 I'm really delighted to welcome you all to this webinar, which is part of the 2020 ESB IIA series entitled, Rethink Energy. I'd like to thank the ESB for their sponsorship of this event. We are delighted to be joined today by Eamon Ryan, TD Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications. I'd like to thank him particularly for being so generous with his time to speak with us today. Eamon Ryan's portfolio includes climate action, communications network and transport. He was appointed to this role in June. He's leader of the Green Party, a position he's held since May, 2011. He has been a TD for Dublin Bay South since 2016 and he previously served as a TD for Dublin South from 2002 to 2011. He was the founding chairperson of the Dublin Cycling Campaign. He began his political career as a Dublin City Councilor. He then went on to serve as Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources from 2007 to 2011. The title of the minister's address is the European Green Deal, Future Proofing Energy in Ireland. He will speak to us for roughly 20 minutes or so. After his presentation, we will go to a question and answers session with you. Our audience, excuse me, you will be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see towards the bottom of your screen. I'd like you to feel free to send questions in throughout the session as they occur to you. And I'd suggest that it would be very helpful if you'd identify yourself into any affiliation when you ask a question. And a reminder that today's presentation and question and answer session are on the record. You may also feel free to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIEA. Before we proceed with the minister's address, I would like to ask Pat O'Dowarty, Chief Executive of the ESB, to offer some introductory remarks. Pat will be, I gather, available to answer questions during the Q&A session as well. Thanks very much. Over to you, Pat. Thank you, Owen, and good afternoon, everybody. I'd like to welcome everybody here on behalf of ESB for the sixth and final lecture in our 2020 Rethink Energy Series in partnership with IIEA. Over the past six months, we've heard from leading Irish and international experts on various aspects of the energy transition. So it's entirely appropriate and timely that the final lecture this year will be given by Minister Raymond Ryan, whose drive to transform Ireland's energy sector will have a lasting impact on future generations. Today's topic, which looks at the Irish energy sector in the context of the European Green Deal, this is the implications to stretch well beyond the energy sector. So I'm delighted that we have such a large and very diverse audience here today to join us. The Green Deal expresses the shared ambition of European member states to transition to net zero by 2050. And it sets out a roadmap and a policy agenda for delivering on these key commitments. Touches on many areas of policy, but electricity will inevitably take center stage, given its capacity to drive carbon reduction in other sectors of the economy, particularly in transport and in heat. I'm president of Euroelectric, and in that role, I have the privilege of engaging with and representing electricity utilities across all of Europe, of course, including ESB. And importantly, your electric members just recently put their weight behind the EU Green Deal and have expressed support for the revised emissions reduction target of 55% by 2030. And this is a big deal, this is a big deal for the electricity sector. And it's a significant endorsement from the sector, particularly when you consider that many your electric members from countries that still have very, very high levels of coal in their energy mix. And over the past decade, the electricity sector has demonstrated its ability to innovate and to implement changes to reduce carbon emissions, but while also maintaining a secure, affordable electricity supplies. And of course, we come to appreciate this during the COVID pandemic. Two thirds of electricity generated across the EU in the first half of this year is carbon free and 40% of that has come from renewable sources. But much, much more needs to be done. And the European Commission recently published its energy systems integration strategy. And this highlights the need to accommodate very large new loads onto electricity distribution system to enable more renewable energy to come on stream, but also to support electrification of transport and heat and industry. It also highlights the need to embrace digital technology to enhance the role of the electricity network, particularly in facilitating this transition. In Ireland, we're already taking steps to deliver on both objectives in order to meet the target set out in the program for government and in the climate action plan. But this requires broad stakeholder alignment across finance, across regulation, technology, and policy to ensure that the necessary investments are made in a timely way to maximize the use of clean electricity in the final energy demand. Across ESP, we're committed to collaborating with our industry partners to support government targets and degree deal. It won't be without some pain. This year, we would close our heat stations. And today actually is the last day for West Offley Park, one of our heat stations to come offload for the last time this afternoon and uprepair in a week's time. And our heat stations and the collaboration between ESP and Board of Moana have delivered secure electricity supplies and created employment in the midlands for decades. But along with the growth of our renewable portfolio and especially new investments in offshore wind, this brings us another step closer to our vision for a low-carbon energy system powered by clean electricity. We're innovating right across all of our business to make this a reality. And while the changes in how we generate distributed electricity are both critical, but ultimately it's the role that customers will play. And I know the minister has a very, very keen interest in what he calls the role of the citizen and this role cannot be overstated. It will be their willingness to make low-carbon choices to adopt new technologies such as EVs, heat pumps, smart meter, earth rifts or homes. And this ultimately will determine the pace of the change. We're working to develop insights in ESP to look at how we can use insights to define and design products and services to engage customers in this energy transition regardless of whether their motivation is climate action or indeed affordability. I'm conscious that much of this is going to be influenced by our economic recovery and investment plans over the coming years, which will in turn be shaped by the European Green Deal. I'm looking forward to hearing you minister as we all are and to your perspective on this and the implications that you see for our energy sector over the period ahead. Thank you very much. And I will now hand over to minister. Thank you very much indeed and thank you Owen. Can I start maybe Owen? I need to add one thing. You mentioned a list of things I've done over the years. One of the things I'm proudest of was I co-chaired the digital policy group in the Institute for International and European Affairs and was also very involved in the climate and energy