 And the evening are very welcome to our timely webinar session for our young professionals network, focusing on the outcome of COP26 and its implications for climate action policy here in Ireland. My name is Derek Moriarty, I work in communications at the IA, I'm able to chair our YPN. Last weekend, as many of you will be aware from all of the media commentary around this COP26 concluded, where the Glasgow climate compact was agreed, and many commentators acknowledged that you know significant progress had been made. But also that, you know, there was a sense that not enough had been done to get us back on track to limit to 1.5 degrees of warming. And a conservative MP, Alok Sharma, who served as COP26 president in his concluding remarks, you know said that achieving the target of limiting increases to 1.5 was still alive. But he said, you know, with a faint pulse. So you know, not a particularly rosy outlook on the conclusion, even though there were really significant pledges made along the way over the course of the two weeks. And to get stuck into all of that and to discuss the outcome we're absolutely delighted this evening to be joined by a very distinguished panel of speakers including Green Party MP for Dublin. Dr. Hannah Daly of University College Cork and Robbie Ahern of Air Grid. Before I formally introduce our speakers this evening, let me just briefly run through some of our housekeeping issues which are probably all very accustomed to this stage. We do want to hear from you, the audience throughout the session this evening. Please get in touch via our Q&A function, which you should see in the bottom of your screen on Zoom. We would ask you that you identify yourself and any affiliation that you do have when you're posing a question. And then you can also of course get involved in the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIEA and the hashtag wipe the end. And the full discussion this evening is on the record, and it will go up on our YouTube and our podcast channels afterwards if you want to give it a listen back or watch it back. And everything the speakers say can be put to them and repeated. In terms of format this evening, our speakers are going to give initial brief overviews of their perspectives on COPPA, the initial five to seven minutes reflections on the key takeaways. And then we'll kick off with some questions I have one or two ready and we'll see how the discussion goes. And then also we'd be delighted to hear from you once we get to the Q&A session. You don't have to waste until the speakers finish, you know, get your questions in throughout the session and we can get them once they finish up. I'll just briefly introduce our speakers now. So Kiran Kof is Green MEP representing Dublin following his election 2019. In the European Parliament he's very active in a number of different committees. He serves on the Industry Research and Energy Committee, as well as the Transport and Tourism Committee. He previously served as Dublin City Councilor, a TD for Dunlairis, and he was Minister of State for Horticulture, Sustainable Travel, Planning and Heritage. Mr. Hannah Daly is a lecturer in sustainable energy and energy systems modelling at University College Cork. Her research focuses on modelling and developing sustainable pathways for the energy system encompassing energy access, climate change and air pollution. Before she joined UCC Hannah worked with the International Energy Agency as an energy modeler from 2015 to 2019. She completed a PhD in energy and transport modelling in 2012 and her BSc Mathematics in 2009, out of them coming from UCC. Robbie Ahern serves as Head of Future Networks with Ergrid, a position he's held since February 2020. He has worked with Ergrid, the STEMI State Body, responsible for operating Ireland's National Grid for over 16 years in a number of senior roles, including Head of Public Engagement and Head of New Connections. He received his MSc in electrical power systems from the University of Bath in 2013 and he completed his degree in electrical engineering in UCC in 2003. This is a very UCC heavy panel. I'm going to start first with Kiron. So over to you, Kiron, on your initial reflections of COP, how you think it went and what your main takeaway is? Yeah, I guess I'm still digesting it all, less than a week after it all wound up. I actually went to the start of COP, then was back in Ireland, then back in Brussels, then went up to the end of COP and then back in Brussels. I guess I could spend most of the last two weeks on trains talking to people about COP. But COP, yeah, it's like an electric picnic for policy wonks. And it is an extraordinary gathering of tens of thousands of people with varying degrees of understanding and policy interest in climate change. I'm going up to COP two and a half weeks ago. There was actually a special train to the COP that kicked off from Amsterdam, came down to Brussels, picked up a few of us, then went to London and then we walked from St Pancras to Houston and took a train up to Glasgow. But that train was pretty amazing because it was a pretty high powered group and we were seen off by Franz Timmermans, the Vice President of the European Commission, with responsibility really for climate action. And he's great at kind of enthusing people. And on the train, there was quite a few people who are at the heart of the kind of movement of Europe towards climate action. So like the head of EuroStar was there, the head of land transport from the European Commission. So a lot of people who know their stuff backwards, and there was some very good conversations on the train. And, but we were also joined by a lot of young time at Activus and actually on the train up from London Greta was was on board. And so there was a huge crowd at Glasgow to meet us. And I guess the start of COP is dominated by the high level political speeches and mostly rhetoric, but all well and good. And the meat of the COP is really in the detailed negotiations in week one by people who are skilled negotiators and then in the last few days the politicians come back in. So I wasn't there in the middle, but then I came back at the end and it was fascinating on the Saturday afternoon sitting in the plenary room where there was, I could watch kind of Timmermans working one side of the room and then John Kerry from the climate in the US working the other side of the room, and just trying to keep the lines of communication open. And you just have to remember about COP it's an attempt to bring together almost 200 separate nations by consensus. And that's why the lowest common denominator is set very low, it's really hard to get people to agree and here we are 25 years later, 26 years later whatever it is, and agonizingly trying to move things forward and for me it was my fourth COP and I was in Cancun as head of delegation 11 years But back then we were simply trying to keep COP alive, there was a real danger that the process would absolutely fail at that stage during the middle of the global financial crisis. But it was kept alive and then we had Durban and then we had Paris and Paris, as Philip Boucher Hayes has pointed out was an extraordinary achievement in diplomacy, and it wasn't a make or break within two weeks or even one year, it took many years to make things happen. And I think the UK government maybe tried to bring things together in a very short time frame of perhaps 12 months. But I would have expected more and there was a real opportunity there I think it was quite telling that it was India and Australia who in some senses just didn't really go the extra mile at COP and surely the UK with these countries as part of the Commonwealth could have gone a lot further with them. So I found that quite disappointing