 No, no. It's the way we've always gone. God forbid you'd give anything new a go. Excuse me? I'm sure I have a Bluetooth stereo, don't I? Was that not our turn? This way is much better. More...reliable. It is easier this way. But we'll turn off soon, don't worry. The maps say to turn off soon as possible. Ah. Don't mind them maps. I am sweltering. All the signs are saying to turn off now. I know, love. We just need to go a bit further and we'll turn off then. I'm going to pull in up here. What for? Petrol. Is he coming back? Are we going on without him? I think that was our turn. I know. I'm sorry. All right? It's not easy, you know? We don't know where any of these turns lead. And do we know where this one goes? Where it ends? Are you going to get out somewhere along the way like he did? I don't know. Okay. So if your stop is somewhere along the way, you can just hop out. And I'll just head on. And hope we haven't missed the last turn. Today we'll be showing you some of those virtual plays. You're all very, very welcome back. I'm about to sign to the noise over the break. There are some great conversations already happening. Welcome back to this session three on the just transition. Because when we consider the changes that are involved, as certainly as we heard in our last session, we can't neglect the social and economic dimensions to this transformation. This third session of Accelerate will look at just that, the just transition. And, you know, I often hear Mayor Robinson of the Elders for a former president say that, was climate change as man made, that women are the solution, that they are the agents of change who will bring things along. So we make no apology that our next session is an all-female panel. Three expert speakers who are going to examine this vital question of how to decarbonise our economy and still ensure that we leave no one behind. Let's welcome, I'll introduce them individually, but let's welcome Tracy Crowe, Dr. Jean Moore, and Dr. Brenda Boardman to the stage. That's superb. Now our first speaker is Tracy Crowe, Senior Director and the Chief of Staff at Sustainable Energy for All. Tracy oversees the execution of SE for All strategy and its business plan, which is centred around the pursuit of SDG Go 7, which is accessed to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030. So Tracy, I'll hand the... It's nice actually to have someone up here with me. It was a bit lonely and all that virtual space, but Tracy, I'll hand over the real floor to you to our first speaker. Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone. It is a real pleasure to be here today. I want to thank the IAEA and ESB for convening on this really critical topic. Indeed an honor to be part of a conference on accelerating the transition to a net zero future. Just to give you just a brief introduction to the organization that I come from, Sustainable Energy for All is an international organization working in partnership with the UN as well as leaders in government, private sector, civil society, other international organizations on Sustainable Development Goal 7. So we are very focused. We have a laser focus on Sustainable Development Goal 7, but in alignment and in support of the Paris Climate Agreement as well. So to get us started, make sure I know how to use my slides here. Good. So I want to just start with three words. Climate, energy, development. I'm starting with three words and I will end with three words because if you don't take anything else away from what you hear from me today, I hope that you will take away those three words. Climate, energy, development. The transition to a net zero future must address all three holistically. We cannot reach net zero by mid-century without first achieving Sustainable Development Goal 7, which is access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030. At Essie for All, that is our definition of a just and equitable energy transition. So we're hearing every day about the climate crisis. There are more disasters, more impacts. The losses in the billions are making headlines every day. Our urgency to act is growing exponentially, as it must. But energy accounts for about three-quarters of our greenhouse gas emissions globally. So we cannot address the climate crisis without addressing energy. And that, of course, has become all the more complicated with the war in Ukraine and the major impacts on energy, particularly here in Europe. But what we are not hearing about every day is the energy access crisis and the development crisis. Again, climate, energy and development are all and must be interlinked. So there's a fundamental question that we have to ask ourselves. As we work to address our climate and energy crisis, as we work towards that net zero future, will we do so in a just and equitable manner? Will we honor the promise that is embedded in the Paris Agreement that's embedded in our sustainable development goals to ensure no one is left behind? So there are still 733 million people around the world who do not have any electricity, not even a basic level of electricity. Of this global number, 77 percent, 589 million live in sub-Saharan Africa. In many of these countries, access rates are still below 50 percent. So imagine if half of your population did not have access to electricity. The situation with clean cooking is even more dire. And I've heard a lot about the energy crisis being focused on electricity. So for us, it's electricity and clean cooking. Sustainable Development Goals 7, when we're talking about energy access, it's both, it's electricity and clean cooking. There are 2.4 billion people around the world. A third of the global population in 2022, a third of the global population that does not have access to clean cooking solutions. So we're far off track from achieving SDG7 by 2030. And at the current rate, at the end of this decade, we will still have 670 million people without electricity and 2 billion people still cooking with dirty fuels. In our efforts to achieve net zero, we have to address energy poverty. Now think about the impacts, and these are just a couple that I'll mention. A lack of access to electricity for small businesses forces a reliance on highly polluting diesel-powered generators. One study, one recent study from Woods McKenzie conservatively estimates that there is more than 100 gigawatts of diesel gensets operating across Africa. And at least 17 countries in Africa have more diesel-genset capacity than grid-connected power. The pollution and climate impact of that, in some studies have said, it's close to 1,000 coal-fired power plants. Clean cooking, it contributes to deforestation and results in household air pollution that prematurely kills over 3 million people a year. The majority of whom are women and children. Why isn't that viewed as a crisis? Three million people premature deaths every year. Energy is an essential part of our everyday lives. Access to clean and affordable energy is the prerequisite for development, for economic growth, employment, poverty reduction, for quality education and health care, and for gender equality. STG7 calls for universal access to modern energy for all. Modern should mean more than just enough electricity to power a light bulb or charge a phone. Development requires more than a basic level of household energy. By most measures, modern energy access is achieved when an individual's annual electricity consumption reaches between 50 and 100 kilowatt hours a year. The world average is just over 3,000 kilowatt hours. And in high-income countries, it's