 Good afternoon. You're very welcome. My name is Alex White, Director General of the Institute of International European Affairs. Welcome to my office. This event is the second in a series of webinars co-organized by the European Parliament Liaison Office in Ireland and the Institute, the IIEA, seeking to explore in depth a number of important critical issues relevant to the future of the European Union. These are democratic resilience, digitalization of the future of work and the energy transition. And in that context, we're looking at the important role the European Parliament plays in making progress with respect to those questions. We've an expert panel of speakers exploring how the European Union can help deliver a sustainable and just energy transition for the European Union and its member states and its citizens. And in that context discussing the crucial role that the European Parliament is playing in this transition. So just to let you know what's going to happen for the next hour or so, each of our three speakers will offer introductory remarks of up to about seven minutes or so, and then we go to a Q&A with the audience with you. You'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you'll see on your screen, and feel free as we always say to send in, pop in your questions throughout the session, according as they occur to you, rather than waiting until the very end and sometimes questions tend to budge up and one can't get around to them all. So if something occurs to you, just pop it into the system and we've come to it. Once our speakers have finished their introductory remarks, you can also participate in the discussion on Twitter by using the handle at IEA. Today's presentations and the Q&A are all on the record. Just as you know that. Nothing secret here. And now to our three speakers. I'll introduce each of them in a little more detail when I come to them but just as you can probably see on screen are three speakers Karen Koth, MEP, Claudia Gamon, MEP, and Professor Lisa Ryan. And we'll come on the basis of alphabetical order firstly to Karen Koth. Karen Koth is a Green Party MEP for Dublin. He sits on the committees for energy, transport, and regional development is president of Euphoria's European Cross Party Network that promotes the deployment of sustainable energy systems. He served as a rapporteur for the revision of the energy performance of buildings directive, the EPBD. Prior to his election to the European Parliament 2019, he served as a Dublin City Councilor, TD for Don Leary, and Minister of State with responsibility for sustainable transport and climate change. And his CV range is far wider and longer than that but we just don't have the time to go through it all. So welcome Karen, the floor is yours, seven minutes or so we look forward to hear what you have to say. I wish Alex and good to see you again and to be with the audience, including my colleague from Austria so it's a pleasure to have you all online. As you can find I will share a screen. If I can and pull out a presentation, which has I think just seven slides so I will just see if I can find the presentation, and it'll hopefully pop up. There we go. Just saying okay to a few things and a slideshow from the start. There we go. Hopefully Alex you can see the view that I see when I walk out from the European Parliament. Terrific. So that is both the literal view from Brussels but I also want to give you, I guess the metaphorical view from Brussels as to where we are going with the sustainable and just transition. Four years into my mandate, I would preface remarks by saying it has been a tumultuous a few years I in a sense that the three C's come to mind that we started off with climate. We then entered six months later into a period of COVID and a couple of years after that a period of conflict with Russia's murderous war in Ukraine. The good news from my perspective is the green the European Green Deal is still very much in play and continuing within the European Parliament. I think no one quite knew what was going to happen when COVID took hold. And then when conflict started on our Eastern border, there was again a level of uncertainty. But certainly with the repower EU plan coming from the European Commission and endorsed by the European Parliament. It is very clear that we need to accelerate our efforts to decarbonize at a European Union level, not just to save the planet, but to break ourselves away from dependency on Russia and other states that are run by oligarchs or dictators. So the fit for 55. Well, the European Green Deal I guess was but was announced and which we voted for as parliamentarians parliamentarians in the course of the year 2019. And even at that early stage it broke down into a series of packages. I don't know how good your eyesight is it certainly strain in mind to read the small print but you can see in the bottom left hand corner co2 emission standards for cars and vans. I think that that has become a transported a transformative piece of legislation, which we now call the ice band the internal combustion engine ban, essentially, the end of the production of vehicles vans and cars that will run on fossil fuel by the year 2035. And you can see that individual elements of this European Green Deal are extraordinarily transformative in the coming decade. And in a nutshell the name of the deal is about a 55%. Well this translated into the fit for 55 package of a series of measures that would reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 55% between 2020 and 2030. Is this ambitious, it certainly is. However, a lot has been done at a European Union level in the years between 1990, and shall we say 2020. That having been said, we still have to ramp up our efforts in the decade ahead. And that's why this fit for 55 package of around 20 different pieces of legislation. You know, in different colors, the different files that have been led by the Environment Committee, the Itry or Energy Committee, the Transport Committee down at the bottom, the Economic Affairs Committee, I've highlighted in yellow, the one where I am the leader or the lead negotiator, the recast energy performance of buildings directive, but in every sector from aviation to land use, we need to work hard at decarbonizing. And we also need to work hard at bringing citizens with us and ensuring that they have a just transition as we move towards a lower carbon economy. And the headline packages are the Renewables Energy Directive and the Energy Efficiency Directive. But these are backed up by new laws such as CBAM, the carbon border adjustment mechanism to prevent imports