to be honest, and yes, there was the methane pledge and the forestry pledge, but the devil is in the detail and if you drill down into the detail of those pledges, there may be not as substantive as they were spun, dare I say it, by the UK government. But look, I like so many people I'm torn between the enormity of the climate crisis and the fact that for a huge amount of people, they're not waking up every day and thinking about climate change. I'm in the European Parliament, we have 75 green MEPs, but that's only 10% of the parliament. So there's 90% of the political representation at European level, who aren't spending an enormous amount of their agenda on on climate and I think you have to remember that, and it puts the gains in context. So it's no wonder that India at the last moment said look, it's not a phase out of cold, it's a phase down weird funnily enough this week in the European Parliament several of my of my mainland European colleagues for whom English isn't their mother tongue said phase down is this a word. And I said, well, it's a new one to me, but it certainly come out a cop, and it's, it's part of the language. Look, a lot of achievements, I was delighted that Ireland signed up to the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, headed by Costa Rica and Denmark but Ireland did join at COP26. And I guess from where I'm sitting in, in the kind of the political sphere. We can talk about all numbers all day we can talk about the 55% the fit for 55 package in Europe, which is 1314 15 separate pieces of legislation that we'll be working on for the next couple of years, we can talk about the 51% reduction of emissions in Ireland, but ultimately it comes down to the policy measures that will actually achieve that. So I'm shadowing or following the aviation file in Europe so I'll be looking at look, what are the sustainable aviation fuels, how can we get them off the ground if you pardon the pun. And it won't be easy, the biofuels where there's all kinds of challenges and problems of kind of monocrops and defers are sucking up all the world's agricultural land, the synthetic biofuels where we're really still in the experimental stage. So it's easier, let's say to do deal with other aspects of transport, and it's a in the Irish context it's a no brainer that we need to improve public transport, get active travel with walking and cycling, improve and wearing my kind of hat as a spatial planner, make sure that people don't have to commute long distances to and from where they want to go so having more homes in Dublin City, having more places to work in the commuter belt, so that we reduce the need to travel. All of this stuff comes into the mix. At a European level, I was disappointed that we were not seeing more movement on rail on modal shift of getting stuff off roads onto railways, whether it's freight or people on railways and inland waterways and short sea shipping, which I always stumble over as a phrase. That's what we need to make happen in Europe. It's agonizing me slow in Europe to make this stuff happen. And in the Irish context, my gosh, we've talked around the houses so often about improving public transport, getting people walking and cycling. But I think certainly, and here's my political bias I think Amy and Ryan is really pushing to try and make public transport really work. I think the ambitious aims for 80% electricity by 2030 is kind of eye watering as a target and would be extraordinary if we can achieve it. And then in agriculture, it will, it is a huge challenge to bring ag on board. And finally, we're seeing the discussion of feeds, seeds and various factors that can reduce our emissions there. So pulling right back to conclude on Glasgow and look, it did achieve a fair amount of what it set out to do. And after 26 iterations of this process, interestingly, kicked off by Angela Merkel back in 1995. And she's not quite left the room yet, but in, in politics years, they're a bit like dog years. There's an awful lot of them and 25 years is an extraordinary amount of time. But we are seeing climate action happen on the ground in Europe in the legislation we're dealing with. The world is following suit. I think the package in the US. It's not as good as what we're doing in Europe, but it's quite extraordinary to have a US president talking about climate change with conviction. And it's such a change from where we were two years ago. So some movement in the right direction. The gap between politics and science is still very large. It's frustrating, but it's the only game we have. And we just have to keep trying to push, push things along, even though it's so frustrating. I'll leave it at that. Well, look, that's, that's a really fantastic and help a lot of you to set the scene, I think, from where you're sitting in Brussels. And obviously, you, you outlined your trails and your travels up and down the cops. That was really good to hear that as well. Robby will turn to you. And I mean, Kiran puts it was coming towards the end there. That's 70% renewable or electricity targets, you know, air grid has a, has a recent report out, touching on that very, very item. So I'd be, I'd be really interested to hear your take and your analysis on from where you're sitting as, as, as head of future networks and air grid over to you, Robbie. Great. Thanks very much, Tara. Look, I'd agree with huge amount of what Kiran has said there. I think there was really good progress in cop on some things around greenhouse gas emissions, climate finance and international cooperation. There were some good side deals as well. But I think unfortunately, there wasn't enough to ensure that we can keep below 1.5 degrees pre industrial levels and look that's disappointing at the end of the day. But I think look, as we go from cop to cop. One thing that really struck me this year there was a really a huge amount of focus leading up to cop in the media around it. I think that's, that's really a positive because it shows the people, general average person in society is a lot more engaged or starting to get more engaged. And I think look from each year we are making greater progress towards what we need to achieve. Look, I'd agree with Kiran. There's 200 countries. It's very, very difficult to achieve consensus on something like this, but I think progress is being made. So I would take some positives here from cop. I think the critical factor though, I think to kind of maybe think about beyond cop, the critical factor really is about moving beyond pledges and into action because the time is not on our side. And we have to commence, start taking action in parallel with getting the pledges into the right place. And look, I'm going to focus in Ireland and particularly the electricity industry, because that's my area of expertise and I have to say, because it's an incredibly exciting time to be working in the electricity sector and really a privilege to be involved in work that helps ensure our world and Ireland is sustainable for future generations. Look, in Ireland we have very significant ambitions. Kiran mentioned that there around the electricity targets, the recent climate action plan really pushes it out in that context. The electricity, it really is a central component of decarbonizing our broader economy. It's not just about decarbonizing electricity, but if you decarbonize electricity, that can play a really important role in other areas like heat and transport as well. Thinking back to COP and COP we launched a platform. We took the opportunity to launch a project we called shaping our electricity future. And in shaping really, we set out a blueprint for how the electricity system in Ireland needs to change in the coming years. So it's moving kind of into that