we measure purpose by looking at the degree to which organizations perform against these four factors. Are you improving the lives of people around you? Are you working beyond profit? Of course you have to make profit, but are you also working beyond that? Are you acting for a better world than are you benefiting society? And a strong sense of purpose is to be inspirational. It needs to be forward looking and speak to the greater positive impact that a sector can aspire to achieve. It can be an organization's new weapon. It can help to shape organizational values to build internal alignment and to deliver much stronger reputational impact, and it can be the engine of long term profitability. So in April we went back into field actually just to look at which organizations were succeeding during COVID and which organizations were really standing out amongst the Irish public. And which had stepped up during COVID to support the public. And three organizations stood up, the HSE, Ungardashia Corner, and Unpust. These were organizations which resonated hugely in the month of April and where their purpose translated into clear actions. And I thought I'd just give a one minute case study on Unpust as an organization because it has some relevance to a sector. So Unpust, who's a client of ours, and its purpose is to act for the common good, to improve the quality of life now and for generations to come. And it's led very strongly by David McRedmond, its CEO and a very agile leadership team. Its 9,000 workforce has been bringing this purpose to life in a myriad of ways before COVID. The rapid growth of technology has created deep challenges for this organization, but also great opportunities moving online and moving towards a cashless society. So as the digital world has closed one door on Unpust's postal letter business, it's opened another with the world of e-commerce. And Unpust has been changing dramatically. It's been required to make bold strategic moves to become a sustainable and profitable business and successfully delivering in a digital world. And so some of the recent initiatives that they've been dealing with are gender pay gaps, making very strong commitments to STGGs, pledging zero emissions across the main cities of Ireland. And in fact, they were the first in the world to do this in Dublin. And a dress point, a really nice award winning global first that gave the homeless of Ireland a unique address of their own. And this is how they performed during COVID where they really shun because they stepped up to meet unique challenges of COVID very quickly. And their scores in reputation move to excellent. Their standout service for caring for the elderly and the vulnerable in the community during that time was very much appreciated, but also what they did to maintain the delivery services. So I guess it's just a case study to show that look when organizations stand up in times of crisis, the public takes notice and sentiment shifts. So there are those that makes gestures, but there are those that really truly activate their purpose. And when we go through the crisis, the public are going to remember and note which organizations, sectors really did stand up and their loyalty is going to follow those. And to finish just a little bit about taking the reputation journey for those organizations who really want to build their reputation and build trust and build support amongst the public. It starts with measuring your reputation really understanding it what drives it and what level of support you currently hold. It moves them to integrating that into your business planning. I'm sending reputation over to your communications and your marketing team and saying I'll leave it with you. It's over to you now. But it's ensuring that reputation is understood by every business leader in your business cross functionally. The marketing and comms leaders can be the conductor of this orchestra, but it needs a melody to be able to work through all these stages in the reputation journey. So if we go from measurement to business planning to working cross functionally in the next click, I'm really building reputation in into your long term strategy. So you need a melody, you need a strategy, and it needs to be fully integrated into the organization's long term strategy. So my final words then are just a little recap of my takeaways. And first one, the energy sector is relying on the public to adopt new behaviors and purchasing patterns. Secondly, reputation matters. It drives support amongst important stakeholders and helps you to achieve your goals. In quarter one, the energy sector entered the strong reputation tier for the first time. But COVID and the economic recession are going to threaten that reputation and it's now at risk. So what's more important and challenging is going to be building and retaining your reputation now a cross functional approach integrated into your medium to long term strategy is going to be incredibly important. But you do need to remember to build common ground, understand what the public values most now, because it's a very different environment to the environment in quarter one. And how can you share those values and express that in really activating initiatives that share those values and concerns. So how the sector behaves towards society during this pandemic and recession could form its reputational legacy for years to come. Thank you. Thank you very much, Nev and Christina before you for both of your presentations which I enjoyed very much. And just to remind all of our participants and colleagues and people on this webinar that you're invited to submit any questions that you might have through the Q&A function or some questions that are coming in already. Do tell us who you are. Well, we'll probably find out from the source of the question who you are, but you might just give us your organization or designation if you have one just so as we have a sense of who we have on board and who is interested in this debate. I suppose the first question I have broadly speaking for Christina, Michael Coyle who's a member of the IEA, and he, as we all did, noted what you said about trust and trust is there and people are prepared as a way to make sacrifices or to pay more, but that's not unqualified. It is qualified by a number of things and some of those qualifications were concerns about the corporate sector, profits, transparency, concerns about collusion and so on. I'm kind of interpreting them as sort of, you know, that it's their qualifications to people's general sense of being positive towards making sacrifices. And what Coyle is wondering is whether the increased possibility and potential for jobs and job creation, whether that kind of positive possibility and potential featured from the participants or from the people that you spoke to in some of the service. It's a very good question and I should clarify that trust is a particular complex concept actually and we particularly looked at trust in energy companies delivering a low carbon or taking part in a low carbon energy transition. So in that particular element, trust was quite low because people didn't perceive energy companies currently to have a perfect or motives aligned with that goal. That doesn't mean there isn't trust in other ways. So for example, most people particularly if they've been with an energy company for a long