 Thank you all for your attendance this afternoon, to what I think would be a very interesting and engaging session. We're due to finish at about two o'clock, so I think it's time we got going. The main business is for the presentation of a report by Dr. Joe Carton, who's sitting beside me, most of you, if not all of you, know. And Joe will speak for a few minutes to the main themes and content of the report. And then there'll be a reply, there'll be two replies and my former colleague, Eamon Comfrey, principal officer in the department of, what's it called again, communications? Action and vermin. Climate change. A little bit of everything. And you're very welcome, Eamon. And then we'll have a further reply, Dara Linus, who is the representative, I've forgotten the exact title, but the electricity... Association of Ireland. I don't know whether you're a chief executive... So good to say it twice, chief executive. Chief executive, newly minted chief executive of the Electricity Association. You're very welcome. So first of all, without further ado, I give you Joe Carton. Thank you, chair. And thank you for, I'm very kind. Thank you for the premature accolade of my doctorate. And we'll give it to the doctor, everybody. There's some people in UCC who I'm not sure if they will take to that kindly. But anyway, thanks to everybody. And also I wanted to thank our respondents in particular for joining us today. It's great that you're both here to react to the report. And also to all of you, of course, for braving the elements. And hopefully if we get snowed in, well, we'll try and finish up at two so we don't get snowed in anyway. And it may seem a little bit obtuse to talk about climate change on a day when there is such a big freeze on the way. But we know that the Arctic is in fact warming faster than anywhere else on earth as a result of climate change. And in fact, it apparently hit an unprecedented six degrees above in parts of Greenland over the weekend. And this is still quite amazing when you think that this is an area that's under perpetual darkness at the moment. And it was six degrees above in Celsius. And the area between Greenland and the North, the Arctic Ocean, is in fact ice-free at the moment for the first time, as is the strait between Russia and Alaska. And while it's certainly of course not possible to connect these phenomenon to climate change, Professor Peter Thorne from NUI pointed out this topsy-turvy weather that we're experiencing does have many impacts. And what happens in the Arctic will not necessarily stay in the Arctic. Anyway, I've been assured that we do have enough sandwiches to survive, as I said, if we get snowed in. So I better push ahead with this report. So Power Transfer 2030 is the title of the report considering the pace, democracy, and diversity of Ireland's electricity system decarbonization. And to give you a little bit of background on the report, much has been achieved over the first decade of power system decarbonization. Particularly in terms of deployment, 26% of power approximately is going to come from wind in 2017. But I think more importantly and more profoundly, there's been a widespread acceptance over the last decade that distributed renewables are at a very core of our energy system. A decade ago, they were sort of a bit of an inconvenience, but right across the policy and regulatory system and the political system, we have a much more widespread acceptance of the need for distributed renewables. But there have of course been challenges along the way, I would say, chief among those is buy-in from local citizens and communities. And there are certainly questions that remains to be seen if we fully achieve our targets, perhaps related to the first factor. And of course, there is also challenges, well, not so much challenges around diversity, but I think it's safe to say that we've been primarily dependent on one technology and one sort of model of deploying that technology. And so the question today that we want to address is what will the second phase, the second decade of decarbonization look like? And it might look very different from the past decade. And I suppose sometimes there is an assumption that we're on a linear path and that we just keep on doing more of the same of what we've been doing and everything will be fine, but I don't think that's the case. And we wanted to contribute to this debate because of course there's a crucial juncture at the moment in terms of domestic policy, in terms of EU policy. But we wanted to point out that the outset that this is a moving target, we're aiming at a moving target. And in fact, since we finalized the report, there's been a lot of very significant developments which hopefully we can pick up along the way. And of course, these are observations, not prescriptions. And we'd like to thank Friends of the Earth and NTR Foundation for supporting this work. Of course, this is an independent report by the IIEA. It's not being endorsed by any organization, nor have we asked for endorsement by any organization. So we wanted to start off by talking about the areas where we think that there's consensus in terms of where we're going. And of course, the first area of consensus is the electricity demand will grow, continue to grow to meet the demands of a growing economy, but also the need for data centers, et cetera. And there's also consensus that onshore wind and gas will form the spine and the backbone of the future energy system. Especially in the period of 2040, we feel there's a strong degree of consensus around that point. There's consensus which has been endorsed since we published a report by the National Development Plan that people must be phased out. Nuclear power is not really considered part of the debate at the moment. And that's partly because it's ruled out by the Electricity Act of 1999, I think. It's not that it necessarily won't be part of the future, but certainly it doesn't appear to be the case at the moment that nuclear will form a part of our energy future. And offshore wind, solar PV, interconnection, energy storage and biomass, I should say, are really part of every possible or plausible energy future for Ireland. But the degree to which they'll be part of the future is something that there isn't consensus on. But this report doesn't