action space and setting out on a page really what needs to be done. It provides an outline of the key developments. Air grid belief needs to be done from an electricity grid, from how we engage with communities, how we operate our power system, and also our electricity market which underpins all of our electricity bills. How they all need to change in the coming decade. This is a really important step on the journey out to full decarbonization and net zero out into the future. The project we called shaping our electricity future, and I hit the very heart of that and the key part of it was engagement with all sectors of society. And I really cannot emphasize the importance of that as we look as we look to transition our society over the coming decade. In shaping, we had the deepest, broadest engagement program of any utility in Ireland to date on a project like this. And of course after this year we would have spoken to pretty much every county council in Ireland, we would have held multiple briefings with youth groups, chambers of commerce and rural communities all around the country. I suppose what was unique really from a from shaping our electricity future perspective is we had a deliberative assembly as well, where we took 99 random people, and I suppose brought them through. At the end of the day climate, all of this space, it is really complex. It was an important opportunity for us to take people through it, talked to them, give them a go through it a number of days, and, and I suppose get their views then at the end of that on on the how they taught electricity system needed to evolve. So it's kind of basically our version of the citizens assembly which I think has been internationally recognized as being very successful. And we complemented that with engagement with experts in the industry. Look, we got a huge response like, we got an order of magnitude more than we would normally get 500 responses from the public 100 responses in the industry and these are really good responses detailed, considered responses who are absolutely delighted with that. Look, it allowed us to reach out into all sectors of society and respond to people's views and, and really again I just think that's so important engagement is going to be crucial to the decarbonization journey that we have to bring society along with us, not just within air grid, but I think in all the different areas that we need to decarbonize we have to win people's hearts and minds to the greatest extent as we can. Then over the summer months, kind of reflecting back to shaping, we were reviewing all the feedback we got, we carried out detailed simulations we actually carried out literally tens of millions of simulations. We developed clear action plans on what we believe needs to be done over the coming decade and we publish it at COP26. And really what it does is it sets out a blueprint of what the power system would look like in 2030, how the electricity grid needs to be developed, how we're going to continue to engage in society, and how we will operate the future electricity system and market. These are all the power system in 2030 is going to be very different from an economic from a physics perspective. To give you an overview of what we see it look like as well, look at the power system is going to carry way more electricity than it ever has before, and most of that's going to come from renewables. Like we anticipate 5000 megawatts of offshore wind, an additional 1300 megawatts of onshore wind, 1000 megawatts of solar fast developing sector, and what really jumped out to us and I think it really kind of goes back to that point about the desire of people to play an active role in climate change and mitigation. We're going to put 500 megawatts of micro generation so that's quarter of a million homes, farms, buildings that are going to play an active role in providing generation on to the grid. The coal will be phased out over the next decade with natural gas catering for times when the wind is low and the solar is low. And at the same time our demand is going to increase by upwards of 50%, which books international trends really, but it's facilitate large energy users like data centers, pharma, semiconductor plants, that electrification of heat and transport, and also making sure we have the grid we need to cater for the economy at large, like our population growth, new commercial and industrial customers. And I think sometimes in electricity demand perspective it's been Dublin centric, the global tech companies have a very focused on Dublin look for many different reasons, but as part of shaping we heard a lot of feedback about the importance about looking beyond Dublin and really we reflected that. Look, we recognize the scale of challenge that's ahead of us is not going to be easy. I'm looking at it from an electricity perspective. We're talking about 40 new grid projects, a billion euros on top of another and existing 2.2 billion euros of projects. Public acceptance is going to be hard. There's a lot of talk at the moment around electricity prices and justifiably so security or supply as well, not just this year but every year out to the end of the decade and beyond. I think shaping really was to look to develop a robust economic and deliverable plan that kind of facilitates that transition from where we are today to where we need to be at the end of the decade and a more renewable based system. And look, I think Ireland, it's sometimes people throw their hands up and say with what's Ireland is only a small country I think it's crucial that Ireland plays its part and takes practical actions and sets challenging targets to ensure the temperatures don't go above 1.5%. And look, we found cop really good. I think it's really shows there's a coalition of I suppose momentum starting to develop. And I think look our project like shaping our electricity future blueprints like that provide I suppose provide I suppose a clear roadmap on how things need to evolve over the coming decade. That's it there. Robbie that's brilliant. Thanks very much. And look, you mentioned loads there I'm sure we get stuck into some of that in the discussion later so so yeah look there's a couple of questions already coming in so please keep them coming. And then we'll come to you, come to you last and I'm fairly not least, you know, you've really carved out a fantastic role as a commentator on all things. Climate action and modeling and systems around transport and we're delighted to have you this evening so over to you for your reflections on your take on all of this. And, you know, please feel free to disagree with some of the some of the comments of the previous speakers more interesting discussion. Thanks for having me and happy to be here this evening. Think like a lot of people I'm grappling to come to sort of a simple conclusion about what cop what happened at cop and how I feel about it. Because there's a huge mix of things that happened from, and they can be interpreted in so many different ways. So if we look at the projections that various modeling groups came out with about what the what the temperature was as a result of the the key new NDCs these 2030 commitments for different countries and their and their net zero 2050 or 2060 2070 targets. The temperature outcome in 20, 2100 ranges from 2.7 to 2.9 degrees which would be a disaster, you know this is really far exceeding the Paris Agreement goals of limiting warming to well below two degrees and and striving for 1.5 but at the lower end or at the most ambitious sort of scale if we take all the all of the pledges and say that okay they'll be met. We'll reach a 1.8 degree world in 2100 and that is phenomenal that is actually huge progress for the first time the sort of projection