group. And I mentioned that because proud because I was proud to work with Brendan Halligan. I miss him. I miss Brendan Halligan. I'm sure a lot of people watching this know that feeling this year. We lost him in August and didn't lose him. Gone to higher things, but he was a real mentor to me and inspiration, a joy to be with. And when it comes to energizing Ireland's future, I think actually he has, history will see that he had a critical role. It will be his thinking, I think has been picked up by a lot of people and shared including myself. So what I say today is in memory of Brendan Halligan. I'm repeating his words. I'm plagiarizing. And I'm remembering you'd meet him on a Monday for lunch to discuss grid networks. And if Twinkler and I, of course, you'd have a glass of wine to discuss it. And everyone would know Brendan the sweep of time and place. It was like playing on the risk board with Brendan. One minute you'd be in China, the next minute you'd be with Daniel O'Connell. And thinking of that role part of the citizen in an O'Connell-like way. That's where we... And it wasn't just he was European and international, but he was South Dublin to his core. That's maybe why I liked him, I'm a South Dublin boy, but he was Rat Farnham, UCD School of Philosophy, good crack, intelligent, breadth of interests. And that's, I just wanted to start buying my comments by referring to him. And not just referring to him, but it developed some of his thinking as he shared it with me. He said two things maybe I could pick up and in terms of this topic of energizing our own future, it's a simple thought. He says, we have access to wind power in this country that is akin to the competitive advantage we had in grass growing, which led to the development of an entire food industry here over the last 30 to 40 years. And I know it's obvious and I know it's, but it's sometimes the obvious needs to be restated. That basic comparison, competitive advantage we have we're in the windiest place on the planet and let's turn it into something that's useful for our citizens, bears repeating and drives everything that we should do. Second, I remember Metham for about a year to go and he was telling me about thinking big about the station and when is Ireland good at things, how are we doing? And he cited and only Brenda would have known this sort of detail going back, I think in the early mid 90s, the European Commission had looked to see why had Ireland done relatively well as a new member state to other countries? I suppose they were interested with regard to the expansion of the European Union to maybe see lessons for the new 10 accession countries. Well, take a country that had joined 20, 30 years previously and looked to see how did they make a success of it? And their sense was that Ireland had made a success. And I think they said, according to Brendan, Jacques de Lour to do that task. And Jacques de Lour reported back to the European Commission that one of the reasons why Ireland has been so successful is that for a period from the late 50s, early 60s, through to the 80s, it had common cause in the project of making our European Union accession a success and not just that, but common cause around the strategic objective that the state had, which over that 30 years he argues was going from being a closed economy to being an open economy. And that in the political stability or consensus around that, it allowed us to invest in education to join the European Union, to be good at foreign direct investment and to make a success of it. So putting those two together, the big strategic sense of where we're going with energizing our country. We have to think of our, that the direction we're going is this 100% renewable future. And it is, we'll work best when we devise that under a form of politics or not just politics, but civil and political support for the project on a stable basis for two, three decades. So if we over the next two, three decades set ourselves in this task of decarbonizing our electricity system and getting advantage from that, not just from the big global environmental perspective, but more broadly, that is what we should do. Thirdly, referring back to Brendan, I was working with him 12 years ago and I was then Minister of Energy with the likes of Brian Hurley, Eddie O'Connor obviously, there were a number of people who were thinking of this concept of a super grid, of actually developing particularly offshore wind and interconnecting that wind, not just with the island, but with our neighboring island and the neighboring continent. This big project, this big idea of the super grid is something that Brendan also championed from the very start, along with the likes of Eddie and Brian and others. And that was very much behind the North Sea's offshore grid initiative, which was signed by 10 European countries 10 years ago. And I want to come back to today as the first point I want to make in terms of our energy future. Because if you look at what the government plans are and the real confidence that I hope I can give part on others behind this plan is that this is agreed across the political spectrum. This is something that all parties in the outgoing Eroctus and I believe this Eroctus has signed up to, yeah, we're going to go at least 70% renewable in 2030. Yeah, we're going to build something like 35 gigawatts of offshore wind. And given that our peak load at the moment is probably about five gigawatts of demand, like 35 gigawatts gives people a sense of how ambitious that is in scale. That this super grid project is going to be central to the energizing of our future, to providing a scale of electricity that taps into that basic concept Brendan had turned our competitive advantage in wind and particularly recognizing that our sea area being 10 times our land area and that there are limits on the land area from good planning reasons. It is offshore wind that we can turn to for scale in energizing our future. Where are we at that? Well, that's broad agreement and it's interesting now. It's not just here at home. It's in the European Union and the UK. You can see that as a separate statement. And I'm not just here, but in other developing parts of the world, in China and Japan, in California, all the technological centers are agreeing. Yeah, this is going to be one of the big areas of decarbonization. And in our part of Europe, the German government, French government, Belgium, Dutch, Norwegian, Danes, all committed and UK, all committed to development of offshore wind. And we've been talking about this for 10 years and thinking about it for 10 years. And in that 10 years, we've learned a lot. So we're not starting from scratch. We've learned that it's becoming more competitive and is likely to continue to come down at price. So this is going to be good for our economy. We can do this in a way that taps into that comparative advantage. And we're starting to, people are already starting to build it out at scale. Ireland hasn't. We were first out of the blocks in the ArcGlo Bank with those six or seven turbines, is it? General Electric Turbines, built by Eertricity. We probably rightly went concentrated then on onshore because it was more competitive for our economy, but now it's the time for us to go offshore. We will start that firstly