into the European Union that are not paying a full price for carbon. And that graphic that I showed you in the previous slide of the honeycomb is very important to remember, because this is a package that has to work vertically and horizontally. And I think what keeps the European Commission awake at night is the need to ensure that these legislative pieces of the jigsaw do not contradict each other and are in harmony. And I think thus far, we've done very, very well. The 555 package, there's the headlines, the Renewable Energy, the Energy Efficiency Directive, all of these pieces of legislation are through or nearly through the legislative pipeline. Almost all of them have been voted on by the European Parliament. Some are still a trilog stage where a deal has been hammered out between the European Commission, the council, the relevant council, or the council of relevant ministers, and indeed the parliament. With my own file, the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, our first trilog takes place in three weeks time on the 6th of June. But you can see another file below there on sustainable aviation fuels. We hammered out a deal, a trilog, a few weeks ago it's coming back to the parliament for a final vote in a few weeks time. So most of these pieces of legislation are going through or on the point of going through. The issue now in all of this is the money and this graphic produced by Renovate Europe in regard to my own file. You know, where do we find the money to renovate our buildings and this generates newspaper headlines here at home in Ireland. And one of the answers is through European funds and a lot of the money made available at Europe already through the multi annual financial framework can be made available for this particular issue of renovating buildings. And it's interesting just looking at this kind of snapshot. We also have the recovery money from COVID the recovery and resilience facility in Ireland's case that's just under a billion, but for a country like Italy, it amounts to about 70 billion euro. So the COVID recovery money is very significant for countries that suffered very badly during the COVID period. And then of course there are structural funds. There is the Just Transition Fund Horizon Europe. We're seeing parts of that money being made available in Europe or in Ireland, not as much as in other countries because let's face it. The economic performance of Ireland has been way ahead of most other countries who are dealt who are dealing with challenging levels of unemployment, challenging levels of low or negative growth, and many of them would be envious of the challenges that we have here in Ireland. An issue that does arise though, to my mind is one of efficiency versus sufficiency. A lot of the legislation that we're dealing with is about improving the efficiency of cars of buildings. And I think there is a debate that we need to have about sufficiency that made its way into the last climate change negotiations in the Middle East last autumn. But it is hard to find a political majority for sufficiency, which I think demands us to rethink our economic system somewhat. So for instance on buildings, you can have a very large home that has a low energy use per square meter. But really, you might ask yourself, do you need a three or four or five thousand square foot home? And these are, I think, are some of the debates that we will have in the coming years. And I think that needs to be part of the discussion that we will perhaps have in the next mandate of the parliament starting next year. One final remark I would say is that I am acutely conscious that I live in Brussels in an environment that very much focuses on environmental action. But the green group are only 10% of the parliament. I would imagine, well, we know a majority of the parliament are in favor of climate action, but perhaps not at the pace that I believe science demands. And you've seen a kickback or a pushback, should I say, on the European nature law and on some other pieces of legislation that I would argue are integral parts of the European Green Deal. So in conclusion, I would say that challenges remain. There are, there is a minority of political interests who oppose the European Green Deal. There is a majority in favor of it, but sometimes the support for the European Green Deal is lukewarm. And I think support particularly for the just transition measures such as the social climate fund that will provide some of the monies to help those who have difficulty in paying the price for the green transition. We need to do more in that area. We need to ensure that people are not left behind. And an environmental transition is of no use unless it comes with social safeguards that protect those who are most at risk as we move ahead on this journey. Last Friday I was in Paris with the International Energy Agency, and I described what's happening in Europe as a gentle revolution. But Fatih Barel, the head of the IEA, turned to me and said, it's not that gentle. It's quite bumpy at the moment, particularly because of what has happened in Ukraine. And as we move away from these energy sources from Russia and elsewhere. There have been price spikes. There have been challenges. So the outlook is not all positive. And I think it demands constant vigilance as we move forward. Eran, thank you for that clear and succinct presentation. Very grateful for that. I'm going to turn next to our second speaker. Claudia Gamon is a member of the industry research NEP is a member of the industry research and energy committee of the European Parliament. He is the spokesperson for all EU related issues for the new Austria and Liberal Forum, NEOS, and she sits with the Renew Europe Group in the European Parliament. Previously she represented NEOS as, I don't know if that's the way we should be pronouncing NEOS, NEOS, as a member of the Austrian Parliament. But she focuses mainly on the topics of energy, climate policies, science, research, and technological progress. Claudia Gamon studied International Business Administration and International Management at the Vienna University of Economics and in Leuven. Her first political experience in 2011 when she was the leading candidate for the Young Liberals in the Austrian Students Union. So you're very, very welcome to this IEEE webinar. Claudia and the floor virtually the virtual floor is yours. And we look forward to what you have to say. Thank you very much, Alex. And thank you for the invitation and giving me the chance to speak today and to try and present it. I guess if you also from an NEP from another country because I know