of a certain set of actions goes below two degrees, which is something really to celebrate you know there is a lot to celebrate here, but but you know it's it's a step towards towards achieving the full goal but but never ever full. It hasn't gone all the way. We've heard about disappointment as a result of India, you know, taming down this, this mention of coal. So there was a goal to phase out coal and India at the last moment brought in a phase to phase down coal. You know, that was met with huge dismay and disappointment especially by the youth outside. But we still have to remember that that India is extremely poor country and they rely on coal for electricity which powers their whole society and whole economy. So still half of the people in India don't have access to clean cooking fuels on a per capita basis they consider that they emit about 1.3 tons of CO2 from coal per capita. And as Germany is 3.5, you know, the UK the host of cup recently until about 2015 had had a higher per capita emissions from coal than India. And if you look at our oil and gas and agriculture emissions per capita the developed countries are far far greater than India. So the India's position there was that it is developed countries, it is us who bear the responsibility to phase out fossil fuels first, not just them phasing out coal it is us to do what we can. And we always have to bring this back to Ireland and our we are developed country. We have a huge out kind of huge impact on the climate on a per capita basis. In every country in the world of every person in the world at the same per capita emissions as we have had historically here, the world would already have warmed to three degrees. You know, so we've, we've blown apart if you take all the historical burden of our contribution to the climate with with far blown the like the historical carbon budget. And if you kind of slice up the remaining carbon budget, we only have a few years left at current emissions. So it is really not about 2070 2015 at zero it is about what we're meeting today, and about how quickly we can, we can, we can bring that down. And so this was a, and this, this, this goes to what one of the key kind of catchphrases that I that I heard coming from cup was from Lawrence to be on who's one of the key architects parts agreement, the greenwashing is the new climate denial. So this is what we all have to really keep an eye on all the time is greenwashing is to understand if climate commitments are meaningful, and if they're significant so we looked at the global methane pledge and it's, it's a very good step 30% still not enough to meet the 1.5 degree target but it's still very very good. And Ireland has committed to 10% reduction now that's, you know, it's more difficult to reduce methane emissions from agriculture. But our, but our methane emissions have actually grown by 15% since 20, since 2010. So 10% reduction in methane emissions only gets us back to 2014 2015 levels. You know, is that fair. So if we can see the 10% is really a kind of a poor commitment from Ireland PhD student of mine was, was that cop I wasn't there myself. And you know he talked about the different country pavilions he said Qatar was there the highest per capita emissions in the world. They were promising and it's your World Cup. And maybe I talk to you about, you know, flying to the to Mars. It's, it's a, you know, it's, we have to always look at our fossil fuel consumption and coming back to what we're doing and is it enough. I think Mary Robinson's intervention was very powerful for a lot of people and she expressed what a lot of us feel. And if we really kind of access our emotions and personally I kind of tend to sort of block off the the enormity of climate change often because I work on this on a day to day basis. I really kind of tap into my emotions. I like most young people. I feel really afraid. I feel really angry. And a lot of ways I feel powerless as well. And, and this is what we all feel but I think what is really hopeful from this is that the youth movement and the youth pressure putting moral pressure on our leaders that they're not doing enough and that they have to do more. And it's very, very strong and it's, and it's also very, very powerful. When I teach a lecture to a lot of undergraduates and post graduates and I feel these emotions coming from they feel in despair. I was chatting to my class and sustainable energy this Monday about the COP and reflecting on the commitment to end deforestation, you know, student from from Brazil just raised his hand and he just kind of raised his hands and he said that's never going to happen in Brazil and it's been promised there will be no ending deforestation in Brazil by 2030 is his opinion of his leaders back home. So, young people have a huge role to play. I was looking at the new climate action plan which is Ireland's target to, you know, our kind of mechanism to meeting our very, very huge commitment to have emissions in a decade. So there's going to be a huge number of people, you know, each of these actions will require people like like Robbie and air grade institutions working at different levels, pushing change very quick change. So there's a huge role to play professionally and socially as well so young people is there's a huge sort of career position to or there's a huge potential to bring your career there and I'm often hiring postdocs and PhD so please do get in touch. And I was also asked to reflect on the major challenges back home and Robbie kind of rightly pointed to the electricity sector. Electrification is the key to decarbonizing the the the whole energy system only responsible now for about 15% of emissions, but it will be required to decarbonize heat and transport this this key one. I just bring you some some of the broad insights from our modeling because I'm running out of time but recently led a modeling study which is informed the climate change advisory councils assessment of carbon budgets with for it for the energy system. And there's there's three major things so electrification is absolutely essential if we can both increase the amount of electricity and and half emissions from that. It will be very hard to reach any emissions goals. Second is that businesses usual energy demands. So in terms of like car kilometers, heating homes, businesses that's what we call energy service demands and sort of lingo with businesses usual energy service demands it will be very hard to decarbonize the energy system by more than 50%. And with the agriculture sector committing to something between 22 and 30% in the climate action plan that will require the energy system to decarbonize by up to 65 to 70%, which is enormously enormously challenging for the energy system. What it's, let me be clear technologies alone will not get us here. They're very important so a million EVs is essential, but at the same time it's not enough in transport. So it has to be about systemic change in terms of how we live, where we live, how are we getting around transport planning, like you're on mentioned, and I think everybody, whatever they're doing in their lives will play a very big role. I'm looking forward to the Q&A so I'll stop there. Brilliant Hannah look absolutely fantastic analysis there of some of the key, the key takeaways coming out of COP and your own reflections on us it's really interesting to hear the insights from your own class. And, you know, obviously you're dealing with them on a weekly and daily basis. And so yes look I mean that's a really powerful contribution to the discussion here. There's a good few questions coming in there I'm just going to go for one of my own because it's been pushed upon throughout, and you know the fact that these big headline pledges