critically with the Marine Planning Development Bill, which will be introduced by the government early in the new year. Critical that you get the planning right. This is huge capital investment. The more you can de-risk it in terms of de-risk the uncertainty, getting the planning right, living up to environmental standards to the max, maintaining public support on environmental issues and on the planning of it. But the more we can get that right, the lower the cost. The easier it is for people to know, yeah, this is a predictable investment. We will then, at the end of next year, start the first auctions, first a series of auctions to start deploying the large scale wind offshore at scale. Started with roughly about two and a half gigawatts in the Irish Sea. Starting with existing projects, which have already been in the planning system for our licensing system in a variety of ways over the last 10 years. Starting with short direct connections back into the onshore Irish grid. Starting the Irish Sea, close to Dublin, where there's significant demand. And start in a way that gives us the platform to go on from there. Do a second auction shortly after that, with further developments in the Irish Sea and also then a third auction. And within those two, starting to open up our southern waters, Celtic Sea. And then start looking at, and this decade, start looking at the development of floating offshore wind turbines as part of this process. And really starting thinking about the scale that we're going to deliver in that regard. There are various other components we need to get right. We need to get our ports system right. And again, I remember, Ben was appointed, I appointed him to the chair of the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland. In that 10, 12 years ago, he was frantically looking at which ports do we develop? How do we get the supply chain benefits from this? We still need to do that. And we will do that in the next year or two. And look at a variety of different port options to be able to provide the operation and maintenance, the deployment, the supply chain, and also then down the line, the production, and also the collection of the power resource. The real issue when we get to 35 gigawatts is what do we do with that power? How do we ship it? How do we store it? How do we use it? So those ports, and it's likely our deep sea ports with access to the west, northwest, southwest, south and east will then have the potential to be for the location points where we bring that power back ashore. Whether that's in the form of electricity that then has to be transmitted, whether it's in the form of hydrogen or some sort of storage system, that has to be worked out. We're not the only ones looking at this. Everyone else is considering this as the new industrial development question of our time. We can and will be good at this. And it will create some climate and create opportunities for us to create some climate in a balanced way, given that the power is coming in from the west and the northwest and southwest, that will further enhance the industrial development of my mind in those areas, rather than concentrating all the industrial development which is happening increasingly on the east coast at this present time. One other point about this, for it to work at that scale of power, if we were able to deliver 35 gigawatts, given that our city areas are 10 times our land area, why would we stop there? If this works, if it is central to this new industrial, clean energy, digital revolution that's taking place, we have the prospect we could build even further. But to do that, we will have to be able to ship it as well to other countries. We will have to be part of my mind of an interconnected network. Have to, no matter what Brexit brings, maintain cooperation with the UK so that in this whole area, whether it's sherry hydrogen, CCS facilities, our electricity power through high voltage direct cable connections, we cooperate. It's really significant at the moment we're building a new, even in these very harsh breaks of times, we're likely to see a new interconnector between the Wexford coast and North Wales. And critically, that we're also building a new interconnector between ourselves and France. And I see that, and Brendan used to think this way, thinking that is only the start of something which is going to be really big, which is this super grid that ships solar power from the South, Scandinavian and Alpine hydro and wind from the Northwest of Europe and other power supply sources into a balancing system between variable power and variable demand across this wider area. It's the most critical peace project of our time. It allows us to prospect of actually sharing energy in a different way of distributing energy ownership and energy power across an area so that the resource wars and the challenges we've seen in the outgoing century are not repeated in this 21st century. And same time, we meet the climate challenge of our day. That sounds big, but that is where we are going and where we need to think of, which Brendan would have inspired me to do. Can I bring it down more local? Because yes, we need to think in that big scale, but you also need to think very locally about using the power. How do we use it in our own homes, in our own area? One of the things we've learned in the last 10 years in the IIEA sessions as much as anywhere else is that it's not just the engineering, it's not just the technology, it's not just the economics, it's not just the grids and the power relations between states. It's about how we inspire our citizens that this is actually going to be their transition, their transformation, good for them. I think this is possible. I think the ESB got it in their strategy. Pat, you talked about it's this transformation of using electricity for everything and being really bringing it down to the local level is which is what you do well and will do well in the next 30, 40 years serving our people. It is about electrifying the heat in our homes, transforming, building both efficiency, which Owen Lewis has the expertise on with this clean power supply so that we take out the oil and gas for our burners as quick as we can and replace them with heat pumps and really well-insulated buildings. And the benefit that is so many-fold. Firstly, to our health. Henry comes down and one of these cold winter mornings into a warm home will know it's a completely different experience where you can stay in your pajamas and the house is healthy and warm. It's a fundamental transformation, improvement of our everyday lives. It's also really efficient. Those heat pumps deliver an efficiency gain that means actually they're a better energy system. They work better than the outgoing model and that has to be the case. That's been a better energy system for it to work. And it gives us the balancing capability. It gives us the use of that power which is a really clever use because we can turn it on and off as we need to to match the variable power supply as it varies with the wind coming and going as well as having that interconnection to give us further balancing capability. Secondly, we're going to use that electricity power to power how we move around. Obviously with electric vehicles that's coming now with the real certainty because