discuss the areas where there's consensus. It looks at the areas where there's divergence and where views we think aren't particularly aligned between stakeholders, experts, citizens, et cetera. So the areas we've looked at is pace, how faster renewables will be deployed, democracy, what is the role for citizens and communities in generating their own electricity and diversity, what technologies, what portfolio of technologies will play a role in Ireland's energy future. And we sort of hung this analysis on a reinterpretation of air grids for energy scenarios which they published last year. And as you can see, we've got the three, our three criteria at the side there and these are air grids for energy scenarios. And as you can see, in each of the four scenarios, there's differences in terms of pace, diversity and democracy. So if we look at the slow growth scenario or the steady growth scenario, these envisage a 47% and a 57% penetration of renewables, respectively. There is very little diversity in these scenarios. We focus on the most cost effective technology which is onshore wind and we pretty much have an energy model fairly similar to the one we have at the moment in terms of democracy where citizens are quite passive and unresponsive consumers. There's a little more consumer responsibility in the steady growth scenario. In the second two scenarios, low carbon and consumer action, low carbon is the most ambitious scenario which envisages 75% renewables by 2030. Consumer action envisages 55% renewables by 2030. In terms of diversity, there's more diversity in these scenarios. There's a wider role for a portfolio of technologies differing according to the different scenarios but things like more PV, little bit more biomass, more energy storage, these are the kinds of technologies a little bit more hydro even and a little bit more ocean actually I think in the low carbon technology. So broader portfolio of technologies. And lastly, in terms of democracy, so there's a big difference between these two scenarios in terms of what we would describe as democracy. So you have a very responsive consumer in the low carbon scenario. But in the consumer action scenario, you have a prosumer, so there's much more self-generation of electricity but also citizen investment in things like electric vehicles and heat pumps, et cetera. And so it's important to point out that these are the two scenarios that envisage the kind of strong growth, the strong economic growth that we're experiencing at the moment as an economy. So in terms of pace, so what does the renewable energy, the renewables consultation, the support scheme for renewables tell us about pace? Well, it envisages 40% of renewables. It was a sort of a holding position in fairness. It's envisaged a 40% penetration of renewables by 2030 against a backdrop of increasing demand. But as you can see, this is below any of the four air grid scenarios. And as was acknowledged in the consultation itself, this was set against a backdrop of uncertainty in terms of renewable targets at a European level. And we may be required to do more at European level. However, a recent policy development, of course, to Gazumpost, the National Development Plan published last week, this is not mentioned in our report, suggests that there could be an additional 4,500 megawatts of renewables on stream by 2030. So that would push us into much more like a low carbon or a consumer action scenario and not in the slow growth scenario that we were envisaging in our report. So why, the question is why are we in this very slow, what we would consider a sort of a slow world in terms of pace? And the answer that we would find is that it's based around the impact on the PSO and exclusively on the impact on the PSO. So the more you go in terms of pace, the bigger the impact on the PSO. But we would point out, and I think that this is acknowledged across the energy community, but maybe not so much across the citizens and the public and non-energy experts, that the PSO increases a completely different thing to increasing bills. And actually the more renewables you bring on stream, the more it depresses the wholesale price of electricity and that gets passed through to consumers. So the conclusion in our report is that we need to differentiate politically especially and publicly between an increase in the PSO and increased bills. And we think that that's a very important differentiation particularly we need to make in our politics. And we need to upgrade the air grid SEAI study from 2011 which showed that these two effects, the PSO increase and the depressed wholesale price of electricity, they sort of cancel each other out. But we need to update that study and we need to look at that interaction in a bit more detail. And then I suppose the question is, is there a case for a slightly more ambitious trajectory in terms of power system decarbonization than we currently envisage? In terms of democracy, this is I suppose my area that I've been working on in UCC where I've been doing most of my research. And so I think I'm in a pretty good position to say that the proposal in terms of democracy was extremely profound, very strong and based very much on international best practice and what the kind of research is saying internationally. So the first thing was that there would be a strong prominence given potentially to community led projects where community owned more than 50% of the equity in a particular project and that there would be an auctioning set aside for those projects. And it was a range of measures to cover lots of different barriers to renewable energy which are well-established in the literature which I won't go into. In the developer led, so there was a requirement that developers would be required to make a share offer within our local community. So in all community, all future renewable projects post-2020 in other words, there would be some form of community participation which is certainly a very profound and profound way of attempting to address some of the social acceptability in community buy-in issues. But I suppose it's just very important that this comes through very strongly in the research that communities really are not at a level playing field. They do not have the expertise. There's no experience here. There's no culture of