over 6,700 kilowatt hours per capita. There are no high-income countries today with annual electricity consumption below 3,000 kilowatt hours per capita. In comparison, in Africa, the annual per capita electricity consumption is around 500 kilowatt hours. To put it in perspective, that's about the same as the electricity needed to power an efficient American refrigerator. So we need to change the narrative of what it means to have access. And we cannot focus only on decarbonization of existing systems. To achieve a just and equitable energy transition, the scope and definition of energy access must grow. And we must also focus on building out new energy systems powered by clean energy sources, sufficient for productive use, and to drive economic development. Turning now to what's needed and how we can support a just and equitable energy transition. First and foremost, we need ambition. We need much, much, much greater ambition. And we also need just recognition. I think that's part of the problem that we see is that in the climate conversation, it is getting elevated. It is getting attention as it needs to. But energy and energy access has been struggling to really reach that same level. And again, recognizing that we can't solve the climate crisis without solving the energy crisis and energy must include energy access. So we really are at a pivotal point in what we call the decade of action. We need bold new commitments. And an example of this were the UN energy compacts that were introduced during last year's UN high-level dialogue on energy. That high-level dialogue on energy was the first time the UN General Assembly had called for a leader-level event on energy in 40 years. So that can tell you where we are today, but at least recognition from the UN side that energy is at this crisis point and it must be addressed holistically with climate. And by the way, on the energy compacts, I do want to have conversations with ESB and the government of Ireland about signing those compacts. So I will find you after I finish. And just to note, the Ukraine war and the resulting energy, food and security crisis, I think we've really heard it already said today, but we cannot have that distract and instead it really should and must focus our attention on the importance of a just and equitable energy transition that offers energy access and energy security for everyone. Accurate and transparent data is critical. Learning about the new system that's being developed is fabulous. Wish it was available today versus in 2030. But countries really do need data-driven, evidence-based and bespoke energy transition plans. And an energy transition plan provides a credible pathway to achieving energy access by 2030 and at zero emissions by mid-century. So it brings those two together. An example of this is Nigeria's energy transition plan that was developed in partnership with Essie Ferrell and the government of Nigeria and debuted last year at COP26. But this energy transition plan is really what spurred the government of Nigeria and President Bahari to announce a net zero commitment by 2060 at COP in November last year. So we think these energy transition plans that provide a very detailed sector, a multi-sector plan are really what can help a country put together a viable pathway to net zero that also includes energy access. Another component of this in terms of data and transparency and so forth are integrated energy plans. So an energy transition plan is a long-term plan to mid-century for net zero. But an integrated energy plan is a geospatial-based model that lets you identify down to the community level the best technology for achieving energy access. And it looks at off-grid, mini-grid, and on-grid. It looks at affordability of the community. It looks at lots of the social dynamics and so forth. But an integrated energy plan in the short term an energy transition plan for the longer term. We also have to recognize that different countries have different pathways to achieve net zero depending on where they are on energy access and development. Consider that Africa's cumulative share of global carbon emissions is around 3%. Use of the current identified gas reserves in Africa would raise their share of emissions to 3.5%. So there's a lot of discussion in Europe now about partnering with Nigeria and other countries in Africa for their gas reserves. What's missing is the investment in those countries and their own use to develop their own economies, to use those gas reserves, to use gas as stabilizing as they increase their share of renewables. So there is a disconnect. And I think we're starting to hear that disconnect get corrected in some of the conversations we've had recently. But there was a level of disconnect that was really disconcerting and was not very productive in the conversations with African countries up till now. Some African countries need and will considerably benefit from gas in the short term to meet their energy access and development needs for industrialization in particular. So we don't advocate for fossil fuels at all. We are very much focused on building out, promoting renewable energy. But I think we also recognize that a blanket ban on the use of gas could lock African countries into reliance on diesel, heavy fuel oil, traditional biomass for cooking, which is so, so harmful and even potentially coal. So it's just one of those things that we want to raise that for consideration. But whatever a country does, that energy transition plan should show in the medium term how any gas capacity would phase out to meet net zero targets. So that's a critically important part of that. And another important part of that is having a clean energy offer. So the investment that's made in a country from development finance institutions, the multilateral development banks, so forth, that clean energy offer has to be sufficient to help that country choose that clean energy pathway. Massively scaled up investment is essential. I think everybody knows that finance underpins everything and there are so many challenges here to get on track. But a first step is to rebuild trust and for developed countries to follow through on the promised $100 billion a year in climate finance for developing countries that was supposed to start, be reached by 2020 and it's still, still we're short of that. To put this in perspective, I was in a meeting with the head of the IMF recently and she said the $100 billion is basically a rounding error when you compare that to the estimated $14 trillion that the global community has mobilized in funding to address the COVID-19 pandemic. And this $100 billion is really just a fraction of what's needed. To put it in context, the energy transition plan that was developed for Nigeria, Nigeria is the biggest economy in Africa, so this is going to be very expensive. But it shows an additional $410 billion above business as usual spending is going to be required across the economy to bridge energy access gaps by 2030 and to achieve net zero by 2060. But that's one country. Another important mechanism to think about and that we're looking at for scaling up finance, especially in Africa, especially with the private sector, can be voluntary carbon markets but we really need support to scale the carbon market, stimulate demand and really improve the reliability of carbon credits in Africa. But also look at what are the methodologies that really would be specific to the African context, such as offsetting the diesel gensets. Finally, women and youth must be at the forefront of helping