were made, and the where significant sort of you know achievements now you know how how overblown or otherwise the achievements where you know time will tell but I mean to this someone of you know 100 countries agreed to slash methane emissions by 30%. You know over 100 countries and holding more than 85% of the world's forest said they were going to halt deforestation which has just been alluded to there by Hannah. And then India of course, as was mentioned earlier on one of the biggest emitters on coal pledge to reach net zero by 2070. And I suppose those are some of the biggest headlines to come out but despite them, there was a real sense that you know this was an overwhelming cup, and given we're sort of hurtling towards, you know, really significant climate disaster by 20302040, you know, was there enough dawn and I just pose I'm interested to get your views on those big pledges. And yes, to still the sense that it didn't quite deliver what people were hoping for so Karen I've come back to you on that. What's your sense of that disconnect between the big pledges, and then the feeling on the ground among young people who still feel that sense of despair. Um, you Carol. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, it's typical of very often young people look at politics and say look, things need to move very rapidly. And they are frustrated when they don't. I think in the Irish context over the last decade we've seen to referendum. We've been asked quite dramatically the marriage referendum and the repealing of the eighth amendment. But I think it's important for young people know that to know that there's some of us with gray hair who were trying to make this stuff happen 30 years ago, and it took a more than a generation to make these things happen. So, and, as always, you want things to move very quickly, the younger you are, and, you know, maybe some of the older people as well. So I think that frustration will remain. I guess if I were to sit down and I did sit down with some, some young activists in Glasgow I would say look, start working out what's going to happen in Cairo next year. You need to get to to influence the outcome of Cairo and I would say to kind of extinction rebellion and other groups. The big public manifestations are enormously important, but you also need to get to the decision makers and get to them to go 12 months out, rather than with two weeks to go. And that's the long hard slog of policy of policy change. It's not easy, and you have to prep for it a long time in advance. Yeah, and Robbie just the same sort of question to you, you know that disconnects you know you touch them yourself in your own presentation on on some of the big achievements but but yes, you know, there is a sense that you know we are running out of time, essentially, and that these pledges aren't enough. And, you know, how would you sort of, you know, married to the expectation versus what what actually the outcome was. I think God there's huge frustration is the only way I put it. I think if there was apathy, it would be it would be far worse. I think we need it. I mentioned there on that project shaping we engage with you Council of Ireland, and we had a number of events and for me they were the standout event of the last 12 months really on that project and believe me. There were a lot of events like this in the first half of this year, but it was just so much energy so much like like real like good ideas. And I think that's I think that frustration, if we don't have that frustration, we're absolutely heartling towards disaster. And I think look, we're absolutely it's, I think we're disappointed really with the ultimate outcome but I will go back to that point look it is, I think we're getting there but not at the pace we'd like to. Anna what what you make of that message from Karen to your young students that you know this type of change that we're talking about this this massive reorganization of how we live how we work. You know it is going to take time and despite the fact that you know people people know it needs to happen quickly, but just that this gradual glacial pace of bringing 200 countries along with you is what's going to take time. I mean, I think at a global level it's going to be very glacial and incremental but I would encourage young people to continue to push for rapid change because you can well sort of global energy systems do transform slowly. You have at a country level seen rapid transformations when when you've got the conditions right. So I think that to keep pushing and for the transformations that are necessary can still be effective at the national level. And then that has you know knock on effects at these in these global for we can be parts of these coalitions of the willing but not unless we're actually making these these changes as you know ourselves. So I would also say though that it can, it's easy to suffer from burnout as you know to sort of watching this and to sort of to keep seeing it on social media and to be obsessed with it or you know to really think about it. This is this is not going to be a marathon, it's going to be a sorry this is going, this is going to be a marathon not a sprint. So, even if we do have emissions to 2030 those to be an enormous effort to push for net zero as quickly as possible before 2050 if possible, and to get to negative emissions I mean they'll need to be a whole new set of solutions to deal with adaptation and damages from climate change and global development issues. So this is sort of a lifetime. I kind of came to a realization a year or two ago that I'll still be working in 2050. I'm actually within the age demographic of your group so you know when my my I've got two young kids and they will be at my at my age they'll be at my stage of their career when they're when in 2050 so in 2050 they will be sort of a you know so this is this is in the long haul I think and and and people shouldn't feel too burned out I think so it's hard to juggle that. Yeah, look that's that's really interesting thinking of you know where we'll be with 2050 years to be working and the kids will be at your, your, your level now in terms of their trajectory and we're going to move on to audience questions as a good few coming in so please keep them coming. Robbie inevitably data centers have featured in the questions and I suppose it's directed at you but I'd be interested to get the views of all of this because it's quite a wide question and what role do you see data centers playing in terms of balancing the grid. And should the government grant companies planning permission on the understanding that they use and batteries that they back up their own power. So that's available to balance the grid and can we support new data centers without endangering supply to other users so that comes from Steven troke and he's fit three questions into one there so Robbie I'll start with you, and then we'll go through the panel for their reflection on that as well. Yeah, thanks very much and thanks Steven for the question. Look the data center. It has been, I suppose, maybe to bring it back a set a step. The digital economy is a key part of the Ireland economy, and it's something that has grown a huge amount over the last decade. And if you kind of think it maybe in simple terms, the fact that we're doing this call. There are benefits to this digital economy on a very practical basis. Look, I think what's going to be very important is balance development of data centers over over the next decade and indeed beyond. I think look we have to, we have to think about greenhouse gas emissions targets renewables targets because is your demand increases it obviously stretches that. So I think that balance is really important. I think