that I guess one of the challenges of the European Parliament is of course making the energy transition and making energy transition policies work for all member states. And I think we have seen, especially in the last years, the limitations of the energy union and also maybe the potential that could be there with if we try to work together a little bit better in this regard. But I would like to give you maybe some insight into my views on this and I wanted to thank my colleague Karen Kupfer for his overview also the files that he's working on and generally to give us an idea of how big the European Green Deal is and how big this fit for 55 legislation package has been. Because whenever I talk to people in my constituency here in the west of Austria, we have lots of hydropower, and we have lots of pumped hydro storage. It's a very different situation, very privileged, I guess geographically, and the situation that we're in. And also when young climate activists come to talk to me and say nothing is happening on that member state level. I try and explain a lot is happening on the level. A lot is in progress, but it will unfortunately take some time until it reaches the member states and till it reaches member states legislation or legislative process. I don't need to consider it but I want to. I also want people to understand that there is a lot of change coming their way. A lot of change coming their way in terms of their own private home, the way where their energy comes from what it will cost a lot, a lot is happening and it's at a pace that has not been seen before in the European Union when it comes to energy and climate policy and that's something that we have to get people ready for. One of my biggest priorities always when I try to talk about the work that is important and energy policy is trying to focus on the paradigm shift that we're seeing in the energy transition. When it comes with it when we move from a centralized fossil based energy production system to a renewable space and in its nature decentralized system that comes with lots of changes, not just for the European Union for the member states for regulators but also for communities at the local level, the potential that it could mean for rural than rural development and and the. The challenges that the communities will have and how to best manage the new decentralized nature and and the potential that it could have for local communities. And this all starts with the energy infrastructure. And for that there's lots of investment needed in the European Union in order to support. And the new nature or this new paradigm that we live in the in the renewables based system. I guess of today and in the future and then I worked on on some legislation that has to do strictly with with cross border infrastructure. I mean it's all technical nonsense but in this case it's called it's that the 10 legislation that deals with the cross border energy infrastructure. And the view that it gave me is that we have so much to do with that part of energy policy. Okay, so I do believe that there is a huge investment gap when it comes to energy infrastructure, but also in terms of the member states, regions and local communities understanding the size of the investment gap and what will be needed to really ensure that local communities can benefit from the energy transition. And that role that actually brings me to to something that that my colleague mentioned and that is what's the other side of the parliament what's hindering us in going further and and really pushing the agenda forward. And that is the fact that, well, elections do matter, the majorities in the European Parliament do matter. And even though the Commission, and I guess all the institutions that try to be as objective as one can be in these questions I mean that there's no true objectivity in this but I guess we can try to act as as objectively as we can, that there is, for example, no further need for natural gas infrastructure, as an example, there is still a lot of public money that goes into new infrastructure where I think we might as well be burning it somewhere because the gap in the needs that we have in the future of our energy system is so big that every euro spent on new fossil infrastructure for me is is a euro wasted on the past. And there's something else that I would like to mention, because I'm working on it currently and it's one of the big parts also of fit for 55 is the revision of the gas and hydrogen market. And it's also just as relevant for Ireland as it is for all the other countries, because it does have to do with the future of heating. And what we have, or what I have been trying to do is to make it a package that is also about decarbonizing the gas system, and giving people a way out of gas, and making it fit for purpose for local communities that they can use energy systems and the question that they can use heating, sustainable heating that they might have available locally, but it's a question of know how it's a question of integration. And it's a question of, I guess, reducing administrative hurdles, administrative burdens that make it too complex and too complicated for people to really have access to the potential that is there. And while I would disagree with my colleague when he says that the big question is the money, I do know that for individuals for consumers the big question is the money but I think for, for those that have to bring the companies that work in the system and the people that make it a legislative reality at home. It's a question of, of making it as easy as possible. And we have to deal with so much bureaucracy that is in the way of, of, of keeping up the pace of the energy transition that it really angers me and personally I think that it's, it's about making it easier and making it more accessible to more people, to more businesses, and, and, and just, you know, doing some, sometimes it's also about doing a bit less in Brussels, and regulating a bit less in some areas. And I think this is also something where truly liberal policies do meet with truly green policies in the way that we have the same goal and, and can relate in the same way. Yeah, I think I shouldn't talk too long. So this is it for me and my focus is, as I said that the paradigm shift that I want to explain to people that will come with the energy transition and the potential that it could bring for local communities. Thank you very much, Claudia for that. And an interesting point at the end that it's not so much about the money it's about making it as easy as possible and then that does raise of course, pretty profound questions