 So, okay, so first questions to the panel and in any order, so I'll actually just ask some. The first question is, what will this industry look like, do you think, in say five to ten years time? I'm earing maybe towards the ten because five is very, very soon, but let's say five to ten years time. What do you think this industry is really going to look like? Not what it could look like, but what it will look like. I guess I'm focusing on Europe primarily here and to some extent Ireland. Whoever. I'll throw the ball in. I believe we're on a transition away from an old model, a predominantly based on fossil fuel generation and passive customers to something very, very different and we've heard lots of where that's heading this morning and this afternoon. The future will be very much carbon free customer centric, but in ten years time will be well underway that transition. We'll still have large fossil fuel burning power stations coexisting with new technologies on that transition. It's a law of physics that you need inertia. It's called in engineering terms to facilitate a lot of these new technologies, so we will still have that. I don't believe by then that problem will be cracked by new technologies. So we'd be well underway, lots more renewables and from Michael Ebrick's presentation this morning, I expect that onshore wind will not require a subsidy and maybe some of the others won't require a subsidy, there'll be new technologies maybe that we can't even dream of today will be being subsidized. Increasing levels of distributed generation and storage beginning to put the customer into this prosumer space where they're producing and consuming electricity. Customer right at the heart of it, smart, engaged, internet of things, new players, new business models and lots of tariff innovation by suppliers dealing with this technology and a new customer centric business model and the whole smart, smart metering, smart networks all colliding with the internet of things. I would say that I'm not sure Amy Lubbins would agree with you that in 10 years time we still need big fossil fuel power plants. But one thing in his message that I thought was very important and is actually under emphasizing his message is that if we can make things work with a portfolio of clean resources, the key word is portfolio and that's wind farms and fuel cells and energy storage and distributed solar and central solar, we still are going to need the grid. So this is a constant that I don't think we emphasize quite enough today that the grid is a key to making division work regardless of the mix, it is going to be a mix. The optimization problem is improved when we have options. It doesn't mean we see analysis of how could it work if a customer just had solar and storage, could he go off grid? Sure he could go off grid but it's not the optimum solution. The optimum solution is having other clean sources and optimizing on that base and so our problem, one of our biggest problems is figuring out how to pay for the grid which actually is a much more complicated grid now because we have to enable that portfolio with communications and controls and still maintain the reliability and resiliency. So I think that in 10 years the importance of the grid is bigger than ever. In following on that as it touches a little bit the area where we're working at IBM Research and that's on data and optimization models. I believe that and we've already heard it today that we're moving from the old model where supply follows demand and we can tweak supply such that we meet the demand we need. We will be moving and we're already moving into the problem where supply is quite uncertain and we need to tweak demand and take advantage of the flexibility of demand to address the uncertainties in supply. And to do that we certainly do need the grid. We do need the portfolio of renewables that's my belief. We also need advanced models naturally thinking of the modeling and mathematical expertise that is required here to address this problem so that we have the right distribution and furthermore I believe that we will be in a position where we would be using exogenous data to better address the demands of the customers. Certainly the consumers will also be producers but I'm of the believe that rather than consumers adopting to the energy system the energy system has to adopt to the consumers. Ten years from now I think the whole energy era would be a more democratic one. The two fields of the future wind and sun are locally available free of charge. That will give local control over pricing, production and indeed security of supply. It will require a different type of engagement with local communities and the industry will not only have to earn economic goodwill it will have to earn human goodwill by very very different type of democratic engagement with communities. I would say that some of the European utilities of today won't exist ten years from now and there is a classic scenario in place that the electricity industry will undergo the same transformational change that happened to the telecommunications industry and the IT industry and look what has happened to that over the last ten years and the successful utility of ten years from now will be an energy services provider not a commodity supplier which they are today and the consumer and customer will be an active participant right across the electricity supply chain to enable the balancing of supply and demand. I would also say that the customer will have to be at the center of everything that the successful utility will do in the next five to ten years unlike today. And today utilities don't have customers they have billing points and I think Matthew described it as a negative dated relationship and Scott used the term this morning in dealing with customers when he said we must surprise and delight 99% of engagement which utilities have today with customers is around two touch points both negative one is the restoration of a power outage you know in times of storm etc and the second one is when the dreaded bill arrives so the utility industry the successful utility industry a decade from now will be in the business of surprising and delighting. So thinking of that okay that's the what in a way but I'm going to come back to some of those issues in a moment but thinking of the the when because it's a very