time trust energy companies to deliver electricity and gas to their house and to resolve problems fast. So it's not that there isn't any trust. It's just depends on what aspect you're talking about. So when you're talking about producing jobs, this is obviously something that people see as a positive for these these energy companies being able to provide jobs. And actually if you look at what people want to see out of the energy transitions they want to see support for people who might be in industries that are left behind. So for example, if we move towards more low carbon production. What does that mean for workers in areas that are currently working within fossil fuel industries. So it's not unimportant to people, but I think if you're talking about energy companies, actively and honestly participating in the low carbon energy transition. I think there's some of the distrust emerges in particular about anything to do with cost I think because in the UK in particular I actually I don't know the situation in Ireland but in the UK in particular people have only really seen prices increase. Apart from when some of the policies changed around the cap recently. And I think that that features a lot in people's distrust. So here just for a comeback to need need did a very interesting kind of comparative as a presentation on reputations and what makes for strong reputation and the importance of reputation for corporates and so on. And from your point of view Christina is the trust issue for the corporate sector, is it, is it the sector generally, or would you would you agree with me if that some companies can have more can have more trust than others and that people will will just dismiss the whole sector they might say well, you know there's profiteering going on and this or that company but there are other companies that actually perhaps are more attractive in terms of change. I certainly would agree with that that I think if you go into a little bit more depth, there will be there will be nuance so there will be energy companies that are trusted more than others and have a better reputation among certain groups of the population. What I, what I would say is that Jen, particularly the retail energy market is slightly different because they're providing something that people see, or not everyone but most people see as a basic right. The fact that you want you can heat your home isn't something that people should not should should be jeopardized. And to some extent, you know there's an element that energy companies can take advantage of that, because people need to buy energy, they need to choose and the choice that exists isn't the same as you know buying different types of mobile phones for example so there are extra challenges I think with energy energy retail market in particular, and also the wider energy industry I would have said I would say, but they will be different. It's probably a good cue for the next question from John O'Shea. I go to maybe to leave first on this, and John says, in relation to the perceived collusion between government and companies which is something I think that Christina brought up from her research. In relation to that collusion or perceived collusion as John calls it. Engagement between government and companies is necessary, because companies are often leaders in their field, and they work with government to inform policy development and so on. How can this perception of collusion as both John means as a negative thing how can this perception of a negative type of collusion be reduced. Public consultation is an important tool in that regard and I will come to you Christina I know you're a student but I go to me first on that so this notion of of a bad kind of collusion as it were that people perhaps have. Perhaps, I mean I'm not saying there are no grounds for that, but how can that be addressed if indeed you think it is a problem. Yeah, I mean it probably hasn't come up to the same extent in the study that we've done quite the same extent that we've been studies we've done in Ireland. However, engagement and communication is always important when there is a lack of trust about particular issue. And the more you can engage with town halls and with society and talk to them about the decisions that you're making and why those decisions are being made and the background around them, the better. I think that sometimes this can be the role of leadership within organizations because you can forget that you're talking to each other and you're talking within. Within the sector and to your own organ, you know to your own organizations and maybe within a very close knit group of people between government and industry. But are you actually talking to the public and are you talking to them enough sufficiently and are the leaders speaking to them sufficiently and really explaining things to them. And I think that you know, there are times where an organization can think well I've done that you know I did that piece and the Irish Times or I did that piece of Morning Ireland, but actually, you need to be doing it again and again and again. And really explaining why decisions are being made and why things are important, like progress is important to move ahead. But also engaging and listening and showing that engagement and that's something that organizations fall down on all the time that willingness to actually engage as opposed to simply speak. I'm interested that you both really concentrated on the rep, the reputational question and the trust question for the corporate sector, and we've touched on government and touched on official the official sector the government sector but we haven't really talked much about whether there's a deficit of trust in terms of how politicians are are viewed and how governments are viewed in relation to this whole debate about about the necessary transition. Christina, do you want to say anything about the collusion point or even about trust for politicians which is a kind of a topical enough question at the moment in terms of whether people believe what they're told. Yes, no absolutely and I think both of those points contribute to why there might be a perceived collision or this sort of negative interaction between government politicians and energy the energy industry. And the first point yes, I mean this trust in politicians is very low and there's general if you talk about societal trust which is a very general measurement. It's been going down generally over the decades so there's a general problem there. I think what need was also talking about speaks to the point about procedural justice is this idea that you are being open and honest but you're also listening and engaging with people and I think there's an element of that. There's there's a perception that maybe politicians are listening to the energy industry but they're not necessarily listening to people so it's very one sided. So there are ways that you can involve people in decision making and it depends on the situation that you're talking about how you might do that. And, but you know sort of, you know, simply having sort of some tokenistic consultations on decisions that have already been made. People will very much quickly pick up on that and that won't do any good. But you know there are elements where this is happening more and more now it's difficult it's not an easy thing to do. It's