address these challenges. Women play a critical role in social and economic development, so we cannot hope to meet our goals without their perspective and professional contribution to the energy transition. And at this critical moment, we need the talent, innovation and enthusiasm of young leaders. At SE4ALL, we believe that women and youth should be recognized as change makers, leaders, disruptors and trailblazers. We need the perspective, their innovation, their drive and creativity to achieve a just and equitable energy transition. It's a good thing I'm closing as I lose my voice. But I think we're all agreed that we must get to net zero by mid-century. We must work to ensure people around the world have the same economic and social opportunities as all of us who have abundant energy. There must be an understanding that economies at different stages of development will require different solutions and approaches to grow their economies and develop along a low-carbon pathway. Bringing it back to three words I said at the beginning. Climate, energy and development. They are interlinked and must go hand in hand to underpin a just and equitable energy transition for people and for planet. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Tracy. My goodness, your address and particularly that slide that you showed just around the world really just reminds us of the privilege that we have in terms of access to energy compared to other parts of the world. Well, we're going to bring it back home a little bit and shift the geographical focus to look at what's happening here in Ireland. And I'm delighted that we've Dr. Jean Muir who's going to be with us. She's a policy analyst at the National, Economic and Social Council who's been working on climate and sustainable development most recently on climate and biodiversity on a shared island basis, on a just transition, sustainable recovery from Covid-19 and climate policy. Dr. Muir holds a PhD in environmental psychology from the University of Liverpool and she has a huge interest in environment, policy and social inclusion. Like everyone here, their CVs are amazing. She's a member of lots of different groups including the Climate and Energy Working Group. But I'm going to stop now so we can listen to her. So you're very, very welcome, Jean. Thanks so much for the really nice introduction. That's fantastic. So yes, I don't have to say who I am now. I'm part of the secretariat at the National, Economic and Social Council so we're very delighted to be part of this important conference. So let us see if this works. Yes. So what I'm going to talk to you today is the work that we've been doing that touches on just transition. It's part of a broader focus on climate, biodiversity, sustainable development within the National, Economic and Social Council. I'm going to just briefly take you, I suppose, on a very short tour of the concept of just transition from theoretical approach more to it being applied in practice and to try and really focus on the governance needed for just transition. And I think it's really important to recognize that along the way we really understand that the low carbon transition is one of a number of transitions happening at the same time. So already we've heard this morning the importance of governance and the kind of critical issues of planning and development that we need to think about. So it's really important that we kind of have that focus. So I'm going to just go through those different elements and then I'm going to just conclude with our most recent project which is going to focus on agriculture and climate. We've heard a little bit about that this morning. So established in 1973 the National, Economic and Social Council is established to provide strategic advice to government and it particularly looks at economic, social and environmental advice. We have a fantastic council that is made up of representatives of unions, business, community and voluntary groups, farmers, NGOs, environmental perspective, government departments and independents. And the most recent reports that have really impacted on this work that I was involved in as already been mentioned was that collaboration and climate biodiversity on a shared island which really took a strategic overview across the island of some of these important issues and looked at the existing collaborations and potential for more. The council also produced a report on addressing employment vulnerability as part of a just transition approach in 2020 and that report is largely influencing the work we're talking about today and as part of that we had a number of research projects and papers, one of which was by Sinead Mercier who wrote a really interesting paper on 4K studies on just transition which I really recommend that you take a look at. So we've heard a little bit today about the imperatives of climate action and I think what's really important is that we think and recognize them as societal challenges. We understand the economic we understand a little bit more about the technological but the societal piece I think we're only just at the beginning of particularly when we see the urgency of trying to stay beneath 1.5 degrees that the unequal impacts from climate policy and from climate change are going to increase the complexity of delivering policy in this area and that we need to deliver this in a relatively short period of time representing a considerable political challenge and it requires policies that both appreciate that urgency that are effective but also where the burden is shared and that brings the opportunities to as many people as possible. So it requires in a sense a societal support framework it requires a sense of justice equity, fairness and inclusion. And as I mentioned we're dealing with more than one transition so how do they intersect the digital transition the circular economy that we're moving towards as well as trying to bring a restorative approach to bring biodiversity back to health how do we do that in a way that's integrated and I think again the governance systems the policy process have been siloed how do we begin to think about that in an integrated way and the OECD and the EU have put quite a lot of guidelines together around some of the regional transitions that are needed some of the guidelines around collaborative governance that might be needed because the key part of this is thinking about the participatory and inclusive process of transition that it isn't just about coming up with the most excellent policies and delivering them with the right resources in a certain time frame when you're talking to people along you also have to engage with their experiences on the ground so this emphasis on collaborative governance for example a recent paper by the community platform in Ireland has really set together some of the really interesting examples of collaborative governance but also social dialogue which I'll talk in a moment it's the heart of a just transition and NESC is no stranger to social dialogue and I think bringing this perspective in where you have multi-stakeholders approach is part of the broader framework of dealing with transitions and that's recognized in the European Green Deal that the transition must be fair, inclusive putting people first and paying particular attention to supporting those regions industries, workers, households and consumers that will face the greatest challenges so what is a just transition? Well NESC defines it as one that seeks to ensure transitions are equitable, participative in a process and outcomes