doing community energy in Ireland. And it's really like probably a bad metaphor to use but well, maybe a good metaphor. It's like turning around an oil tanker. It takes a long time and really it takes a long time to develop these new models and for learning by doing and new models of community participation to emerge and then to be shared across communities. But I suppose our conclusion in the report is that government is very serious about this community energy thing and that's an important thing to be aware of I think. But what we require is very persistent policy focus over time. This is not a quick fix. It's not gonna take a year. It's not gonna take two years of policy focus. It's gonna take a full decade of policy focus. And one, I suppose, point that we think would help giving this sort of certainty of direction is if unused community capacity was rolled over to future community schemes because we don't think that it's realistic to expect that communities will come forward and bid in for the capacity that has been ring fenced for them. We think that that pop might be undersubscribed based on international experience. And so we think that that should be rolled over for future communities and that would give the long-term signal required to communities involved in developing projects. In terms of self-generation, the initial consultation suggested the economic analysis in the consultation suggested this wouldn't be favored. But there then was a subsequent announcement that potential for rooftop solar PV would be explored. And then of course, since we finalized the report, government announced a grand scheme for solar PV, for rooftop solar PV, which should be forthcoming maybe in the summer and I think Ayman might address that. But I suppose the points we were making in the report that LCOE is not favorable for self-generation because, well, we can go into that. I wanna get through this as quickly as possible. We can go into that in the discussion of why this analysis doesn't work for self-generated energy. But what we also pointed out in the report and which is still relevant is that there are dangers. Yes, there are advantages to grant programs and I see some people from SEAI here who can, or formerly of SEAI even, who could talk to those advantages and dangers. But one of the big advantages is you rely every year on an appropriation, on government funding. The second thing is that when we put in place a program or a grant program, they often remain in place and it's very difficult to kind of change them. And so over the medium to long term, a big problem I suppose also with solar PV and one of the reasons that we think there's a lot of difficulty around this issue is because these are very profoundly, potentially profoundly disruptive technologies and so there's a wariness around them for that reason. So we think that there's a case for solar PV to be put on a sort of a more market-based track. So in other words, that citizens would be allowed to sell their electricity to the market, just like, you know, a farmer can bring his sheep to the market or whatever, that a homeowner can bring their electrons to the market, that they get a market price for that, that won't be enough in the short term, so you bring in a subsidy, but the subsidy is phased out over time, so you're putting the market on a long-term sustainable track. So we just can see advantages to doing it that way, but of course the case for a grant program in the short term is probably a good one in terms of setting up a pilot program and exploring the alternatives. So diversity, we didn't say too much on that, other than to say that the current proposal will potentially favor cost-effective technologies and I'm not gonna go into that, I'm just conscious that I wanna leave enough time for discussion. So really our conclusions are that the pace will potentially be slow on the basis of current proposals, although the National Development Plan would certainly seem to change that and it's a sort of a moving target, as we said. Democracy would be high and diversity would be low, but as we warned, as I warned on several occasions, this is a moving target. So thanks very much for everybody for coming along today, I really appreciate it. Thank you. Too busy conferring doctorates on our other speakers. Our next speaker is Eamon Confrey, who's principal officer in the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment. I worked very closely with Eamon on a number of different aspects of this agenda, including the white paper, the energy white paper, so delighted to introduce Eamon, floor is yours. Thanks Alex, and good afternoon and thanks to Joe Curtin and the IIEA for the opportunity to respond to the report, which is obviously an important contribution to the debate on electricity system decarbonisation. So I suppose over the next five, 10 minutes, what I'd like to do is maybe discuss the issue across kind of four main areas, so maybe talk a little bit about the current policy context, including EU, and then just respond across one of the main report headings in terms of pace, democracy and diversity. So as this audience will be well aware, in terms of at European level, the clean energy package is out there. It had proposed a binding EU target of 27% for renewables, and we're just about to head into the sort of the trilog stage, which is essentially the three-way conversation or discussion negotiation, call it what you want, between the Parliament, Council and Commission. And it's again no secret that the Parliament is pushing for an EU-wide res target of 35%. And I suppose ultimately the deal will be somewhere in the middle, and I guess for us, our baseline will be at least 16% out of 2030, and under the governance regulation, we are going to have to hit certain kind of milestones as we move out towards 2030. And I'll come back to that from my final point around the national energy and climate plan at the end. And I suppose the key point is in relation to the EU target, and it's important in the context of the res and some of the points that Joe has made, Ireland's contribution is yet to be determined, and that's important to understand, because as I say, we wouldn't, and it would be sort of, it would be silly to set our target in advance of those discussions and negotiations