they're just better vehicles. Fifth of the fuel costs, fifth of the maintenance costs, a tenth at least of the moving parts so that they're just better cars, better to drive, cleaner, local air, better for our health that way. So we know that's coming. That'll only be the start. It's really interesting talking to Irish Rail at the moment with an interesting strategic decision coming up in the next six months where they will have to commission new trains, buying new trains, the first new electric battery trains that we can use on our suburban rail services. That's our Cork suburban rail service, our Limerick suburban rail service, our Galway suburban rail service, our Waterford suburban rail service as well as our Dublin suburban rail service. We're on an electric batteries where you get into the station in Mallow, you charge up, you get back to Middleton, going through the eight stations along the way. We have our trains there in Shannon Airport, fully charged, heading via Moiraas on towards Fyne, stopping off in Patrick's Well, Crescent, Duradol, all those stations enroute along the way. So electrified transport in this efficient way where we do what's called transport-led development, really efficient design of communities around really effective efficient public transport system run on electricity power. Lastly, going back to what I was saying there about these ports of the potential then for development of our industrial use. What we have to do in 100% decarbonisation is switch everything. So that means all those cement plants, all the smelting plants, all the big food processing plants, all currently fuelled by fossil are gonna have to be fuelled by electricity, or hydrogen, or CCS instead. And this is doable. This is going to be a better system because we're relying on long-distance supply chains. We'll have the local power supply available to us here. It'll be cleaner, and it's where the world is going. And it creates that distributed industrial model where the industries close to the power supply have the advantage. So balances changes Ireland in every way for the better. Lastly, I'm going back to what I was saying to you, Pat, about that ESB role on the distribution system. You know, and I know we all know that actually one of the biggest challenges in this is if we have a row of houses in South Dublin, that's St. Bernard's, Brendan Halligan's, home area of Rathfarnam, we have a whole series of those semi-decent suburban Irish houses. We all, I grew up in. How do we get electricity to each of those houses, each running a heat pump, each running an electric vehicle in the front drive, and make it work? You know that that's probably one of the biggest challenges of our time. It'll be done by really clever use of data management systems, so things switch on and off, so that the wire limit right down at the end is used in a really hyper-efficient way. It'll be done where as a street or as a community, as a neighborhood, as a parish, we actually cooperate. We actually to get that management of the energy at the local level, the really balancing of it, where I'm allowing my deep fridge to be turned on and off or my electric vehicle charger to be turned on and off or my heat pump to be turned on and off so that my neighborhood, my street, is part of an overall balancing system. That's, I think, how we're gonna do it. To do that, we need trust. To do that, we need this to be a social transformation. Brenton came from a labor social democratic justice tradition. This transformation has to deliver that. It has to be Pagliani's great transformation, market serving people, public service serving our people, all towards their betterment, towards their owning the data in those sharing systems so that they have confidence, well, this is mine. This is my transformation. This is my advantage. This is my home heated where we are playing our part in the greatest challenge of our time, stopping the burning of our planet, restoring biodiversity. And at the same time, maintaining our jobs, maintaining our economy, maintaining our welfare. It is a social democratic green transformation. That's what Brenton espoused and I share it with him. And I think most Irish political parties have bought into this now. This is where we're gonna go. That analysis that Jack DeLore had 20 years ago that with the Irish, when they set their minds on a common goal, when as a relatively small country where people get to know each other and talk to each other, set themselves and the task of delivering it. When you meet in the likes of the IAEA where you can swap notes in an informal way and actually get to synergies and the benefits of having this connected island we have. That's what we're gonna do. And it's gonna be four or five, six governments time, but four or five, six governments doing the same thing in this path will bring us there and it will serve our people well. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, minister. Perhaps a special word of thanks for your remarks about Brenton. I mean, that idea that he has missed, I certainly missed the late night exchange of emails about emerging ideas and offshore energy, for instance. But we have a big number of questions. So maybe I turn immediately to those. And the first question I have before me is from Alan Dupes, former director general of the IAEA and former minister for finance. And he asks, we use vast quantities of precious metals, plastic and steel and making over elaborate cars and mobile communication devices and consumer product packaging that we have because we can, not because we really need them. This process uses huge amounts of energy. Is there any prospect of serious measures to reduce this climate wrecking proflicacy minister? Yeah, there is. The transformation won't just be in the energy side. It has to be in the land use agricultural side. It has to be in the transport and it has to be in every area, but it will also has to be materials use. I come from the training of the early 70s systems analysis that limits to growth, Daniela Meadows and others devised say that the challenge for this 21st century is how do we balance the various objectives of maintaining economic well-being while maintaining environmental limits? And their systems not modeling showed that it was going to be really difficult and I think particularly on resource use. So what we need as well as this energy transformation is the development of a circular economy which radically reduces the level of material use and consumption. I believe it is possible and I did think again it will be delivered because it will be a better economy. Within government, inheriting good work done by Richard Brut and others, we have just published a waste action plan for circular economy. It has about 200 actions in it and I believe it's setting us in the right path. And going back to maybe I can be the case or your man's a bit optimistic or a bit kind of positive sometimes about our country or about our ability because we have failings too. Lord knows our mission's record is shocking. But the industry sat down with the department in the last year and the environmental NGOs and social organizations and they agreed to this plan, this waste action plan. And it is quite radical and quite progressive, very progressive. I was out last week in