at national, regional and local level but as we know the concept of just transition came out of a trade union approach that really understood the importance of looking at employment and jobs and development from a just transition perspective and the ILO guidelines are really significant in this respect it's also included in the preamble of the Paris Agreement as an overarching framework and NESC work has really looked at explicitly looking at these principles trying to align just transition policies with decarbonation measures and thinking about how do we do that work and I think that approach is really the important to think about not just we've heard about climate justice we've heard about social justice and just transition touches on many of those different concepts but the important way that we can think about them is in three ways procedurally so we talk about this idea of listening to people we have a process of inclusion we have a transparent process it's very important we also talk about distribution who's going to be most impact where are the impacts going to be felt and then restorative is another aspect of justice which talks about the historical context in which justice is considered so each of these need to be considered and that we can learn from just transition your initiatives that have been undertaken already particularly in relation to Coal the Coal Exit Commission for example in Germany provides a really interesting example of a regional structural change in La Trobe Valley in Australia again where power generation had to switch quickly away from Coal how those communities have been supported to regenerate and then you've got examples of commissions like the Scottish Just Transition Commission which is in its second iteration which has provided very interesting national advice and I'll talk to you a little bit in a moment about that so one of the key things that Shanaid Mercy has looked at the case studies across Europe one of the conclusions were that transitions are messy and complex and they take time secondly that there isn't really a template out there to tell us how to do it there's no off-the-shelf approach so we have to develop as I've heard already bespoke approaches so Nesk's work really try to understand how this might be delivered in relation to the digital and low carbon transitions and it was asked by government to identify steps that could be taken to address the vulnerability of workers and firms and sectors in relation to both of these transitions and I suppose it concluded that you needed a number of different things you needed a focus on continuous pre-emptive work workforce development you needed to build resilient enterprises and deliver high impact targeted funding to support the transition but mostly I suppose it talked about this just transition approach that it needed to be purposeful, participant and multi-faceted and that you needed appropriate social protection but you also needed sectoral measures an inclusive place-based approach and it was that mix I suppose that drew the attention of President Michael D. Higgins who really I suppose liked our work and talked about the need of transition really focusing on all of government setting our priority actions the sequence of interventions and time frames from implementation and considering what resources were needed so he understood that you really need to progress this in terms of the implementation phase so moving from principles into practice I think it's important to recognize and ask sort of key recommendations and ideas we presented on Eructus Committee on Climate Action that really showed that what we need is purposive and proactive planning at national, regional, local levels involving a wide range of actors you need this kind of participant of social dialogue as part of public governance you need a focus on quality decent jobs, training and social protection you need this place-based, regenerative local bottom-up approach and you also need fair, inclusive and equitable outcomes and it's that interaction that really is key to the next approach so it's important I think to stand back and think you know we're not alone in this, other countries are struggling with developing in practice a just transition approach not all countries have tried to align it with climate policy so while we are still at the beginning of this journey we have already learned a great deal I think the consideration of dealing with uncertainty and the sense of I wouldn't start from here but we just have to learn by doing get on with it I suppose and think about some of the ways that we can progress other countries as I mentioned are doing the same we have Scotland really interesting examples if you want to follow them of just transition commissions who are and now their advice have been taken on by national governance structure where they're coming up with national transition plans New Zealand has also developed an internal just transition unit that's utilizing regions who want to transition how best to do it Northern Ireland has a commitment to establish a just transition commission the Canadian task force has really developed a coal intensive regions there that really provides another really interesting example and then in Wales we know they focus on future generations but they also got plans to develop just transition so that we can really understand how other countries are developing this combination of an evidence research and scrutiny we heard before monitoring reporting strategic advice and planning but also building agility and flexibility and structures in institutions and I think it's that interaction of the governance the kind of centre but going out to context local context and bottom up participation is really critical to a just transition so just to set the frame then briefly the EU as I mentioned the Paris Agreement international we have that framework we also have a commitment to Ireland assigned up to the Solitia Declaration which underpins a just transition approach and reaffirms the imperative of that then you have the context of the EU just transition fund which is specifically designed to address the adverse effects of climate transition in carbon intensive regions across the EU by supporting those regions to work towards balance socio-economic transition to a low carbon economy Ireland is set to receive 84.5 million from this fund to the period of 2027 so it's a considerable investment and we have submitted a draft to territorial just transition plan that sets out probably the area of the midlands that will receive the bulk of this resource and then most recently the European Council has produced guidance to help member state devise and implement packages that ensure a fair transition and they encourage member states to put these comprehensive policy packages to strengthen the cross-cutting elements to promote fair green transition and make optimal use of public and private funding and then in terms of Ireland's experience the midlands became the first focus of a just transition lens here when the decision was taken to suspend the operation of the peat industry and to stop using peat for industrial heat in a short space of time put tremendous pressure on communities and Bordemona the semi-state body in charge of this transition. The Just Transition Commissioner Kiramalvi was really engaging with many of the communities that impacted and has produced four reports that provided advice that government is now addressing in the midlands implementation plan and I think the work of Bordemona is interesting