as well look we've to consider the balanced regional development of Ireland. That was something that really kind of jumped back to us in shaping and I know I mentioned that there previously, but particularly when we will have spoken to chambers of commerce and local communities out in kind of the regions of Ireland. The need for that kind of less of a Dublin centric approach. And to that end in the project I mentioned there, we spoke about large energy users which includes data centers but there's other types of large energy users as well. So we're looking for them to connect in different parts of the country. But look, I know that the regulator crew is consulted on this earlier on the year that we'd expect the decision very shortly on that. I think look things like backup generation that kind of is definitely going to feature as we look out into the day out into this decade and beyond. Thanks very much Hannah to you and he taught some data centers I know I remember just thinking back now that a Claire Bourne, especially as she did on the Monday evening think your colleague from UCC Paul Dean was on, and they sort of had the Lego house and they were looking at the energy that the data center absorbs. I mean, you know, as we look ahead, you know, ergo its own analysis projects that maybe we're looking at 30% of our energy will be will be drawn will be will be used with data centers you know how is that going to fix overall as we're trying to you to rebalance our grades, you know, low decarbonize etc what what's your own take. Yeah, I of course I agree with Robbie that data centers are an essential part of modern life, and the kind of centralization of our data processing into these super sort of centers like data centers is actually a much more efficient way of doing it than everybody individually having their own server at home or in the office, but Ireland become a specialist specialist in data centers. That raises huge concerns so even right now, data centers account for about 1% of global electricity demand, but over 10% of Irish electricity demand and that's projected to grow by more than 30%. So Ireland has become a specialist in data centers. And these are huge huge consumers of electricity, and we have a fantastic grid. You know, thanks to Robbie and and and and air grid really super modern and flexible grade, but it's a small isolated grade which at the same time of trying to decarbonize and double the share of intermittent renewables which is an enormous technical some of the modeling that we're doing is suggesting that electricity demand could up to double by 2030. I don't say like make make Robbie's hairs go go twice but because because of the amount of like it depends on the level of kind of demand that you assume but the amount of electrification of heating and transport and just serving a growing economy and and so on. And you think if you believe which I do that there's a limited extent to which we can grow renewables, you know we can only put in so many gigawatts a year of wind and solar. Then any additional demand from data centers or other large energy users is going to basically SAP the sort of renewables growth is going to lead to more emissions it's going to make the emissions targets out of date. The kind of the backup that they're planning at the moment is with fossil fuels batteries would be a good option but they're just enormously expensive, and it would obviously kind of reduce the business case. One other option technical option is to agree with data centers that they can that they can power down their operations at times. When I say the wind is low and demand is high otherwise so that could be another sort of option or that there is on site generation of hydrogen or so on, but I'm not sure if we're there yet with with these with these technical options. Thank you. Yeah, I mean it gets complicated fairly quickly I suppose in the Irish regulatory context there's two issues. Planning permission being granted for a data center and then grid access and in practical terms grid access is not guaranteed even if you get planning permission. The kind of the saying no more planning permissions for data center is a bit simplistic. I think we do have to ensure that data centers are using the waste heat within the local community for either for housing or for other buildings I know the one in Claire is talking about a vertical farm. I kind of, I'm somewhat skeptical of vertical farming convinced me that it's that it makes sense but but also the battery storage I think they do need to provide their on their own onsite backup and yes that will be expensive and it may interfere with the building with the business so be it I mean in terms of bang for your buck in terms of jobs per gigawatt of energy. I'd imagine data centers are way down there, and I'm not sure if it's the perfect thing that Ireland should aim for. In a sense we're going down the if a route of Ireland's the best place for cows. If we start doing that with data centers. We need to be a little bit careful that we don't sort of start believing our own stories. And maybe the tech giants actually are showing us the way a little bit the way Google for instance is powering up data centers with the sun around the world so the same data might be stored in Asia in the Americas and in Europe, and the data center might be very active during daylight hours. So there's some tech solutions there as well. But I think we've got to get beyond the belief that we can always check our Instagram feed at any point day or night, or that we can always charge put on our washing machine or charge our car at 100% extraction from the grid. Obviously, and peak shifting demand shifting saying look I'd like the washing to be done at some stage within the next 24 hours rather than right now is going to be a future of a feature of our future electricity demand. And I think, yeah, we do have to curtail our voracious appetite for data. And clearly, it's better than driving to a meeting to do it online. But we need to be careful that we just don't gobble up that extraordinary amount of we don't just gobble up all the supply that's out there. We're going to see a tremendous amount of innovation in the coming decade. And I think Kieran and Hannah have touched on it there. There really is. And look to be fair, the companies, not just the double tech companies but the developers in Ireland are very adaptable, they're very flexible, they're very smart. And I do think that there's going to be new ideas, new proposals that are going to come on stream in the next decade that we look that that aren't there yet. I often think back to I joined 15 or 16 years ago. And I think back to where the electricity industry was then to where it is now it's literally there is no comparison. And I think if we cast forward 10 years as well. I really hope we'll be saying the same thing again because I think there is going to be some great ideas and over the coming decade, and there's a lot of money and effort being pumped into, to suppose to look at innovative ways forward. And I look I'm closest to the electricity sector but look I'm sure that's the case in other sectors as well. And look, thanks very much for all the comments there. There's a good few questions here 2023 is the main as best they can before we finish up at eight o'clock. And Francis Jacobs asked a question regarding the European Parliament found as a former head of the European Parliament office in Ireland and he has a question specifically for you Kieran, just around the role of the EU in negotiations at cops in general you know he says over the years, they've been very active and very, you know, successfully perceived as being, you know, one of the drivers of the cop agenda. And but but