one of our big recycling companies, Panda. They just said, okay, we're gonna go electric vehicles for their collection trucks. We're gonna invest in a new bottle recycling facility. So all those plastic bottles, the curse of anyone who does a beach cleanup or a river cleanup will be able to be recycled here rather than exported to China or to Rotterdam and we'll be able to turn that plastic pet bottle back into a bottle that's used again by Coca-Cola or some other such company. And that's only one of 200 actions but it's starting to be delivered. And I think the, I keep going back to my fundamental message, I suppose that I think that I learned in that conversation with Brendan about the European Commission Assessment of Ireland is when we pool together, it works. And if, can I say the best example of that probably is Alan Jukes. I mean, that's the tally strategy. That's what happened, got us out of economic crisis in the late 80s. Wasn't just Alan Jukes. There's likes of Rory O'Donnell and others who, who recognize that it was a time not for division, it was a time for working together, for collaborating on economic strategy out of that shockingly bad crisis. And it worked. And I would say the 2010, 11 experience, my experience in that time in government. One of the reasons why we were able to get out of that bloody horrible, difficult crisis and it wasn't easy getting out of it was because there was a handover from Brian Lennon to the incoming government, the incoming minister of finance and a continuity. And therefore I keep going back. The lessons to me seems to be in this modern world how you manage good economic recoveries is you try it by consensus. It's a good day today. Hopefully we'll have to see how the unions vote for it but we may just have agreed to partnership a pay agreement for the next couple of years be up to the unions to decide how they vote in it. But that's what we're good at. We're good at our partnership. We're good at social partnership. We're good at collaboration. And we do that for the circular economy as well as everything else. Thanks minister. May I put a question to you, Pada Daherty. It's from Dunch at Kavanaugh. And he inquired, he says the ESB's remit is still to meet the country's electricity requirements. But to what extent can this be achieved by reducing energy demand rather than by producing and selling more electricity? You're on mute. Yeah, sorry, yep, yep, thanks so much. So I suppose the question I asked is the ESB's remit. Of course, ESB's remit now. We operate in different parts of the value chain. Very different remits when we had 20 or 30 years ago. So our generation, our retail businesses operate in competitive markets and our networks business then is the monopoly business is regulated. And the network's businesses, as the minister said, networks into the future have a key enabling role in terms of leading the transition. But I suppose in terms of the extent of which the future energy requirements can be met by energy efficiency reduction. Like this goes back to the EU mantra and all of this is efficiency first decarbonization and then electrification. So everything we're doing in ESB is to make the system more efficient, whether that's in our generation business and whether that's in our network's business in the context of our license obligations and in accordance with our price controls. And likewise also in our interaction with customers for a retail business, efficiency must be and should be high up on the agenda. So efficiency first. So the EU mantra is effectively our mantra also. Thank you, Pat. Minister, to turn to electric vehicles for a moment, Derek Riley of the EV review Ireland YouTube channel asks, do you think that Ireland will be able to match other European Member States such as Germany and France with their generous grants for purchasing new EVs? And he also notes that Scotland provides interest-free loans to purchase secondhand EVs. Minister. We do know and I'm very fortunate that the role as Minister of Transport as well as Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications here. And I think there's real crossover in synergy. Electric vehicles are going to be a key part to this transition. They bring huge benefits. It will not be the transport system though won't work if it's just we think what we're going to switch from combustion engine vehicles to electric vehicles. It has to think bigger, I think somewhat in towards us monitoring to have to drive less. This will come because what COVID has brought is remote working now that we never expected to deliver it this fast at this scale. I think the standard office will probably run on a hybrid system where maybe it's three days a week rather than five days a week from the office. And that will reduce the amount of interest of demand for travel. But similarly, if we're to live up to the national planning framework, we will reduce the amount of long distance commuting. It's not serving our people to have this dispersed transport model, but we will still have cars. And particularly cars first in rural Ireland. I think for rural Ireland is here because of that technically should I mentioned around the challenge of how you do a terrace row of houses each with an EV. That's a real challenge. It's going to take us a bit of time to work out. That doesn't apply in rural Ireland. In rural Ireland, one of house in the country, it's very easy to get the car recharged. We will have a whole range of other policy measures. We've just introduced significant changes in the budget on the tax of vehicles again for other tax which will incentivize electric vehicles. We've maintained or continued the grant supports for electric vehicles and for the charging infrastructure in people's home. We will continue to look at a whole range of other measures to make sure it works. I think one of the other key things that I was pointing out though, what is one of the key things we need to get right? It is the public charging infrastructure. It is, I mean, for most people, they're probably, particularly rural Ireland, it'll be charged at home and that'll be fine, but there will be some people who will need charging infrastructure and inter-urban motorways, who will need charging infrastructure in their local area, particularly if they can't put a charger straight outside their home. We gave an upfront payment or investment from the Climate Fund, which Britain did, for ESB to work with the two-tube upgrade our charging infrastructure. And we were one of the first countries out with the charging infrastructure. I would have to say because that government I was involved in 10 years ago really put us right up ahead of the pack. But I fear that we've fallen behind of what we need to be and we need to accelerate the rollout of public charging infrastructure. And I think we have to do that ahead of the really large volume of carbon, as cars coming in two or three, four years time. I mean, really scale delivery. And the difficulty is for those petrol stations and other potential sites for charging infrastructure that they're saying, well, I don't have the demand yet. I met them recently, met the industry and said, we're gonna have to invest. We're gonna have to invest ahead of demand. We're gonna have to invest at scale so that when you go