concluding because it will set a trajectory over the next 15 years. But I think the desire will be very strongly at EU level for Ireland to do more and for other member states to effectively underwrite its ambition, given the scale of the challenge with respect to emissions reduction. I just wanted to briefly mention a couple of reports recently that came across my desk. One was in relation to the World Energy Outlook for 2017, and just looking back over some sort of reports they put out late last year, they've put together kind of sustainable development scenarios out to 2040. And interestingly, natural gas is the only fossil fuel to grow in the sustainable development scenario, along with rapid expansion of low carbon technologies and indeed energy efficiency. And interestingly, while the installed gas capacity stays around 220 gigawatts, utilization dropped strongly over time. And I suppose while gas demand is projected to fall markedly in the EU, gas transmission distribution infrastructure needs remain high. In other words, the imperative to keep the lights on during dark, cold winter days, in fact, like today. So I suppose energy security is always there as one of those tensions around the energy dilemma. The second one was the International Renewable Energy Agency, or IRENA, published a report, which some of you may have seen last week, which says Europe could reach 34% renewables by 2030 with a net positive impact. It goes on to outline how the renewable share would help reduce emissions by 40% over 1990 levels, and indeed in welcoming the report, Commissioner Canetta stated that, I suppose, given the significant cost reduction, we need to consider these new realities in our ambition levels for the upcoming negotiations to finalize Europe's renewable energy policies. I suppose the implications are that there's greater technology diversity, the share of REZ and the power sector would be up around 50% by 2030, and all REZ transport options are needed, which will include principally EVs and biofuels. I suppose, again, it just underlines the pressure that's ratcheting up in terms of moving renewables targets to a higher plane, and the inevitable consequences in terms of the individual ask of member states, including ourselves. Joe's referenced it already, but it is worth mentioning, I mean, obviously the national planning framework and the national development plan recently published represent a really strong government commitment to climate action. 22 billion euros of public and private sector is committed to deliver on some of our actions and objectives, and I suppose climate action is going to place a huge demand on our society, but societal transformation is what is required, given the scale of the emissions reduction that's required. In terms of the national planning framework itself, I suppose the strategic aim at the highest level is to increase renewable deployment in line with EU targets and national policy objectives out to 2030, and that will lead to greater diversity of renewable technologies in the mix. On the NDP, I suppose in addition to the 22 billion commitment, we speak of an additional 4.5 gigawatts of renewables, and you climate action fund, which will repurposed in lower level and be very much targeted at interventions in the transport sector. Joe's already name checked the references around money point and the P plants, but, and this is an important but, decarbonisation of the electricity sector has no impact on our national emissions targets in terms of the non ETS, and that's an important point to keep on our radar as well. Moving on then, just to pick up on a couple of policy references in the report, I noted it states that Ireland is not on target to meet 2020 and 2030 objectives. I suppose my response would be whatever about saying we're not on track for emissions and renewables targets to 2020, might be just a bit premature to say we're not on target for 2030, but I think there's a lot of discussion to be had on that. Second one was around just compliance costs. And again, the report speaks about compliance costs could potentially grow to billions by 2030. And at the risk of scaring my colleagues from deeper in the audience, there is a lot of noise out there at the moment in terms of compliance costs. And just to focus on renewables, the likely shortfall would be in or around 3% in terms of our 16% target by 2020. SEAI analysis from a couple of years ago had suggested sort of a cost range of between sort of 65 and 130 million per percentage point miss. But just in October, I think it was of 2017, Luxembourg and Lithuania concluded one of the first statistical transfer agreements in Europe. And I suppose while we're just looking into some of the detail on that, the implication is the total compliance costs for Ireland could be less than 100 million all in on renewables. Now, as I say, I don't want to make a prediction on that, but it is just if you look at it in terms of equivalence, the kind of numbers that were concluded in that deal. So I suppose my point is there's a big range in terms of what the compliance costs could be. And I mean, our focus is very much on doing as much as we can by 2020 to reduce that burden. I suppose the other big one is around heat and transport. I mean, how do we electrify at scale and cost efficiently? And that's a huge, huge issue. Because there is a hell of a lot of focus on what we do in electricity, but like I say, it has no impact on our non-ETS and that's an important point. So turning then to kind of pace in terms of how fast the national policy and Joe's alluded in terms of the renewable electricity support scheme, it's under development. We are watching the clean energy negotiations. It does not commit us to 40% res EO to 2030. We are trying to balance a hell of a lot of policy objectives which are often conflict in terms of the energy trilemma around competitiveness, sustainability and security. I suppose, you know, the impression that the res consultation suggests that the baseline of 40% res E is the government's final ambition is not true. I mean, it's, as I say, as we stated, we will base our final contribution on how the red two negotiations conclude and whatever targets emerge. And also it will be a function of how much we want to electrify heating and transport as I've