they were seeing this time has been a bit peripheral and they didn't take on as I saw that question. I saw that question. I think Timmermans was trying fairly hard he was over in India, within the last month and he was on a little bit of a diplomatic mission around the world to make it a success. An eyebrow at the fact that Ursula von der Leyen was not particularly in the mix in terms of commenting on cop or Cadrice Simpson as energy commissioner now maybe I missed something there, but you can't just leave it to good old friends who's brilliant at talking to talk. I mean, Dumbrobskas on trade, Ursula von der Leyen is as president, Vestiger is digital. I just didn't see them in the frame, and you can't leave it all to Franz Timmermans to, to make it happen. And then there was a related question just about the size of the delegation, because of covert the delegations were very small from the parliament itself, only the envy only the environment committee was formally represented. And then there was a trade on itry which is energy and trend which is transport. So I wasn't there as a formal decade on the day to day running of the cop. I think it's the same as it was when I was there in Cancun 11 years ago, that the and the climate ministers from each member found the table with the EU delegation but I don't think the MEPs were invited to that. So I think the parliamentarians at a European level were somewhat distant from the process but I don't think it's been that different in the past so sorry for the complicated answer. I guess in summary, I think we needed more than Timmermans to be talking on behalf of the European Commission, and maybe covert made it a little bit more difficult for the parliament to be as active as it might have been. Yeah, yeah, that's brilliant Karen thanks very much for wondering as well as those of Brexit elements and how much the EU was sort of involved in speaking engagements etc. From the UK perspective. A couple more questions coming in a very specific one Hannah I'm going to just try to do and see if you can answer us from john Leonard. He says how much methane is emitted from the energy sector in Ireland. And then another question for you Robbie come from Andrew McLaughlin. And what are the biggest sources of delay in rolling out grid infrastructure in Ireland. So two different questions there Hannah you on methane if you have the answer. And then we got Robbie on on on the on the grid. Yeah, 260 kilotons. The advantage of having Excel, you know the greenhouse gas inventory open in front of you. You know when we're not in a meeting live. So, so, so 260 kilotons to give that put that in context. And that is, this is your cook so less than 2% of our overall methane emissions. And that comes from fugitive emissions from our extraction of natural gas and leakage from our pipes that that is what is what the inventory the emissions inventory is. I don't know how you know validated that is there's parts of the inventory that are that are more or less validated 93% of our methane emissions come from the agriculture sector. And Robbie over to you next on on the source of play for the grid. I was relieved Hannah took that one. Yeah, the question it was, would you sorry would you remind me again. The question was, and what are the biggest source of delay in grid infrastructure in Ireland. I think I think thinking about it in terms of delay is maybe I look at it in a slightly different way. There's different steps you have to take to develop great and bring it from concept true to to to final and to final energization. So they can say some of the projects we mentioned in shaping look what we have to do first is go out there engage with local communities and talk to on a project by project basis we mentioned 40 projects there. I was looking at it at a programmatic level. We've to go out and talk to each individual communities on each project to make sure to take on board their feedback on the specifics of the project that's that's absolutely crucial. We obviously need to bring it through the planning process get our consenting and then obviously subsequent to that we can begin begin the construction and ultimately energize the circuit. It can take anywhere. Look some of these projects take five years and anything up to 10 years as well they take a long time. They're complex, and I think they need to be handled in a very sensitive manner. One thing we would say is social acceptance of electricity infrastructure, you know there's a very strong correlation there with timeline for delivering project so I don't think it's not in the context of a delay. Look, you have to can't rush these things you have to take your time talk to people, particularly local communities take on board their feedback and then move forward on that basis. Brilliant. Robbie for that. I have quite an interesting question that's coming here from Neil Martin. Excuse me, and he talks about buddying up. You know that you might you might buddy up to big emitters who sort of compete with each other and hold each other to account when it comes to reducing their emissions and he asks in the context of the bilateral sort of negotiations that were going on between the US and China. And he says, you know, we can get to a scenario where it's almost a beauty pageant between the two to demonstrate progress and you know, any idea Karen on whether that's sort of a model that could work if you have two big emitters and slogging it out the trial and so we can get ours down more than you. Yeah, I mean look, I think we're looking at whatever works. And that could be one way of doing it. Actually, at a city level, the European Commission is going big on 100 carbon neutral cities and one of the meetings I had in Glasgow was with Matthew Baldwin, an assistant section from DG move actually the transport side of the things. So he's trying to get cities involved in essentially. Well, not so much a beauty pageant probably kind of a football league to try and learn from each other I suppose is the important thing of what are you doing in transport Oh what are you doing in heat. And I know for instance the city of Helsinki held a competition because they've big district heating but it's a lot of it is run on coal and they said look, what are we going to run it on in future is it going to be biomass is it going to be photovoltaics is it going to be geothermal. And that's another way of kind of encouraging a little bit of lateral thinking of what can happen. But that conversation about the cities. You know we think that countries will do all the heavy lifting, but actually, particularly when you get out of Ireland, local and regional government is really important. So when you look at Austria, or you look in Germany, what the lander might be doing in North Rhine West failure, or what it might be happening in Amelia Romana in Italy might actually be doing a lot more than the Italian government is doing I often I mean I have a kind of a boring kind of talk where I say look, it's not just up to global action it's up to regional action at kind of continental level at European level at Irish level at county level at local authority level and at personal level. So, we can't just say the country the government will do everything. I think we have to think about our own lifestyle. We have to think about, you know, our extended family or our community. I think the focus in Ireland on community action that SC AI have kind of worked on, I think is really powerful. And it works very strongly around Europe of the consumer as a prosumer of kind of supplying their energy to the grid and I know that's going to happen within the next few months in Ireland. So there's different ways of of tackling this competition between countries, yes, but