in relation to the nature of regulation and what is it achieved by regulation, I suppose in some people's minds anyway the necessity of regulation but you're making the opposite art sort of making a different emphasis which is that perhaps in some instances the regulation is too burdensome would you say. But maybe we'll get a chance to explore some of those points in the Q&A. So our third speaker and Lisa Ryan is Professor in energy economics in the School of Economics at University College Dublin. Lisa's research is in clean energy technology adoption, energy markets and climate change economics and related policy. She's an active member of the UCD Energy Institute where she co-leads the interdisciplinary empower project relating to the decarbonization of electricity and consumer technologies in climate change mitigation policy. Lisa is a principal investigator in the flagship Nexus project. She was the senior energy economist in the energy efficiency unit at the International Energy Agency in Paris, the second mentioned today of the August institution until summer 2013, where she led research projects relating to energy efficiency, finance, transport and cross sectoral policy. Lisa, over to you. Look forward to what you have to say. Thank you very much, Alex and thank you overall for the invitation to speak at this event. And it's, I'm delighted to be involved in a policy discussion, get me out of my academic ivory tower where I've been since 2016 and I still take a lot of my research I have to say it's amazing, you know, technology adoption but always in the context of policy analysis. And so of course in Ireland a lot of our policy is coming from Europe so I follow closely the developments at European level. So, you know, Kiran Kup started the, you know, by introducing the Green Deal, and the fit for 55 legislation when I started thinking about this talk today I start a panic to little thinking where do I begin because, as he already stated it is such a broad package and the fit for legislative measures. I had a quick look earlier to see where we are at with those legislative measures. I think of the 58 in the train. This is your talk for me. You know about 40 have departed but there's still quite a few that have to go but that just shows you the scale of the legislation that is required to be implemented to achieve some of this. From my perspective and from the I think the discussion today, the three big targets are the CO2 emissions ones at 55% reduction, the renewable energy target that is now 40% by 2030, and the energy efficiency target which I still call 38% reduction that seems to us now it's we're quoting it in different terms, but it is hugely ambitious all by 2030. And from an Irish perspective, we've translated we are translating these into, you know, Irish policy via the climate action plan. And there we are really betting very heavily on the electrification of let's just say it's nearly everything. And we have, you know, we are well above our targets for CO2 emissions we have a carbon budget that's meant to be achieved by 2020 our first carbon budget that we are running ahead of. And we are betting heavily that we're going to electrify heat and transport, and we are going to decarbonize the electricity sector. So I'm paying very close attention as was at a European level what is going to happen with electricity. I think this year we have seen with, I mean, even pre the Ukraine crisis. And we, we could see this electricity prices have been rising as a result of gas prices rising after the post COVID situation where economic activity took off again so already from September 2021 you saw a natural gas prices rising. And, you know, I agree with Claudia that normally we should not be supporters of natural gas it is a carbon based fuel, but in the Irish context where we're trying to switch to renewables and we don't really have we have very little interconnection. We are very reliant on natural gas as being our cleanest fossil fuel so when natural gas prices start to rise, and 50% of our electricity is being generated from natural gas. It does mean that our electricity prices really start to take off. And, and I do worry about this from a consumer perspective a lot of my research is on consumer technology adoption. The problem is that as we're encouraging people to take on heat pumps or electric vehicles. It's really not helpful when electricity prices become very high. They've doubled in Ireland, as they have in many European countries. So I think one of the things I'm paying close attention to is the electricity market reform. Which is, you know, we already had some proposals now that came out in March 2023 from commission. The I would regard these measures as a kind of a half, a half step in a way I think that we all agree that we have an electricity market situation where we're so it's a paradigm shift just like Claudia said, where we are switching from a fossil fuel based system to renewable space system. And our electricity markets are not fit for purpose in that regard when you have no marginal costs associated with electricity generation we have fixed costs and so the, the proposals that are there are starting to address this but they're really recommendations, we should have more fixed costs, we should have more power purchase agreements, rather than the fundamental reform. And this will take a lot of time it took Ireland by the decades to implement the current electricity market and it took by decade for that to be designed. So it will take a long time but I think that's something that we would really, that really needs to get going. And we have the clean energy package in place since 2019 or eight directives there already. And I think that's something that will continue to be while revisited now. So let's look at the poor European Parliament, it seems that, you know, not once, you know, the, the, even the EPBG or the renewables directive, they haven't the old versions haven't been there very long, and we're already having to res, rescope renegotiate all of those targets and with not just the targets but the measures that we need to implement them. So, there have been a few legislative changes this year and regulatory changes. And as a result of the energy crisis, we've seen the intervention measures that came in September 2023, we power EU and this, I call it the minor electricity market reform, although that may not make you happy. And we power EU was quite interesting in that it, it was, it is very much aligned with, you know, trying to diversify away from fossil fuels so we're killing a few birds with one stone, diversifying where