they're now developing wind energy and other projects. There's also been a transition project that will be really important and there's over 20 million euro have been invested in projects from the Just Transition Fund and in relation to the bogs I think it's a really interesting intersection between biodiversity and climate that integrated solution that I think we need to see more of. But I think it's fair to say that there's learning from the midlands recent research has pointed to the idea that a just transition process needs to be in place going forward so how can we learn from our own experience and develop that further. So in terms of policy we have the Climate Action Plan which sets out Ireland's commitment to a just transition approach and it seeks to align climate policy very directly with just transition and it sets out an understanding that the transition needs to be fair just and the costs are shared equitably. And some of the processes that we've talked about already include the National Dialogue of Climate Action which is a very important part of engaging with a wide range of actors in the public around issues to do with just transition but also climate literacy and many other areas. We also have the important work of the Joint Eruptus Committee on Climate and Environment because they've looked at just transition as part of their advice. We have the commitment to develop a statutory just transition commission in Ireland and work is ongoing to develop that very positive when that's developed and I think what's interesting about that is it will monitor progress it will make recommendations to government commission research provide advice, support to government on social dialogue but beyond that we also have a science of just transition spreading into other areas of policy and our rural future rural policy development there's a real commitment to just transition and the expression that any burdens must be fair no member of our society gets left behind and then most interestingly the commission on taxation and welfare talks about the importance of a just transition and says without it the transformation required to protect both the planet and the people inhabiting it cannot be successful or sustainable. So lastly I just want to mention the NESC work is now moving on to a sectoral approach which is I think a novel approach to try and understand Ireland's particular just transition over a third of emissions are produced by the agriculture sector and so under the climate action plan NESC was asked to explore how the climate targets and the transition that they apply for Irish agriculture can be achieved in a manner that considers social equity and inclusion environmental resilience and socio-economic well-being. So we have a working group chair by Professor Thea Hennessy of the UCC and this working group is made up of councils members representatives from all the different pillars but also experts in the area and it's really interesting we're halfway through that process and we're really going to try and make the process as inclusive as possible and this week we're running workshops with farmers across three regions in Ireland and we're trying to bring in a sense of what would a governance for just transition process look like in that and some of the key questions that we're thinking about you know what kinds of structures and functions really are important for example I mentioned in relation to oversight this sort of forward looking and planning a flexible proactive approach and then we think about what policies, what practices and processes might be needed you know what kind of scrutiny monitoring roles what kind of processes of dialogue would you need and then lastly what kind of specific outcomes are we really talking about in relation to investment but also in terms of the particular sector that we're thinking about so just to conclude I think it's important to recognize that we are moving in a developmental phase from just transition in theory to in practice and we're not alone in this journey and I think what's going to be required as a bespoke collaborative and inclusive approach with appropriate governance and resources and that we have tremendous potential to learn from the Midlands and from European and other international contexts and really try to provide this leadership role Ireland could really genuinely be a leader in just transition and how it approaches it and the council's latest work which takes a novel approach to look at a sector is really going to add to that perspective. Thanks very much. Thank you Jean and just to say that if you can please keep all of your questions coming in through Slido if you want because we will get a chance to chat on the panel and if nothing else it makes my job that little bit easier when you're doing my work for me but let's move on to our final speaker of this session. It's going to be fantastic because Dr Brenda Boardman is going to speak to the critical question of fuel poverty. Dr Boardman is widely considered as one of the most distinguished experts globally in the area of fuel poverty and we're delighted that you're with us today. She's an emeritus fellow at the Environmental University of Oxford following her retirement in September 2008 and she's also a visiting professor at the University of Exeter. Her research is fascinating particularly on the way energy is used in British homes particularly by low income households and I know that her address will have huge residents here in Ireland as well so you're very very welcome Dr Boardman. No table. It's wonderful to be here in Dublin. I'm very delighted. I took the risk of flying I wasn't going to but Barry Cove wrote me such a nice letter I had to. I make some apologies that all of the comments I'm going to be making are based on experience in the UK. I only make some apology because what I hope is that you will be able to pick up on what I am saying and to extend it to develop your ideas in Ireland if you're not there already and very importantly take those ideas to Brussels to the European Commission which is something that someone from Britain can't do anymore so sadly. Right I come to this from a consumer perspective as Durval said I've worked on fuel poverty now for nearly 40 years and I'm very horrified at the situation that is developing at the moment with the energy price crisis. One of the things that's happened since the Ukraine war and the growth in prices is that people like me who've only talked and researched on the demand side have now got to talk to people who work on the supply side you heard from Dieter Helm earlier and this is quite a challenging process so I ask you to be a little bit tolerant of me because I've brought together these two sides and we normally do not talk interestingly Dieter didn't use the words fuel poverty the people that I work with mainly Michael Grubb at the University College London very rarely talk about fuel poverty. Gradually we're beginning to make the supply side and the demand side talk to each other. This isn't trivial. Right. I'm going to give you some things that I hope we all agree on and I'm not going to really talk about yes the energy bill crisis is disastrous I don't know how many of us know or have any views on how long it's going to last but I think it's going to be years not months. It is absolutely disastrous for many consumers how many depends on how high the price goes particularly in comparison with what it has been but there is no doubt about it this is a very urgent problem I think it's absolutely unbelievable