between cities, but also working at all the different layers of where climate action can happen, because let's say, our states aren't going to do this by themselves. And the next time you think about, will I buy a new car? Will I insulate the attic? Will I replace the boiler? A lot of the climate, the big climate decisions will be made there. Sure, countries can make it easier to make the right decision, but they can't kind of come into your house and tell you exactly what to do. Yeah, Hannah, I saw you nod along a little bit to Karen there any thoughts on that particular, you know, pairing each other off for me, not even at the country level, but down the levels as Karen mentioned. Yeah, there's definitely a danger of sort of taking too many learnings from COVID to climate, but one thing that we did learn in Ireland is that we have very strong trust in institutions, and that we have a lot of social solidarity. We understand that we're taking climate action for social solidarity because the sort of the future generations and other people required from us, then we can kind of gather a lot of momentum in terms of a lot of people changing their lifestyle and behavior, not just in terms of what energy technologies they use, but what their diets are, you know, how they get around, whether they're walking and so on. So I'd say that I would agree with Ciaran there. Brilliant. I know we're just finishing up now. So one final question for all of you and it's related to sort of the issue of a just transition because we've just talked there about innovation. And I mean, I know, Ciaran, you mentioned earlier on, Amy and Ryan, he's forever talking about the opportunities that are present that's not just this, you know, this looming stress and this looming thing that we want to take your cars off you, etc. But actually, there's opportunities there within climate action, within climate justice. Robbie, just you, obviously you touched on the how different electricity and the grid and the industry is from when you're forced out there and how you hope that will change. I mean, can you just talk a little bit maybe about the opportunities by way of job creation, etc. that you see over the coming decade. I think there's, I think the electricity sector, it's actually, it's going through a boom at the moment, to be honest with you, we talk about all the work that needs to be done over the coming decade like the whole, it genuinely needs to be transformed. Radically change or electricity grid build twice as much renewable generation in this decade that has been built here to four. We also need to develop our, or we call it our conventional fleet. So, like, a lot of it probably gas generation batteries, demands, demand response as well. That also needs to significantly change over the coming decade so I really do think it's, it's, there's going to be tremendous opportunity. I mean, that's looking at it maybe from one particular angle. I think we have to make sure that we enable that opportunity as well. And that, you know, as we are very much focused on things like 2030 targets that we we we equally we and indeed we do an opportunity as well. We have, we have specific work programs in place to enable new technologies to come onto the grid, and, and, and identify barriers to whatever the next iteration of a battery is whatever that may look like find that barrier get rid of it to allow that particular flourish as to the extent that it will. I think look as well, just maybe bringing it back down to the, to the real local level like Kieran and Hannah did there previously. I think that when we were out talking and on the shaping or electricity future we did so much engagement in the first half the year. What really struck me was I couldn't get over it I was probably surprised by it as well as that desire for micro generation, and the desire for people to play a real role in in this transition and it wasn't about money or like it was it wasn't necessarily commercial motivation. Obviously, it's part of it, but it was more of a desire to play an active role and would have heard it again and again and again at all the different engagements and that was, it was very much a straight up. What can we do to to enable this transition at my level. What can I do about it, rather than always thinking about the really big macro. It's the micro to if you add all of that up. It makes a big difference. Thanks for that. And Kieran any any thoughts on the opportunities that it presents. Yeah, I like the way Hannah said, look at COVID but don't be careful not to stretch the analogy too much, but it is worth remembering that period I mean in the midst of that awful crisis that has killed millions of people. There was a there was a moment in time when you could hear birds on again, you could walk with your children down the street without being worried about cars tearing around the corner. You spent time in your community with your family, you look you called into your neighbor to see how they were getting on. And I think a lot of those lessons do apply to climate action of thinking about how you get around thinking about what you are thinking about solidarity, as Hannah said, with your neighbor. And we, we have the kind of the academic basis for doing things like this. Dr Lorraine Darcy and in TUD a former colleague has been pushing the kind of active travel. It's good for your health as well as kind of good for your pocket. The issue of clean air I mean I'm here in Brussels for constantly the level of air pollution is really high, and it's mostly cars that are causing that. So I think we can, we can take a lot of other boxes as well as climate. If we think about this a little bit I mean in some badly polluted cities it's about clean air, but when I'm talking to my colleagues from Romania about climate action. But I talk about energy security. So I think we can tick different boxes with different people and get everyone nodding in agreement that we need to do something. And I do think there are lessons from the last 20, 20 months as to how we tackle this. We're in final word to you Hannah opportunities. fully agree there's loads of opportunities and I'm, I'm, I think that if done right the the opportunities and the positive benefits will outweigh all these costs and this is kind of glaring headline numbers of the billions that it will cost will be far less than in action. I would leave with the word of caution though that if we're too rosy about it then we might kind of neglect that the, that the policies that will be enacted will require kind of painful changes and if they're not targeted carefully. So that right now, frankly it is, it is kind of carbon tax is kind of a blanket tax on society and it is people who are well off who get grants to kind of go to clean energies and if that continues and I think that there's a change that going to happen that that's not going to continue that there's going to be more of a rebalancing and that's acknowledged in the climate action plan, but if the government doesn't get that right then they won't bring people along and that will be will be a big loss. And look, we've, we've, we've gone over slightly there but I think we could have, we could have been talking till tomorrow to so many issues we didn't put economy and carbon tax, we didn't mention that I only got a word at the very end. But look, thanks very much for joining us, Carol, Robbie, Hannah, really appreciate your insights and again for the audience for the very active participation the questions threw out, and we'll hopefully be back with an end of year YPN before we finish up the year of 2021 to look back at all the key issues that that happened. But for now, thanks very much, thanks very much again for our panelists.