mentioned. So there are very much, these are open res design questions for us and the res consultation did indeed look at other res-e targets up as high as 55% as well, which is worth mentioning. Again, I suppose even just as it stands, our res-e target of 40% to 2020 actually represents one of the highest res-e sub-targets in the EU by comparison with other member states. And clearly I suppose the consultation can never answer the questions about kind of pace, diversity and democracy. They are wider societal questions which deserve, in my view, a very open and honest debate. And again, you know, the responses in the consultation paper itself are all part of that design process. But the fundamental point on res I want to leave you with is no policy decisions have yet been taken on kind of the technologies to be supported, the level of ambition. We are, as I say, watching where the negotiations are going. But that's not to say that the wider government system is an alert to the climate challenge and the costs involved. But we are not the only area competing for resources. We have to ensure Ireland remains cost competitive. There's the Brexit dimension. We have to ensure Ireland remains attractive as a clean technology investment location. And again, I mean, the economic ministries across government will push us hard around costs and rightly so. And at the end of the day, this is going to be I suppose a shared national ambition in terms of where we want to go. Just to pick up on the reference around PSO costs, I mean, again, we've in terms of its impact on the different levels of ambition. We have, as ever, laid out the three policies of energy policy, namely sustainability, security of supply and competitiveness. And again, and we've consistently said that I mean, the trick is striking the balance and because these aren't necessarily an intention and it's not an easy sort of policy choice. Again, and it's a personal reflection, I do think though, in fairness to the work that's pointed out in the report, it is genuinely time for an honest debate on the PSO and wholesale prices. I mean, the average residential PSO cost per annum is in the order of about 9,210 euros per annum. And perhaps we are too focused on the PSO element only, which the report points out, and there certainly is a need to differentiate between the PSO and consumer bill increases. We acknowledge that renewables do reduce the wholesale price of electricity. And frankly, I think we can do better in persuading people around the wider benefits to the Irish economy, which are around decreased fossil fuel imports in terms of that bill, greater energy security, and the ability to retain a larger slice of ex-Jepher money for other services in the country. And again, whether it be schools or hospitals or roads and all the other competing areas there are. I suppose the question is, how do we best communicate that? Is the political system prepared to take on that challenge and articulate what can be somewhat abstract issues to a citizenry that may sometimes we might sometimes take for granted, and I'll come back to that in a second. However, I think it would be useful to see the cost implications and affordability issues taken into account in other reports, such as this one and future energy scenarios when we're looking at this analysis. Turning down to democracy, social acceptance is a really huge issue and a challenge and something that is constantly on my desk and with colleagues trying to grapple with. Communities are much better informed, activist and robust in their interactions and engagements with the political system. That's not a bad thing, by the way. However, I suppose the issue is when certain groups dominate the debate and crowd out other voices, there is a need to hear some of the positive stories and experiences that are out there from communities who are genuinely keen to embrace the opportunity for renewable energy in terms of employment in the local areas, many of whom, lest we forget, suffered significant unemployment and migration of population during the recession. Personally, again, I think the Citizens Assembly was a fabulous example of what can happen when you let ordinary citizens engage directly with subject experts and then, oh, Joe, you yourself address them and allow that group to digest and reflect on the evidence and formulate reasonable solutions to addressing some of the critical issues that we face. I mean, just as an example, I picked out that in terms of their conclusions, 80% of the members were willing to pay higher taxes on carbon-intensive activities. It was qualified that increased revenue should be directed at climate measures and exemptions for households in energy poverty and that's also something that, at the policy level, the department is very mindful of around the affordability question. Moving to micro-gen, I mean, the minister's obviously announced the proposed pilot at the Renewable Energy somewhat a few weeks back, which will be, hopefully, commencing this summer and will target solar PV and self-consumption among domestic consumers. It's very much a first phase of a multi-phase approach. It's really important, and we've asked SEI to gather data and look at the behavior and attitudes to inform future phases of support for micro-gen in Ireland because, again, we need to prove the case. And you do, again, hear a little bit of noise about micro-gen and we do need to be sure that before we spend any more public money that there is the appetite there and there's a proven appetite there. But again, this is, I suppose, our response to align with the ambition of the recast Renewable Energy Directive, which very clearly recognizes the rights, entitlements and obligations of renewable self-consumers and I think that's important to point out. Other quick points, I mean, it's good to see in the report the linkage between smart meters and the growth of the energy prosumer. Again, good to see a call for the distributional impact of micro-gen to be taken into account. This has been lacking in previous analysis, we would argue. I suppose, just maybe a claim that micro-generation is subject to greater uncertainty is, you know, not quite true given what I've just said in terms of the red two and the direction of travel at EU level. Briefly on the res, I mean, there's