into, let's say an inter-urban motorway along the network, there's 10, 12, 15, 20 charging points, not just two or three. And that's difficult because again, you've got to get the electricity to that point and that's the challenge. But if we don't put it there, we're gonna have to build somewhere else to put it because we're gonna need the infrastructure. And if in the urban areas, we don't have it in our petrol stations and so on. But then we'll have to look at supermarkets or car parks or other potential locations and we'll have to act fast because these cars are coming at scale at that number and we'll need powering. And in some locations, you won't be able to do it at home, so we'll have to have alternatives. And so yes, I think that's the key thing. I think we need to get right. The last thing I'd say, just go back to about not fixating on ownership. One of the solutions here is towards in a changing, it's gonna be e-mobility in a whole variety of different ways. Electric bikes are gonna have a huge part of this transition, e-scooters and e-sharing, car-sharing, car, a range of different, we'll go into the even variety of them now. But it does need to change away from just, everyone has their car and everyone, it is, we should use this opportunity of change to make it more efficient and more of better value because most of our cars are parked for 95% of the time. If we can get access to a shared car, I'm gonna pay, let's say a fraction of what we're currently paying, what's not to like about that? Thank you. The implications for our cities and towns of reducing the number of vehicles, the real estate which is tied up in parking and so on, all of those kind of multiple co-benefits of these kind of changes, minister, are very impressive. But let me turn to an area to do with the gas network where several people, including David Kelly and Catherine Sheridan of Irvia and Portacore of the Irish Examiner are asking, refers to the recent announcement by Eric Grid that the record peak demand for electricity has been twice exceeded in the past week. The European Green Deal proposes to address this challenge with energy system integration. To this end, what policy changes does the minister want to prioritize for the decarbonization of the gas network? Good question. Can I just say first of all that relates back to the question you asked about earlier on around efficiency. Like we can and are good at this. Yes, we've just gone over the kind of reaching new peak is 5,200 megawatts of recent Thursday evening or well actually that's similar to the level of power use we were asked 10, 12 years ago. So an economy has significantly expanded since then. So that shows it is possible to get efficiency to get an efficiency does come first. So it isn't a possible for us to really and that's before we start being really efficient in our public lighting, in our public buildings, in our industry, in the whole range of different other ways. The gas infrastructure will have a role in this transition. I'll be honest. I'm very nervous that particularly in Europe we're kind of that can be oversold and people are putting out all sorts of solutions, you know, gas, blue hydrogen and other solutions. And I think the scale of the climate crisis is such is that we are looking at a very radical shift away from fossil fuels, all fossil fuels and gas while it has a role in the security role and a critical role currently in our heating systems. You know, we need all our warm homes but we are, we're moving away from fossil fuels and there will be an end use applications for gas, obviously, particularly with CCS as a possibility and it seems that that's what it's been talked about for several decades. It's starting to come into view as where other states are significantly saying they're going to really try and scale it up and see whether it can be economic and that that was the case. It may provide potential uses of gas but there are others, I suppose, very strongly argued that we can look at bio-meeting as they are developed gas from natural resources. I'll be honest on that as well. I think the scale of power supplies that we can gas supplies we can get from that is limited. It would be very welcome, particularly in tackling waste in our ways, our sewage systems, our landfill system, whether we can catch capture and also other waste sources for bi-meeting will be a critical benefit and an area we will need to invest in including anaerobic digestion. But I think there's a limited potential at the scale of that because as well as us facing a climate crisis, we're facing a biodiversity crisis and it's critically addressed, the two at the same time and provide natural solutions that improve the natural world to the climate crisis. If we were to really double down on the development of bi-meeting from anaerobic digestion which involved a large increase in the amount of slurry from pig poultry or cattle production and that would have consequences in terms of water quality, in terms of ammonia, air quality problems and just an industrial type agricultural system that would be bad for the environment, bad for biodiversity. So yes, we would use anaerobic digestion. Yes, we will have the role of biogas will be significant, particularly from waste resources but it will be probably very efficient in my mind, precise applications combined heat and power and food processing and other areas. It won't be just we replace one gas system with another unless there's some technological chain coming that I'm not aware of yet. But it is, it has to be just transition. We have to do this in the same way we've been trying to manage board pneumonia where it has been really where the companies turned around where they've gone as they say from brown to green that they've now become a climate solutions company and we're seeing employment and investment rise. I think similarly for the real skills we have in our gas network and energy companies and in gas-fired power stations, there's huge skill there. That skill will be applied in climate solutions and those companies will have a real significant role in the transition and it's just we have to be careful that it's not on the false promise that we can continue either on gas to hydrogen or gas used in a way that triggers other environmental difficulties. Thank you, Minister. I have a question from Michael O'Mahony, which is related and he is addressing both yourself and Pat O'Dowherty. He asks, when renewable energy, well, wind energy generation is high, the electricity price will be low, zero or possibly even negative, which is better for Ireland to export renewable electricity at low prices or produce green hydrogen and export a higher value product, creating many more Irish jobs. Pat, would you like to lead off on that, please? Yes, I suppose the issue there really is the economics of hydrogen production and hydrogen transport and that's currently being debated right across Europe. So for example, do you cite hydrogen production close to industries which are hard to electrify and therefore you're able to decarbonise those industries indirectly? Or do you cite hydrogen production close to where there's an abundance of renewable wind, of renewable energy such as wind in excess and then produce the hydrogen and transport it? And I suppose that debate is