how bad it has got the yeses are moral and political imperative to help them and our government and I'm sure your government is essentially supporting households to an extent and also businesses and that's very expensive. We're talking we get into the billions so quickly now don't we at the same time we've got suppliers I'm not sure about ESB in this case but the suppliers making absolutely huge I would call obscene profits and I have to say this whole situation developed I just couldn't understand how this money had to be taken from poor households and given to rich companies so I started getting rather upset and angry the thing you may not know about and agree with me yet is about the targeted compensation for households it is actually very difficult to identify the households at an address specific level at an address specific level in order to compensate them do you do all pensioners do you do all disabled do you do all people that are on a means tested benefit or in Ireland you do everybody on a fuel allowance and as the bills go up those that are really hurting increases so for instance when we just had pre the crisis you just looked at those that were in fuel poverty and that's the same as energy poverty you could say those were the people on a means tested benefit but even then back in about 2020 in the UK it looked fantastic 75% of the people that were in fuel poverty were on a means tested benefit right that's a good number we can go and target them but if you did that only 27% of the money going to the people on a means tested benefit actually resulted in help the other 73% were not in fuel poverty and this is a real problem so I happen to know that targeting was difficult and of course many people on the supply side who didn't know about fuel poverty hadn't recognised it and of course there's a climate emergency now much of what I'm talking about is the present thinking as I've understood it in the UK I don't represent a company I don't represent a large body of people I just represent some academic thinking the one consensus that I believe is happening is that the present electricity market is now no longer fit for purpose what we've got is fossil fuel generation a system based on fossil fuel generation which is designed around generation that has running costs high running costs at the moment we have also got increasingly renewable generation with no running costs effectively no running costs they don't buy fossil fuel they've got the sun and the wind but they do have large upfront capital cost programmes it's a very different type of generation and at the moment we've got them working together and with renewables it's perfectly possible to have long term fixed contracts that's what they want in order to get the money to invest the present system in Great Britain is based on a half hourly basis a day ahead the various suppliers say I will provide this amount of capacity for this particular half hour and I will do so at the following price and as you get the different suppliers added in up to the total you want increases because you start the national grid and the regulator start by taking the cheapest electricity but you go up the scale now what is to my mind a slightly bizarre situation is that the the last person the last company to provide supply for that particular half hour is inevitably the most expensive largely because they're the least efficient and they set the price for all the rest the cheap renewables the cheaper gas the more efficient gas all of them would have been happy to sell at a lower price but they are getting this maximum price I have to say I don't know how we managed to come up with a system which to my non-supply side mind looks like feather bedding if nothing else and it's what's called the marginal cost approach that was what was worrying me when I looked at the problems facing the fuel pool and thanks to talking to the lovely Michael Grubb these are the thoughts that are around at the moment and I think many people in the UK are sharing this I don't know what the situation is in Ireland we've got to change the energy market especially the electricity market we've got to split it into two so that there is the present original system with the dirty supply coming from fossil fuels which is expensive with high running costs that is one market it's the present market but we hide it off in some way how much the division is complete and how you do this is a different set of questions quite separately the green supply from renewables which is not expensive it is cheap and it is getting cheaper is a separate market and as Paddy's described the renewables market is already supplying something just under half of the electricity in Ireland and about 40% or more in the GB you put that green supply into something called at the moment the green power pool you have to understand this is a debate this is not happening it is a possible solution if you can come up with something better good but at the moment this is the best that I know about we have in the UK a thing called contracts for difference it's a very nice auction that happens periodically the government puts a certain number of millions of pounds on the table and says to the suppliers we want some new capacity bid for it and the cheapest gets the contracts it's a long term contract as I said and they get it almost exclusively that is offshore wind and the price is going down down down we've got down to 5 pence per kilowatt hour coming from renewables at the supply side at the moment I don't know about you but I'm paying 34 pence for my electricity at the meter pretty close to 34 cents we've got pretty close to parity those auctions do provide long term contracts and as I said it's almost exclusively offshore wind that situation those auctions have already taken place we have already got a large amount of renewable electricity coming cheaply into the UK system I'm not sure that you've got the same situation here in Ireland I don't think it would be too difficult to do it certainly escalates the amount of renewables being generated I therefore think it could be quite quick and easy to start developing a green power pool using the existing situation as well I've put down there incorporating the original green suppliers they are operating under a slightly different renewable obligation system with us I'm not sure about what happens with you so we've now got a source through the green power pool of really cheap clean electricity how do we help the fuel pool we put all the fuel poor however defined are to receive that cheap electricity from the green power pool it's not people like me that think of themselves as environmentalists it is the poorest people that need to have the cheapest electricity this would start relieving the government of their support systems which are hugely expensive it would go directly from the green power pool to those consumers or somebody representing them it would not go via the wholesale market it would not get contaminated by the prices of fossil fuels it would stay separate from the groups that you might want to give it to and that depends a little bit on how much renewable electricity you've got it might be SMEs the small and medium sized enterprise it might be energy intensive industries but we've now got a body of really deserving and important people companies who have got cheap electricity prices that is independent of the price of gas fossil fuels stage one what do we do about the fuel poor who are not yet using electricity for heating they're using gas or oil we've