are also the existing fossil fuels are coming from and trying to boost industrial decarbonization. But one that I thought was very interesting that was there was trying to improve permitting. And this will come back to Claudia's point on infrastructure. And as I said, we're betting very heavily on electricity and we're not the only country doing so. And this will require offshore wind. This will require but also interconnection. It will require a lot more reinforcement of wires in Ireland we're trying for about a decade now we're trying to build into just a big war in between north and south and we have huge problems doing so. So, without some kind of streamlining of the permitting and planning, and I think this is extraordinarily difficult to do. Every country seems to be facing it, we are going to be stuck and mired in planning difficulties that will mean that will hinder our switch over to a renewable little electricity. And, but overall I think that we, the crisis that we've seen in the last year has hopefully among the wider population, we enforce the idea that firstly domestic energy supplies are something that are to be considered renewables made that fossil fuels and geopolitically they are very difficult to to control basically because they're outside the European Union, and that electricity is extremely important and we need to get it right. So, hopefully, I'm more hopeful I think that the general population will be supportive of a switch to renewables, and also the infrastructure around this that is required. I was very happy this week in Ireland where we had our first offshore wind auction results, and the price, although it's discussed in the media quite a bit, is more favorable than I think most would have expected at 86 euros a megawatt hour. So, things are progressing in the right direction but I do worry a lot about how fast we can get things built by 2030. And I also have to say that I have changed my mind a little bit on the natural gas situation, Claudia, that although I really don't like seeing natural gas or any more investment in any kind of fossil fuel. I don't see a way around it in countries like Ireland where we need some kind of short term game. And so I wouldn't like to see long term infrastructure being built but I think we will need to have some natural gas capacity in the short term to facilitate this transition. And I think that's what I'm stuck with now. Thank you very much. And Lisa for that for those insights and you mentioned planning difficulties and sort of capacity issues there towards the end of, of your presentation. I wonder, because we hear so much about that now about the sort of bottlenecks in the system, the difficulty in supply change and respect to renewables and so on. A lot of people talking about problems of capacity and ability to deliver, not just in Ireland but in many countries, including countries that might sometimes be seen as more advanced than us. Kiran, what, how critical or how much of a problem or how big of an obstacle in broad brush terms do you think the capacity of, we'll come back in a minute to the willingness and the political question but the actual as it were engineering technical capacity of modern states to actually do this transition, how big of a question is that do you think. I think for Ireland, the, the prospect of offshore wind is a hugely important one. And I think we are building bigger and more challenging in more challenging locations than we have ever done. And having been said, I actually don't think the engineering challenges are the difficulty. I think, as the other speakers alluded to the, the regulatory process is, is a bigger challenge. I think within Ireland we often say, planning is a problem, we need to make planning easier. The more challenging issue is to address the lack of resources in the planning field. I'm not going to bring my own bias in here because I'm trained as a planner, but I think we do need more staff in our national planning agency and in board planala, but we also need more staff at a local authority level within the national parks and wildlife services within the areas that will be impacted by this transformation. It could be marine life, it could be, it could be land species on land, but we need to analyze the impact that we will have. All of that having been said, there is a move to simplify the regulatory process at a European level. Franz Timmermans, the executive vice president of the commission talks about this all the time. And some of the examples he uses is, for instance, the replacement of a wind farm with taller turbines. And I think that's a reasonable request to allow a bit more flexibility within the planning process to allow for some expansion of what we all ready have. I'm not sure if Ireland is unique in all of this, but I do know for some of the smaller infrastructure projects, sometimes we have to produce as many as 20 different reports. And I certainly think at a European Union level, there needs to be more joined up thinking between the different legislation that would certainly make the path smoother and hopefully perhaps a bit faster. So picking up on that, Claudia, just on the, the regulation and your point about that it should be made, it should be made easier for things to happen should be perhaps facilitate developments should be facilitated in a to to progress more quickly. And I'm reflecting on what Kiran just said there. Is there though on the other side of the coin the risk of clashing with, you know, citizens interest citizens groups, residents in rural areas, you know, indeed even in urban areas who obviously will want to influence candidates in European elections and indeed in other elections in the coming months and years is there, is there inevitably a clash there. Simplifying the planning system making it happen more quickly. And then on the other side, the demands of citizens to be heard. Yeah, I mean, I understand the connection, because this is also how the planning process in Austria works for example and this is part of the reason why these processes and permitting takes so long. But I think we have to accept that they should have relatively little to do with each other. In order to really guarantee acceptance for renewables expansion because they are visible in a very different manner as as the fossil based infrastructure was visible. It is visible it is part of the landscape and you can just imagine I live in the, I live in the ups. I mean, people say they're not ready to see wind turbines on mountains but then again, why not. I mean it's a, I think the way to go about local questions or fears that people