a lot of stuff in there around communities and how we bring them on. I would, I suppose, short-circuit my remark by saying, I mean, the big challenge is the capacity building in communities. I wouldn't underestimate that and we're gonna have to do a hell of a lot of work and it's not just us and me in the department, it's everybody really has a role to play on that. And then just lastly, on the diversity heading, I suppose, you know, which renewable technologies and if I had a euro for everybody who told me, you know, what they wanted to see and I just summarized it as kind of technology neutral versus technology specific. And that is the key question. It's a fundamental question for government. It's how do we balance that kind of cost argument versus diversity, bigger, better, faster, you know, but conscious that technology costs in solar and indeed in offshore are dropping really, really fast. And my job is to bring evidence to bear so that we don't lock ourselves in too high in terms of what we end up paying. And I think that's an important point to remember. Again, just to pick up, I mean, there are a lot of claims broadly in terms of the res consultation about how greater res-y ambition will lead to decreased electricity costs, but that is based on a number of assumptions around storage, interconnection and increased use of EVs. And I just put a kind of a health warning on some of those calls. I mean, people were saying we should be up as high as EU or res of 75%. So again, we just need to be careful. And I think again, it's important that yes, when onshore wind has dominated today, I suppose, you know, there is a direct link between that onshore dominance and the fact that we do have one of the most cost-effective res-y support schemes in Europe. And I think just the last couple of points for me is broadly again, in terms of other things that are going on around the system. I mean, the DS3 program, which air grid or pioneering, delivering a safe, secure system. I mean, that current objective is to hit 75% wind at any given point by 2020. They have actually moved to a level of 65% on a three-month trial basis at the moment, which will end actually in a couple of weeks time. And again, subject to no major technical issues and all of that, 65% wind loading will become official policy. And I suppose that the point here is the ability of the TSOs to safely move to higher limits of wind, removes a barrier to achieving some of those broader ambitions out to 2030. The other one I just wanted to mention is, again, air grid are also pioneering some fairly groundbreaking work at EU level around the power system. And based on what I said earlier around the arena analysis by 2030, it's expected that 50% of the European electricity system will comprise renewable energy. I suppose that the issue is how do we address that challenge and how do we accommodate increasing levels of res-y and large-scale consumer participation on the European power system. So I suppose just watch this space in terms of air grids working in that regard. Last point for me is really, I said at the outset, all of the challenges, the policy, the desire from various interest groups and stakeholders around our ambition, it will all be wrapped up in the National Energy and Climate Plan, which we are just about to start on the drafting of. This, again, will be a cross-government effort. It's a requirement under the clean energy package, specifically the governance regulation. And in a nutshell, the NECP will have in it the key policies and measures that will underwrite our climate and energy ambition. And again, there's a lot of difficult discussions to be had in terms of how we balance that against, as I say, the energy dilemma. So with that, I'd like to thank Joe again for the opportunity to respond to what is very much a thought-provoking report designed to stimulate the base. I suppose as a forwarder discussion on ideas, I'd expect nothing less from this August Institute. So thanks very much for your time. APPLAUSE Thank you. Thank you very much, Eamon. And the second contribution by way of response to Joe's paper will be from Dara Lynett. Dara Lynett is the Chief Executive of the Electricity Association, as you know. And many of you will also know that he comes to the Association from the EPA, former director of the EPA, from which he brings a wealth of experience and insight. I look forward to his response. Thank you very much. And thank you to Joe for the invitation. I think fora like this are very important, I think, and coming again from the EPA was a very useful tool to set out in a paper a thought process that gets us to an outcome we all are endeavoring to get to. It allows us to find out where we align, but also allows us then to focus on the areas where we need to constructively engage to find some common ground. As the introduction suggests, I started with the Electricity Association of Ireland in January of this year. It is an association that represents 90% of the generators and retailers of electricity in the country. It represents 100% of the distribution networks within the country. And it is an unusual organization, having come from an organization and a board where it was pounded into us that we need to disagree and commit. I'm now in an organization which not always to agree and commit. So consensus building is a big part of my role. After all, all of the members are competitors. So you are grounded by the fact that the competition authority will tell you in one hand if you are cooperating inappropriately, and on the other hand, you will not be saying anything if you agree on very minor issues. So the role of myself and Stephen Douglas and David Eaton who are here today is to try and push that consensus along to develop on our vision. And our vision is very much outlined in a report with a commission of PWC with a few copies of it which is transitioning to a low-carbon energy system. And again, with a few copies here. But how do we get that consensus? Well, we have four committees. We have a policy committee, a retail committee, a markets committee and a networks committee. So what we invite is all of the employees of our various members to come together and debate the issues of the day. They debate them, come to consensus, and then it's my job and Stephen's job