hard to do right, but things like both Ireland and the UK have had citizen assemblies on climate change recently for example. So there are ways that government can engage with the public on these issues, beyond just asking them, for example, asking communities whether they're happy to have a wind farm for example. So there's lots of different ways and I would definitely agree that engaging with the public more is could can be a good thing and counteract some of this. Councillor Sarah Riley from Meath County Council wonders, is there a known method to improve trust between communities who trust communities in relation for example to a wind farm and you know the corporate, obviously there's a corporate involvement as a planning issue and then the local authority so I mean this is a big question which we've many of us have come across a very serious and I wonder in Eve, is there something you can, are there are there do's and don'ts or is there something quickly that you'd like to say in relation to this trust question and in respect of energy infrastructure in particular. Certainly, I mean I think trust, it can be quite volatile. And so it's important to obviously have other measures as well. But in terms of local community and engaging with local community I think those organizations that engage very, very thoroughly with community. And I said, not when they've made the decision and they decided to go ahead and it's gung ho. Well before that, in terms of communicating, listening, understanding what the needs are understanding what the issues are, trying to work around those challenges, being seen to do that, and showing that in their actions as well that actually they're taking things into account. And it's not just something that is a tick, you know box ticking exercise. So those organizations that we can see now and who really engaged in that way. And at the grassroots level, and not just with the politicians, not just with the counselors but right across the communities have engaged deeply with them built relationships, the same teams of people on the ground. There's some kind of sustainability around the people that are working with those communities that builds trust over time. Thank you. The very nice sharp question from we're in Lynch, who is the senior who is a senior research officer in the Economic and Social Research Institute. It's for it's for you, Christina. Where is the incentive for energy companies to act fairly and transparency when it is so easy to hide intricacies of costs, revenues and billing. That is a good question I don't have the answer but this is a question that the public is asking as well. And I think there's probably a role for the government here this is this is where the government, where people see the government role to make sure that energy companies don't act in these ways and I think I didn't go on about this too much today but there's in effect or perceived in effect of regulation of energy companies so I think this is where the government distrust around these issues comes in. And I don't I don't have the answer right now. I don't have the answer to the following question either but but it's raises a very interesting question pulls together strands of what we're discussing. It's from Sarah Pat Foley. And Sarah says to a portion of the public and activists energy companies represent the fossil fuels industry. And they struggled people struggle to move beyond that image, even if those companies are on the journey to become low carbon. This sometimes causes companies to be afraid of getting more active in the community. Have the speakers any tips on how to engage with more militant groups, as Sarah describes them, and to deal with backlash is from a small but very vocal group and me first of all. Yeah, it's a tough one. Do you know what militant groups is very difficult, but I think you have to understand a figure out well are they influential, because if they're not particularly influential amongst your audiences, and they're there. They're noisy, but they may not be influential. If you consider to what degree you're really going to engage, because there are very many other audiences to engage with who are open to changing their mind, they may be neutral at the moment, maybe fence sitters. And if you can, I suppose, focus on those fence sitters and neutrals and keep the people who are positive towards you on site as well. That's really how influential and how impactful are they going to be or what it is going to be. Very good. And do you want to have a final talk on that Christine I should say that Sarah is and the regulatory affairs manager for air via who asked that question. I think actually the answer is relevant for multiple questions similar is the similar line as how do you ensure kind of wind farm community support and so on. So there might be small groups that are vocal. And but need is right you need to figure out whether they're influential and what way they're influential to work out how to engage with them. Oftentimes, there might also be a silent majority. I don't think we can assume these things, and it's important to engage deeply and properly. And I think, finally, you can never expect everyone 100% to be on your side. So it's, it's, and the absolutely final point is that, you know, it's true that trust is easy to lose, but it's hard to gain so consistent action that is genuine as Neve has discussed is probably the best way to build your reputation away from something that is perceived as quite negative nowadays. Okay, thank you very much. And thanks to both of our speakers Christina, Dr Christina Demsky and to me of boil. He's been a very interesting discussion perhaps raised as many questions as we've been able to answer, but the focus on trust and in Christina's case and reputation in these case when they're obviously interlocking questions has been very interesting and I think it's been largely we've been talking about the corporate sector. And that makes sense because they're of course the custodians of so much of the infrastructure custodians of so much of the material and the resources that we need to mobilize in order to engage in this huge change that is happening and needs to be. So the corporate sector is absolutely indispensable to that change but obviously we need another whole hour or longer to talk about, as I mentioned government, not just people actively directly in government but politicians, people who are prominent in the broader public discourse in relation to these questions and how risks in respect of trust enters into how people see those so called thought leaders and how that can be improved and enhanced so there's a massive debate here. I want to thank again in particular the ESP for their support, speaking of reputation, I think I can fairly say that the ESP has given this lecture series enormous support, we really value that at the IEA and it's been a terrific opportunity today to address some of these questions I'm sure in this third of the series we think energy. Thanks again to the ESP, thank you to all of the participants, those of you who ask questions and most importantly of all I can't call for a round of applause, it usually is a nice way to finish, but a virtual round of applause to our two superb speakers, Christina Demsky and Neil Boett. So thank you all very much for your attendance and good afternoon.