have is to is to is a different way of of public policy making. It's an open process, it's involving people very early it's explaining goals, it's leadership. It's very often, especially at the local level. We don't prioritize bringing people into the process we don't prioritize public forums we don't prioritize an early integration of communities into the planning process and also and that is, for example if I compare the Swiss model to the Swiss model. In Switzerland, there is a huge focus on making local communities benefit financially from energy projects. And I know that this isn't this is something that many you member states might have to get into, but I do think that there is a there is value added in explaining to local communities you can invest you can make it part of of the business of your local community you can make people benefit from it. And I see a huge potential in there. But I think this is smart and good policy making, and a different way of going about anything in politics to be honest any big change has to come with an open integrated process. And the permitting should be about regulation, the permitting should be about what is possible, and what is necessary to do. And I see a difficulty actually in in the way in where we leave space for member states to over regulate and where we over regulate on the European level. We much rather have clear policy making on the European level in what is necessary in the permitting processes that we give the member states so much space and setting up a wind farm in Austria can take up to two to three. I think now I think the maximum right now that we're having is seven years. That is ridiculous. It's ridiculous for something, especially if you look at what is, what is the, what is the greatest benefit of renewables is that it's really quick to scale them up if you do it correctly. So we're actually missing the points of renewables expansion that we have, we don't have enough time to wait so long. And of course, at least that there's also the question of grid infrastructure which is also a major, perhaps consideration for, well for some citizens anyway, if it's if it's to be located near them. And we had going back five or six years had some involvement in it myself some, you know, a much public controversy here in relation to, and frankly, but it is seen by many as quite necessary grid infrastructure that we're going to need not least north south. And that's, that's been slow as well, isn't it? It has, you know, it comes back to the same thing for encouraging people to understand and educating people about what the benefits are. And just taking one step back in terms of the planning area there I am a little bit more hopeful in terms of offshore wind and I think that's one of the reasons people are encouraging for offshore winds. Now, we've only had one offshore wind farm so we'll see but I also think although we've been a bit slow getting started, I do quite like the way that we are, it's centrally led at the moment so it's a different way of doing things that won't be just a talk developer lens where designated is where we think a wind offshore wind farm should go and I sat in a call. I have a PhD student who's just starting to look at this area of acceptance of offshore wind among coastal communities. And there are different area there will be other problems with offshore wind. There may be, you know, environmental issues, there may be a fishing issue so there may be other people who are not as happy than the communities, but the communities that I sat in with on a kind of a cut conversation or consultation on offshore winds that might be located near them was so positive they couldn't, they were thinking about all the different opportunities that were going to be there. They were hoping about the community benefit fund that has not yet been designed, but again coming back to some kind of financial gain, but just the general economic activity that was going to be generated through. Things may not be always as dire as we sometimes portray them. And also with, I agree totally with Cure and Coffin, I think on board Planola has been under resourced. They seem to be at least that's what I'm being told that more people are being hired, but particularly people with expertise that is a problem that we don't have that many people who know about offshore wind just because we haven't had that sector. So, you know, there's going to be a new regulatory agency, MARA, as well as in the process of getting set up. So, you know, it seems that some of these issues are being addressed, albeit a little bit late, but if they can get going, we may be able to address some of them. But then after that the grid infrastructure. Yes, this is going to be very important. But one thing we have to always look at what is the smartest way to do it and let's not do unnecessary grid infrastructure and try and reduce our demanded peak times, so that we don't have to build extra capacity and reinforce grids that are only there because they're used for a half hour every day in wintertime. So there are some things that we really need to make sure we have a handle on because grid infrastructure is difficult to reinforce. It's expensive. And it is, you know, there's big wires or small wires that goes right out to every neighborhood when everybody's electrified. So we'll need to make sure that ESP networks and air grid we're going to be really carrying out this grid infrastructure and have a handle on where it's, you know, how can we do this in the smartest way. So the question for the two parliamentarians, well, Lisa, we happy for you to comment on it as well from what you've observed, but just again in relation to the role of the parliament, if you both would with the European Parliament both reflect on that. I mean a question that's been suggested to me here is, if you thought, or if the parliament had a greater role in the legislative process than it currently does, would we see more or less progress towards the fit for 55 targets, for example. Is the parliament of the EU decision making institutions and its play obviously it has an important role in the decision making infrastructure. Is the parliament a progressive force for change or is it sometimes a block on change, and how what, how do you reflect on on the parliament from being in it, in terms of its role in this on this agenda Claudia first maybe. I'm a bit conflicted on this. I'm not sure if it would be if it would be any better if we had a bigger role because what I did notice with many of the different fit for 55 files is that it was hugely dependent on the group of negotiators