to push them as far as we can and to distribute and communicate in fora like this. So again, just to reiterate, we are very happy to be here. It's part of our role. So again, I've never been at a forum like that. Again, I've been at a few of these situations. Do you want me to do a PowerPoint? No, I don't. Do you want me to write a speech? No, you just respond, which is actually nerve-racking because you never know what is going to be asked of you and you can't prepare properly. So what I did is I went back through the archives of the Outrusty Association of Ireland and tried to fit them into the topics that Joe has done, which is around pace, around democracy and diversity. So excuse me if they're a bit blunt. I didn't have enough time to finesse them into the language that if you're familiar with Owen Wilson, would have been very expert in doing. So I want to say a few general points and then I want to give you some points of where the electricity industry, their view on those three topics. So I'm starting off that the electricity industry globally, but particularly in Europe, is undergoing fundamental transformation. I think everyone would agree with that. The dominant consideration, shaping the current and future energy system is the need to progressively eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, absolute consensus on that. And we believe that a future industry will be decarbonized, reducing its own emissions to net zero, decentralized with localized generation, making an increasing contribution to electricity production as technology costs continue to fall, which is what Amy was saying. It's going to be digitized. We're going to take full advantage of ICT to manage a highly complex system and at the same time deliver value and cost savings to customers. So this idea of the prosumer, you can only do that if you digitize the system and you have the ability in your house to do it. And it's going to be democratized. We're going to leverage the application of ICT and low cost, small scale generation and energy storage solutions to maximize the participation of customers in the day to day. So the entire electricity association in Ireland believes in that. But we also believe that the electricity system will play a crucial role in decarbonizing all energy use as it exists other energy end users to do likewise. So obviously if you fuel your car with electricity, then it becomes immobility and you get EVs on it and likewise. So as I said, we recently commissioned the PWC to look at how you'd achieve a 90% reduction in emissions from energy use by 2050. And we believe that it will significantly reduce fuel imports. But as we've heard, some of the challenges that Amon is faced with on a day to day basis, how future change is presented. And it won't benefit everybody. There's going to be winners and losers. But how that change is presented, supported and the fairness with which associated benefits are allocated with ultimately determine the extent of Ireland's leadership. And I think that is absolutely true. And again, why fora such as this are so important to get to the number. So if I can go to pace then. Straight up, the electricity association is concerned there's not sufficient urgency in the consideration of future actions to deliver Ireland's 2020 and 2030. We are too slow, we're not doing enough, we're not being adventurous enough and we're not being innovative enough. Deferral will result in the need to adapt more robust, more costly, more risky measures in the future. The longer you wait, the price tag is going to go up. So there are things that we could do right now that we should be doing right now. Investment is a key to this. Money isn't going to come from the sky. Money is going to come with hard-nosed bankers looking at the pros and cons. If I lend you money, will you pay it back to me? And we believe that the investment climate and the availability of customer funds is still limited. We're still coming out of our recession. Banks are under the cosh. They're offloading their mortgage books, right, left and center under the central bank remit. It is still quite limited. And we think that early clarification of the approach to be adopted, to Resi support to 2020 and beyond, is required to support investment decisions. So people need to know what are the inputs? How will things get paid back? And Resi is a huge part of that. This will give investors the certainty they require to raise projects. But what they don't want, absolutely, is ex-post financial or budgetary adjustments affecting projects that have cleared an auction and that has to be avoided. So you go in, which are understanding that if I lend this amount of money, I am going to get paid and I have a good chance of getting repaid. And if the person who is borrowing that money goes in and says, the rules are this and I can guarantee I can pay this for 20 years and five years later, if the rules change, then there's trouble. So again, ex-post adjustments are very tricky when you've just gone and mortgaged your house against a new wind form that's there. On pre-qualification, in general, we favor the existence of pre-qualification, slightly different to what Joe has said. We think that the projects that have the best prospect of proceeding in a timely manner should qualify an auction. So in the never-never, if time is of the essence and if you're deferring things and then you're saying, well, we keep 20% of the market here and if it's not used, we'll use it, we'll roll it over and you negate others who are ready to go, have the bond in place and compress the green light in order to increase the renewables. We think that is the way to go. But I think that the community ownership is absolutely important. We just don't think the department have put enough thought into this. We think the department needs to put a lot more thought on it. And again, just to give you an example, just on the community side, I'm in from a community. I'm involved in a few boards on a voluntary basis. One of them is trying to build a community center. So I have a board, I chair it. It's a number of people, different backgrounds. I just made a list after him and made the point about the difficulty of community care. So with no previous experience, anyone around this board had to set up a company with