got to transfer them out of those fossil fuels into this new cheap green electricity power pool market so we talked about I've heard you talk about heat pumps generally this is independently of transport and electric cars you can only put a household on a heat pump if it is well insulated because the cost of electricity is too high in comparison with gas certainly in the UK and what do I mean by properly insulated I hope I've got the right reference to your building energy ratings you've got to have a large energy efficiency program so the homes of the poorest households are on A1 or B2 they're certainly better than C1 if you can possibly get there that is a non-trivial task if I've understood the housing stock in Ireland in comparison with ours so you've got first of all get them onto cheap electricity then get them all electric then you have an end of fuel poverty and these are not major structural alterations to the market but they are substantial differences and investments so there's some parallel policies first of all and Paddy was already talking about this you want a lot of new renewables probably very large developments maybe it's all wind offshore wind but you've got to do that as quickly as possible and it sounds like ESP you've got some good plans to do that if all that electricity goes straight into the green power pool the green power pool is getting bigger and bigger that means you can do more households and there's a very difficult debate about how many households you want to get this quantity of green electricity depends on how much there is available but it also depends on how you think hardship is affecting people fuel poverty in Britain used to be about 13 13% we're now talking of 20 30 40% of households having difficulties with their fuel bills even after our government has put in 150 billion pounds it's really nasty issues coming together it's a really difficult set of wicked problems so just as you've got the green power pool growing you then got to find a way of transferring the fuel pool onto that green tariff I don't know how easy it will be but I hope some fuel pool households could go onto a green tariff as soon as possible already as at the moment suffering the problems of heating or eating being cold in winter we know that this is a real problem we know that many more people are suffering we've got to somehow start this green tariff this green power pool as soon as possible yes you need a large energy efficiency program which means that you've then got the ability to install the electric heating through air source heat pumps into these same homes I've been saying for many years in a slightly tongue in cheek way that the poorest people should live in the most energy efficient homes they are the people with the smallest incomes so therefore 10% of their income to spend on energy or whatever rubric you want to use is a very small amount of money it's a lot smaller than my 10% it's a lot smaller than many cases than your 10% but we're beginning to get to a situation where the poorest people could be both in the most energy efficient homes with the cheapest sources of energy that would be good for fuel poverty and good for climate change I just want to give you a couple of references to the work by Michael Grubb as I said he's a professor at the University College London some of this evolves from debates with him quite a bit of it is in my head rather than his so I'm not committing him to thinking like this I'm just saying this is the way in which some of the debate is happening and it really is very difficult to bring these huge different changes from the energy supply side and from the household side together but I hope I've given you an indication that this is part of how we accelerate to net zero some people have been asking about taking copious notes about these slides and they will be made available of all of the speakers on the IAA website after the conference thank you very very much for all of your questions which are remarkably similar to the ones I myself was thinking of asking on our panel but I want to maybe pick up with you first of all Tracy you cited the scale of the global response to Covid 14 trillion and we can see why people bought into that crisis very very quickly not least because of all of the deaths and the illness we're facing another really really urgent global crisis where is the money going to come is it going to be because in one sense we've got used to big government that's one of the consequences of Covid indeed the last crisis so where is the money going to come from to achieve the SDG7 targets is it going to be public private both yes I can elaborate to what extent it can't be all government we know that it can't be all government there's just not enough government money to be able to do this and it shouldn't be all government it really does have to come to the private sector and it has to be we've got to do this in a way to catalyze markets in these countries to be able to scale up but what we can do is use government funds your funding through development finance institutions the multilateral development banks the bilateral agreements that countries have to spur bringing in the private sector and there's various ways that you can do that somebody actually mentioned we actually have heard a few times we have to change the way we do de-risking we also have to change the way we think about this and think of these initial funds as an investment so not a giveaway but as an investment but there's other ways to get the private sector engaged one way is result space financing so result space financing is something that you see on a small scale growing scale for energy it's been used in other ways in the past it's just started over the last few years to really be used for energy access but you're paying for it's a grant usually and it comes verification of the energy connection so the risk is on the private sector they put up the funds at the beginning with the agreement that if they get to these verified energy connections they'll get that grant at the back end so we're doing that now in three countries in Madagascar Lyon and Benin we've just added Nigeria as well and again it will give that input as to the private sector to come in making sure that it is a verified connection making sure that it's also a verified connection not at the moment of connection but that it's actually staying operational in Nigeria for example what we're doing there is funding solar for productive use so we're taking a little bit different approach they get 30% of the capital cost of a system when it's installed, when it's operational and verified, they get another 10% two years later so if they can make sure that they keep that system operational they get an added bonus at the back end but right now it's not financially viable for the private sector to completely take on energy access, it's for the poorest people so they're not able to pay a full market rate so there has to be some subsidy at this point but that's one way of bringing the private sector in is using results-based financing and those funds that are coming to us to pay that grant are coming from governments and philanthropies I'm going to just on that point the notion of having a green pool by fuel poverty being on that green tariff again how is that going to work out in terms of that public private sector balance given the scale of investment that is needed for just even the retrofitting of homes that you cited just as one example I think governments got to lead on an awful lot of that to protect