on the individuals on the rapporteur on on the shadow rapporteurs from the groups. And that has to do with, with the parliamentary groups being very, very non homogenous actually, especially when it comes to climate policies it's the case with different policies as well but in terms of climate and the, the, the borders within the groups follow a different kind of logic than they would do in other, in other policy areas. And I think this might change over time, but this this focus on the Green Deal in the legislative nature everything also in politics, the pace of the change has increased rapidly in the last five years and the changes also that have to recognize that policymakers have to recognize on how parties in all European member states had to adapt their, their programs, their agendas, in order to reflect the need also coming from, coming from the public. So, you really see the files where you have a skilled negotiator somebody who can really who's who who is able to, to make it an inclusive process is bringing people in, who's a great whip also when it comes to bringing in the votes for the final vote. So, it really depends. But on the other hand, I think it's just how democracy works and how parliamentarism is supposed to work. It really doesn't matter who the individual MEP is and who's elected. Yeah, I think it does vary and depending on the file. I think the general view is that the parliament is usually a bit more progressive than council or the commission, but at times I've seen the commission, and indeed council be more progressive than the parliament. I think Claudia is absolutely right. We're always watching who has got that file, who's leading, who's shadowing, and that tells you an awful lot and that can be a grown of despair, or a cry of relief, depending on who, which political group and which, which negotiator almost literally is in charge. I mean, without naming names, I was shadowing on an own initiative report. This is not legislation, but it's reports that the parliament produces on urban mobility. It's dealing with a very conservative reporter who didn't want to have a hierarchy of who should access urban areas. So cars and pedestrians should be put on the same basis. That really stemmed from the rapporteur, and I could not change their view. So I think a good MEP can really navigate through the complexities of the different institutions. And I guess we rely on the political groupings putting forward progressive leaders for these files. And there is a few shadows. There are a few shadows on the horizon with the move to be far right in certain countries that could end up blocking some climate legislation in the next mandate. And that that is a concern. It is certainly a shadow on the horizon. Lisa, I go to your person this question, but I will come back to Karen cuff because it relates to something that he said, own Lewis, who's the co-chair of our climate and energy group here at the Institute. And he reminds us that Karen made an important point concerning new Irish dwellings and neighborhoods, good Irish progress and bear ratings is being made but how will you address all of this if the dwellings are twice as large as European norm and four times less dense. Thanks Alex I think we're back again are we. He is completely right we have very large one, you know, one off housing scattered around the country poorly planned it has to reset and it costs a lot to build the infrastructure both to connect the both electricity water all the other infrastructure that you need. Another issue associated with those large dwellings is the, the older ones we have a huge number of dwellings that have oil fired heating I think that's the largest, largest share in Europe as well. And so, I mean just talking that first of all, and also we still have houses don't even have central heating that are still using a solid fuel to eat their homes. So, if it were me, I would be trying to target and those larger dwellings with oil fired heating and solid fuel heating. And they are not going to ever be connected to a gas grid probably at the stage. They should be targeted for heat pumps and renovation. And also you have to renovate and bring their energy consumption down before you can put in the heat pump. And I think that a lot of this is about rural Ireland as well. And so unfortunately we start getting into this apparent conflict between you know, you know rural Ireland being made to make their dwelling smaller and you know being. It generates this kind of conflict I think one way around that would be to, you know, give different grants to different areas depending on your situation, you know, and similarly will be for transport these are areas of our that are never going to have public transport either. They should get a different grant to somebody in an urban area perhaps for an easy similarly they should be maybe given a preferential grant for renovation and a heat pump, because we will also get bigger bang for our book because they're switching from oil rather than urban dweller again who might be switching just from a quite inefficient gas condensing boiler. So, how do we. So that's the main thing I would do it's quite difficult to decide the size of a dwelling. There is a lot of planning restriction and place in terms of just this urban or just building houses in in new areas that are not well serviced. And this is causing conflict, people don't like it, if people are far a particular area. But I think that's something unfortunately we do have to continue with because it's not sustainable to keep building in one off greenfield sites. Yeah, and this is a challenging one and those who have recently railed against the 15 minute city and low traffic neighborhoods. If they get a quiff of a suggestion that we wish to suggest to them what size their home might be. I can only imagine the protests that we we might get on that one. Look, this for many this the challenge the transition is challenging. And it's not just moving away from oil it's from wood to oil to gas to electricity. I was in a conversation with the German housing minister yesterday she said we don't want to push older people away from using wood to heat their homes and obviously in Austria would biomass is is is hugely important. So we have to gently move people in the right direction. And the point I think that Lisa made about high cost of electricity. It reminds me of the sign in the local barbers a cheap haircut is not good a good haircut is not cheap. And when it comes to energy. We want prices that are not cheap, but that are affordable. And I think this is the dilemma with the reform of the