the CRO, had to apply for charitable status, which is significant, had to apply for a leader fund, which is significant in terms of anyone's gone through the leader process. We had to get a loan for 200,000. We had to affect a land transfer with all the legalities that that entailed. We had to file accounts. We had to get planning permission. We had to hire architects, and we had to get a quantity server. Now that's a bunch of people that have never done any of this in their lives before. So the difficulty of a community taken on board wind energy and building multi euro, a million euro plants is going to be incredibly difficult. And it'd be great to happen, but realistically we think it's going to be a developer cooperation with community for a long time, unless there are substantial supports for our community. No one came in to our community and said, listen, we'll give you a hand with charity registration. We'll give you a hand with the leader application. We'll give you a hand with how to hire an architect. That just isn't there. So I just say that as an example of the types of supports communities would need in order to have a community-led renewable energy, outside of a bio-digester or something like that on a big farm or something like that, you know. So other additional measures that we think could quick and pace, adopt measures to encourage wind turbine upgrades. So turbines went in at a certain capacity, upgrade them. Prioritize solar wind farm coal location. So if you have wind, put in the solar on the same site. Modest solar incentives, again, in the context of solar declining in cost, it's probably a bit too early, but you probably need to put something in there to get it going. Develop expertise in new renewable energy technology. Someone told me that the country is flooded with experts from Denmark and Holland coming into service these wind farms. So we need to up our game in terms of having Irish people in local communities with the expertise to do it. Now that's third party. Someone's shaking their head at the end there. So, and we think that the 40% current target of renewables is a minimum. The ambition should be much more. Moving on to democracy and community impact. Infrastructure development impacts on individuals and communities, no doubt about it. Communities hosting such infrastructure should benefit in a fair, open and sustainable manner that is also consistent with the common good and the desire for affordable energy supply. So that's easy to say, but quite difficult to do. In terms of ring fencing, as I said, you know, we think that further policy options are needed to facilitate community participation for the reasons I said before, but I also think that the level of community led projects will not materialize and I don't think it's a good idea or we don't think it's a good idea that the unused volume should be returned to auction. If they're not used, let someone else come into it and then keep refining the policy supports for communities to get better at doing it. Going on to diversity and I suppose the AI had a lot more to say in this. I think Ireland is facing a uniquely challenging set of objectives in the energy sector. There is no precedent to follow and no other country is experiencing similar issues as acutely as Ireland. We hit a new record of 65 or 67% of our entire energy system was powered by renewables in late January of this year. The previous record was in December 2017. Every winter we hit new records for how a single and non-synchronous system can take on energy. No one else is doing that level of instantaneous energy. So it is a huge challenge and we believe that it's probable that there's going to be a mix of renewable technologies that will be necessary to achieve the policy mix that you need for 2020, 2030 and 2050. But no one has a crystal ball. But we do know that if the proposal supports our technology neutral, coupled with a wait and see approach, it risks delivery of a single technology, very similar to the point that Joe has made. Initially, that may or may not result in the best long-term solution for the Irish system and customers. So again, it's akin to putting all your eggs in the one basket. If it's cheapest, cheapest, cheapest, then probably wind will wear out and then you probably have too much in that sector. So it may be necessary, and now these are maize because I don't have a crystal ball either, it may be necessary to exclude certain technologies in later auctions for system stability or security supply reasons. But one thing that's important, you need early sight of these decisions so that developers have the chance to sufficiently develop projects for these complementary technologies. This is tough work, it's cutting-edge work. No one has the answer, these technologies aren't developed. But if you give clear signals early enough to people who are investing, then they can start to innovate around those systems. We believe that low-cost, large-scale storage technologies represent a key future development given the unpredictability of wind, relative to other variable renewable sources. So if the EIAI were to bet on the best medium-term technology, obviously storage would be where we would think. We need to maintain and expand government-funded support for research, for demonstration and deployment of new renewable generation technology and energy storage techniques. And in particular, innovation on the energy storage around different energy storage requirement types. For example, short-term, so less than one second to two minutes. So this is in long-term storage, but the instantaneous type storage that would give a lot more fluidity to the system. We think that again with the mix of renewables, incentives to encourage repurposing of low quality agricultural land to biomass production is a possibility. And we also feel that we need to progressively phase out energy sector subsidies for commercially mature technologies. So, and that money can be used in other places. And that includes technologies, including renewable technologies that get to a degree of maturity. They should then start to come back into the market if they no longer need it. So again, sorry, it was a bit bullet-pointy that presentation, but again, thank you very much for the chance to respond. Thank you. Thank you.