still going to run and run and that all depends on the economics and some really big thinkers such as Michael Liebrecht of Bloomberg New Energy Finance is questioning whether hydrogen produced from curtailed wind is economic against producing hydrogen close to the centres of demand for hydrogen. I suppose that all depends on how the technology evolves but there is no doubt that hydrogen like at the heart of this question also is the role of hydrogen into the future and there are some other questions there around integration and sector coupling between gas and electricity and hydrogen would be at the heart of that and it is important in that regard that hydrogen that Ireland does have regard to hydrogen and has a strategy and a roadmap for hydrogen. Thanks Pat, Minister. Yeah, one of the things you learn over time about energy policy and I have been over time now is sometimes you get caught out of things don't happen and technologies don't evolve in the way you thought they would but a lot do but we have a certain amount of things that are still uncertain. Floating wind, first of all we have to make sure floating wind works at scale for this all to become a viable reality because that's where the scale volume of energy capable production. Now the odds to be honest in that are incredibly high now because it's already tested technology, the evidence investing in it at scale. We've seen with wind and solar, onshore wind and solar that the cost curve has come down and we've every reason to expect the same and not floating offshore wind but it does need, we do need just to be careful that we do need to really see how we develop that at scale and I'm absolutely confident we will. So it's right to us to invest on the expectation particularly for our state where we have this competitive advantage. I would say the same in terms of hydrogen but probably a bigger higher level of uncertainty yes as to what the exact approach to employment is going to be and this is what the engineers have to step in and really help us. It's energy systems engineering that is needed. But I think one again we're fairly clear that with the scale of investment that I see other governments starting to make that it is going to be one of the key parts of this energy future. My instinct is that it may well, go back to what I was saying in my own contribution at the start that actually for our deep water ports in particular which are close to the access to the power supply just to go back to what Pat was saying as Michael Liebrecht was indicating that you might have a generation close to the point of consumption. That might give us the capability in some of those locations to actually feed the hydrogen directly into industrial applications where it could be very efficient use of it and less transition or less transformation costs involved in the whole process. So I think one of the, and that's why I keep on back to say this may have an economic development application for the whole island, not just the energy sector but the industrial processing side. And actually if you look a lot of our big industrial systems already in, and we don't have many, but are already in the likes of Shannon Estuary, our cork harbor and their sort of deep water locations you would have thought would have really comparative advantages in bringing in hydrogen, which means we won't need algae in those facilities. Minister, if I can bundle a couple of questions together which are raising similar issue, Oana Heron of Kadema and Gary Fitzpatrick are both asking about nuclear energy and specifically small modular nuclear reactors. Are these something that could be on the government's agenda? Is it any more worth exploring? I've always said, I wouldn't rule out if someone could show that there is new form of nuclear power that fits in within this model. But I'll be honest, I don't, I mean, I see some things on design boards or drawing boards, but nothing in application. And no real scale of investment or you come back to what I was saying there about Europe betting everything on hydrogen or big industrial company. I mean, yes, there's still obviously nuclear applications in France and elsewhere but there's no one coming to my desk or my door saying we're looking to put in nuclear or anything anywhere. I don't get the sense from my colleagues across the European Union or indeed when I'm dealing a big discussion with California authorities recently or other, they don't, that's not what people are investing in. If there was a modular form of nuclear, it would obviously fit in better to this variable supply and demand balancing energy system. Big, large nuclear will find a very difficult operate in this new energy markets or electricity markets but I wouldn't rule it out but I don't see it coming across my desk. Thank you. I have a question from Alice Coffey at Cambridge University. She asks, in relation to Ireland's economic policy, to what extent is decarbonisation compatible with growth in GDP? Do you think that absolute decoupling of GDP growth from resource use and carbon emissions is feasible? John Fitzgerald is writing in the Irish Times today about our GDP figures are shot with uncertainties and inaccuracy. So if you're relying on GDP growth for anything, for an assessment of where we are, you'd be puzzled. The economic plan we'll develop is green and digital as in the European plan, as is the UK plan in truth. But it's also another twist to it, I think, in our agreement that it was recognised that GDP does not give you a very good accurate measure of well-being and there's a whole range of other indicators we now need to develop. I'd be an advocate of Kate Rayworth's donors to economics and that kind of the social measures of progress as well as environmental ones, being the key parameters of progress. And it was interesting, I think I saw her writing an article, or citing an article recently, which says that this kind of divides supposedly between degrowth or, you know, various different sides of the environmental economic side isn't necessarily as deep a division as some people think. And but I would come from that fairly deep green sense of it's about quality of life, not quantity of consumption. And the sooner we start measuring every progress on quality of life, and it includes less consumption, the better. Thank you. I have a question from Richard Morrison, which is addressed to both of you. He asks, are there any awareness initiatives planned to get the three and a half million people who are not on this very informative call onto this transformative journey? Pat, maybe you'd like to lead off on how... I know this is a subject, I know this is a subject that's very close to the minister's heart and he demands of us in the energy sector that we communicate and engage with citizens to travel this journey. And this journey is a difficult journey because as I said in my opening, people have to make choices about how they live their lives, about how they drive, or how they drive, how they eat their homes. And these are all difficult and expensive choices. And there is a role for us in the energy sector to work with citizen groups and with customer and community groups to do that. And that is a real challenge because ultimately it's the customer that has to come to the table here to make all of