electricity market. We want to ensure that we move towards renewables to produce this electricity, but we don't want to absolutely favor short term reductions in prices in order to achieve that, because if we do we would just build more, more gas and power generators. We absolutely need to find the sweet spot that brings the transition at the rate that is needed, but that also brings people with us. And I think, often the local conversations that we would have as Claudia would know in Austria, or here in Ireland to show the community benefit to bring people on this journey. I mean literally I often describe the huge offshore wind farm that I often see in North Wales from the train Quinty more, and I think it's beautiful. And I had similar discussions 15 years ago when we were bringing back electric trams to Dublin, and people said the overhead wires they're awful. And I said look when I see those wires. I know the air is cleaner to breathe, because it's not burning diesel to move people around, but we need to constantly communicate why the transition is needed and bring people with us on this journey. Okay to finish, and we only have a few minutes and I'm conscious that we're all conscious that there's been quite a step change in the US approach to, for example, investment to much more interventionist approach taken by President Biden and I suppose by extension to Congress, although there's obviously conflict there but there's a big shift in the American the approach in the US and, and for example, quite hefty subsidies to particular sectors that are so critical to this agenda. I mean, do you do do you think any all three of you and I might just stay with Karen if you like because I'll be finishing on this question so I'll start with you and go finish up with the with the colleagues. Do you think that Europe, and how shall I put it has anything to learn from that shift, and which perhaps we wouldn't certainly wouldn't have expected from an American government and in the last decade or so and we now see it. Really in very stark terms. What's your observation on that and do you think it will catch on in Europe. I think it will. And I think in its simplest form, they used more carrots, they are using more carrots than sticks in the United States. I was in the Tesla factory in Berlin they said look, we're not investing anymore in Germany because of the attractive discounts we now have in the United States. So I think that is a lesson that feeds into Claudia's point about regulation. We in Brussels we if something isn't moving we tend to bring in a lot to make sure it happens, but I think in the United States they're much focused more on a tax break. So I think there probably is something that we need to bring home from the IRA in the United States and apply to our own way of working in Brussels. I agree with Pirin and I guess what we see is that there's lots of money going around in Europe, but it's so tough to access it, it's so bureaucratic to access the European funds. I have met so many companies who say they would never apply for European grants because they can't afford to employ somebody just to fill out the forms and that is ridiculous. And I think what the US is showing us is the power of really using a part of your federal level that is strong in the right places. If anything I think it should be for us an argument for stronger European integration where it benefits everybody. If we want to make these processes less bureaucratic we might need a bit more of a stronger federal European level in certain aspects to be able to make it less bureaucratic. But the problem is one of arguments on where does the incompetence lie when it comes to tax matters and so on and so on. But nobody, I don't think that any consumer or any company in a European company really cares about the institutional question of a fight about competencies between the member states and the European Union. They just want, if there's money, we should have easy access to it and not make it as complex as it is in the European Union and that is, I think a really, yeah, that is, it's actually so sad it makes me so angry that this is, this is how we're losing against in comparison to the United States and we should definitely take a page out of their book when it comes to being on bureaucratic matters. Lisa, do you have any thoughts on. Well, I'd like to reassure our two parliamentarians that I think, you know, us Europeans are doing very well and I'm very glad to be part of Europe and not part of the US so that there may be some examples here where they're, you know, they're putting initiatives, but let's be honest some of these things that are already in Europe like the infrastructure and the money that's going in there are some things that we're already doing, saying that there are some things that I really like in the US and it's not necessarily new. And in energy efficiency finance they have great schemes and they're at local level rather than the federal level where you can you know that where the loan stays tied to the property. Payback via your property tax or payback via your energy bills. And that's the kind of thing that they seem to be able to do as a municipal level or a state level, and people understand it over there and it's via tax break and so that we get over these all these high costs the consumers can't get into the high upfront costs associated with the transition. So I suppose I quite like some of those. The autonomy of municipalities but they're given the freedom at federal level and the backing at federal level to put some of these schemes in place that I would like to see more of and maybe some education among them the consumers of how they work and not to be afraid of loans tied to and but I think overall the European Parliament is driving extremely ambitious targets, and it's not easy I think everybody knows that the transition is going to cause it's changing society that's never going to be easy so we all just have to work very hard in our own middle areas to try and achieve this. This is a nice strong endorsement for the European Parliament from an independent observer and Professor Lisa Ryan, Claudia Gamon and Karen Koff. Thank you very much for your participation this afternoon for your presentations and for the discussion. We found it very stimulating and very insightful on all your parts. Thank you in particular to the European Parliament liaison office in Ireland for their support for this webinar and thank you. If you have been for watching and listening and quite a few of you have, and we look forward to seeing you all again very soon. Thank you and good day.