these valuable commodity, the green power from getting, as I would call it contaminated by the fossil fuel market which is there will be some role for private enterprise we have a lot of private power PPAs, private power agreements between individual solar farms for instance and a supplier but somehow or other that electricity then gets priced at the rate as I mentioned of fossil fuels and that's something we've just got to break that link there is absolutely no reason why green electricity should be paying or charged at the rate of these fossil fuels I understand that ESP is largely government owned anyway so we've got a good start here and I think that the government has to I think start by funding the energy efficiency improvements in people's homes I would give the responsibility to each local authority and say here's the money you've got to make sure that the homes that are the most energy inefficient and occupied by low income households it's a difficult combination but you can find out about it concentrate on getting those homes up to a high level of energy efficiency it would do those fuel pour no favours whatsoever to put them on a heat pump without the energy efficiency first of all Jane can I just bring you in just on that notion of how you bring communities along the debate over heat or heat harvesting in Ireland has been deeply emotional in many many communities and I also think of the agricultural sector which you know often complains that it is demonised so how do we start conversations that really kind of bring people along on that journey because many will feel ostracised or alienated and therefore excluded from the conversations I think we're in a very challenging time for the scale of the transition the rapidity of it and I think those kind of conversations through the national dialogue and climate action through the work of community energy groups for example around the country there are really positive examples SAI for example have really interesting network of energy communities around Ireland we did some work on community energy and wind energy and just looking at the kind of engagement needed and what we learned from that was you need to set out this sort of transition direction so you need to have this broad direction of travel but then you need to find ways of connecting of the bottom up experience so how for example a group who want to maybe develop solar energy or maybe they want to have anaerobic digestion how do they engage with developers or with funders or the legal sort of supports that they might need so that sort of connection between action that's already happening the expertise that can be provided to an intermediary or an energy mentor for example with the kind of connecting that up with the national policy direction so there are models in which you can deliver that because what I do think is that there is tremendous enthusiasm amongst Irish people to get involved but they often don't know what to do to make that transition you heard the minister earlier on saying that there's sort of a non-partisan approach but when you live in a country as small as this often when it gets to our parliament Irish punk can be very very strong does the political environment need to align on that bigger picture particularly when it is perhaps their parish or their community or their constituency that may be affected the most, Brenda you might have a view on that I love community energy groups I'm part of one myself even in North Oxford we have one but what you have to realise Devlin the few poor do not have any capital they've no voice well apart from not having any voice either they're too busy coping with poverty but they don't have any money in Britain we've got something like 30% of households with no savings no savings so how do you go to them and say put in loft insulation or put in double glazing or insulate your walls or put in LEDs in all your life you just can't do it and community energy groups wonderful though they are wonderful so their activities often can be cannot come up with that level of capital it has to come from government Tracy before I let everybody escape on to lunch I just wanted to ask you just about something Dieter said earlier about you know the need for system wide planning and he had a sort of a dim view of COP26 and I was just wondering ahead of the meeting in Egypt next month and given the urgency of the situation again are they sufficient you know it's COP26, COP27 sufficient for the challenge that we're facing or is he right that it's a much much bigger systemic change that needs to happen do they still have value I think they're still yes they're still value is it as ambitious as it needs to be not by far I think what we're already seeing you know countries should be coming to COP27 with higher ambition in their NDCs what we're hearing is that they're not going to be not likely to be COP26 I think the most positive things that came out of COP26 were outside of the government negotiations there were a lot of other announcements from the private sector from philanthropies on the energy access side for example the global energy alliance for people on planet was announced and this is a coalition of philanthropies that have come together pulled their funds really trying to pull their efforts and it's a great effort to really try to address energy poverty because we're not seeing the systemic and the really global response from government so philanthropies are really stepping in private sector is even stepping in as I said on results-based financing that's an area carbon markets is another big area so there's these I think it's still important that you get governments around the table you still negotiate you still try to come up that's the only way you're going to come up with binding mostly binding agreements is through that process but it has to be supplemented through other means as well the final piece of your work when you're talking about specific outcomes including enforcement because I'm just interested in because for the NSC it must be kind of political work in and of itself what do you think is the balance between the diplomatic approach and the collaborative approach versus at some point someone has to shortstop I think we've been looking at some really interesting work around experimental governance and learning and how do you set things where you can have different for example you set a direction of travel and then you allow flexibility and how that's progressed but ultimately you have a penalty default you have something that happens if progress isn't made and I think that balance between yes you need regulation at the end of the day for many areas that are difficult to do without it but it's that sort of allowing flexibility allowing learning by doing and rewarding I suppose efforts in that signal from government that sort of mission oriented approach is really very helpful that European Union has taken on that sort of Mazzacato missions and I think that sort of you know the flying to the moon kind of sense that we're all trying to work towards the same direction but allowing different approaches rewarding you know where that innovation happens but then ultimately recognizing that regulation is always going to be there as a default and I think that sort of ratcheting up of ambition that that link between those different levels well the only enforcement I will have is that you will all have to be back here by 2 o'clock we're going to let you go for lunch now but for now to thank Brenda Jean and Tracy thank you very very much