this work, working back from the utility and from the engineering piece out. That brings one piece. But ultimately it's developing products and services and landing products and services that customers and consumers find are useful for them in their everyday lives. And convincing and engaging and selling the message that this is about quality of life and quality of living as opposed to just kilowatt hours buying and selling kilowatt hours. It's a real challenge. And it's something that all of the electricity companies in the electricity sector are putting their minds to and it's something that the minister, as I said, is demanding of us that we do. Minister. Yeah, we did a lot of work in a series of climate gatherings where we really talked to questions. How do we tell the stories so that it really inspires our people? Because it won't come from top down just, I mean, you do need top down signals and supports and make it easier for people to do the right thing. And not just putting it all on the consumer responsibility, the environmental movement have learned to change their attack in recent years to putting it all on you are the one after change. But having said that, we know to change our agriculture is 120,000 farms and that's not easy to change. And we know that those 1.5 million homes that we have to build better retrofit and so on, that's every home is an individual home decision. In how we do that, the things we learned around the messaging is what firstly you listen, you ask for help rather than telling people what to do. You admit some of the uncertainties I mentioned earlier on around how technology evolves. You have to have the patience that those who built the cathedrals in Europe, it will take several decades for us to deliver. You speak to the home, about the home, you not just speak about big planetary issues, but you bring it back down to local community, local environment, local home and family and close to people. But going back to my message just was earlier on, it has to be a better economy. If you're stopping going from age one, sustainable being, you have to have a better alternative. See, it has to be better. So those 120,000 farmers have to know that actually they're going to get paid better, all of them, particularly the ones that are paid so badly at the moment. Those one and a half million homes, they, we have to make sure that we can do it under a loan arrangement that it is actually, that the bills are paid for with the savings and make that real as a better economic investment. But lastly, yeah, it has to be citizen-centered. And it's all doable in this country. Last week, or this week, the GA just started their green clubs initiative where they're going to get that clubs looking at their own local environment, loan, local use of energy, local transport systems and so on. Irish people are ready for this. Irish people are going to be really good at this. It's going to be good for Irish people. We're right up for it, I think. But we will get it collectively with a bit of humility and a bit of listening rather than telling people what to do as a set and asking for help. And I suspect addressing things in ways that are little more than, you know, the benefit cost analysis and stuff like that, but more, you mentioned both in transport and the home, that a better quality results as well as a more comfortable home and so on, Minister. It's getting very close. I might just squeeze in one last question, which actually was addressed to both of you, but maybe Pat, you might briefly address. It's from Neil Ryan and he asks, I note that coal is currently making up about 7.5% of our energy production today. In greening our energy sector, will the closure of fossil fuel be based on their economic viability or the amount of CO2 they produce? So given I suppose the level of high demand today during the winter, coal will be the high levels of coal produced, but for many parts of this year, there was no electricity produced on coal. But ultimately, so coal for Ireland and for ESP is money point and the economics and carbon are the one thing, the ETS emissions trading scheme puts an economic price on carbon and coal, like it's end game for coal. Anybody in the market knows that money point coal plants have not secured capacity contracts for the year 2025. So that's bringing the cessation of coal ever, ever closer. Coal does provide a security of supply component for sure. And that all has to be addressed, but like in the coming years, coal will become an ever decreasing component of electricity generation. Eventually, we can see a point in time very, very close when we will cease producing electricity on coal. Thank you. Minister, do you want just a brief concluding mark on that one, please? We have to stop burning everything. And we have to switch to a better alternative and this is viable. It'll be challenging. It'll be connected with ours. The balancing when we're sort of rather than relying on big base load here, we will have interconnection and some of that will be nuclear coming in with France or the UK, but it is go back to the really big picture. I think these new cables, HVDC cables that size could take the power of money point. Well, the French interconnector will be the equivalent of money point in scale. And it can ship over 7,800 kilometers with next to no losses. And this is the transformation. It is, and it is collaborative. The nature of this digital green energy and transport revolution is more, it's a sharing economy. It's balancing by sharing. And both right down the house level and we won't be burning coal at home very soon, stopping it entirely and at the bigger base load generation side. And yes, we'll have some sort of security systems backing it up so that if the network fails, I'll be turned to Pat and say quick, give me a security, but it's just there as a security backup. The everyday system is going to be this balancing, flowing efficiency first digital low carbon system. That's the energy future ahead of us. And it is going to be socially just and citizen centered to make it work best in my mind. Thank you very much, minister. And thank you, Pat Adardy. I fear I have trespassed slightly over two minutes over my scheduled time. So I will have to suppress the gratitude except put it very, very simply. And thank you both minister very particularly. Thank you for giving us a view, a perspective on the very substantial opportunities that lie before us in the coming years. This was the final event in the 2020 rethink energy series. Over the last months, this series has explored a wide range of themes, including the smart grid revolution, the impacts of Brexit and COVID-19 on the energy sector, the prospects of an international price on carbon, the challenges and opportunities regarding popular support for this energy transition and the prospects of deep water, offshore wind energy. I want to thank the ESB for their support in facilitating this year's lecture series. And I want to thank all of our speakers, including you minister, Eamon Ryan for sharing their valuable insights with us. And finally, I'd like to thank our audience for your extensive engagement throughout the series. I'm sorry we couldn't get to all the questions. There were a mountain of questions. Thank you all very much and good day.