critical question isn't it if you're a company in this space right now that is trying to develop services whether you're an incumbent or whether you're a new entrant or whether you're some company that's trying to actually change things dramatically whether it's like Tesla or anyone else timing is is really critical right I mean whether it's if it's one year two years three years five years eight years makes a huge difference so when do we actually think this these this real change will start to materialize properly we've seen in Australia that we're getting some change but it's still relatively relatively slow right it's taking time but as when it pays off it starts to accelerate when do you think the timing will be on all of this I think we're seeing it already yeah like I think we're seeing the transformation of this industry before our very eyes it's going to be slow for sure you're going to get early adopters who will do things as Matthew Warren said earlier regard regardless of price and but but more and more as as we engage and the customer becomes much more engaged with the system like the nature of the system just by virtue of its design has been passive passive customers and by and large I don't disagree with Sean O'Driscoll the customers have been taking what utilities have been giving them and that's just the nature of the system but utilities have to reinvent themselves and have to reinvent the industry and new pairs coming together with customers so I think we're seeing it at I think we're actually seeing it as you'll before a very eyes it's like I don't believe there's going to be a step change transformation overnight there's this belief sometimes that you know there is a single solution to this there is no single solution to this it's going to be a mix of solutions it's going to take us a transition from where we are from the past to something very different in the future that's going to maintain security supply just going to deliver affordable electricity and at the same time clean electricity the technologies are here to quantum heater nest thermostats Tesla batteries there you know the opportunity for the customer to participate in this portfolio of resources is there from a technology point of view from a cost point of view some of it has a ways to go but where it has the longest ways to go is in the regulatory and market environment to enable participation of those resources and this is a big challenge and it's one that lays on the shoulders of regulators I would say more than anyone else as we as we define a new market structures in Ireland we're working on a package called DS 3 delivering the secure and sustainable energy system which is defining like 17 new services that we're going to have a market for related to flexibility and capacity and frequency regulation and and and all the things where customers could participate and get paid for those resources and it is a matter of enabling those and there it has a battery in his garage in California but there's no payment for that that's that's in the category that Matthew described of people just wanting a cool thing in their garage you know the only he's doing PG and E a favor and doing some balancing of his solar but there's no economic reason to buy that battery now but there could be when we when we have this package of resources that have value you know to to the overall operation of the grid so apart from regulation what are the other catalysts of change here I mean what what is going to really accelerate or decelerate this I mean is it going to be for example trust in the industry trust in the services is going to be the speed at which battery technology develops is it what what do we think is are there some key catalysts here that are going to change or that that speed of adoption this change is with us the technology as Pat and Mark said is here connectivity is here the age of digital dark Darwinism has arrived and there were huge disruptive forces you know abroad out there on the 25th of July the afternoon of the 25th of July this year in Germany 78% of all of the electricity consumed in the German system that day came from solar and went very frequently at win at weekends 50% of all the electricity on the system is coming from solar now these are not just disruptive forces unsettling business models Eon or W were referred to today they're shattered their business models are shattered and the industry is going to have to look at things very very differently and the type of dislocation that has taken place for example in the German industry is that the normal wholesale 24 forward pricing for a unit of electricity that's traded on the wholesale market is in the mid 30 euros for 100 hours last year in Germany that pricing was negative at the most extreme negative it was 1,800 euros now there is huge huge inherent value to be unlocked there and that calls for new business models and I know in our group we're participating in that earlier this year we invested in a new startup energy services business in Germany called BG which stands for better energy we took a 25% shareholding at that and one of the 30% shareholder is the fifth largest electricity utility in Germany in VV major shareholder is the city of Mannheim five years ago we would never have visualized ourselves getting into an investment like that so it the technologies are there that disrupt the forces are abroad what it requires is creative minds to unlock new business opportunities and it requires again that the issue of regulation was spoken about earlier if I look here in Ireland regulation is not just about the department of energy it's also about the department of the environment who are responsible for building regulations and we have to have a complete joint up approach to regulation rather than silent regulation these are the types of things that are required to create the industry of the future can I bring you back to trust because I believe the industry here has a trusting relationship with its customers and we have seen particularly in the UK where trust has been damaged between the energy industry the regulatory and the political system and consumers and I think what's really really important here that as we transition that that trust is maintained for sure it's not perfect and more can be done more can be done in terms of engagement in terms of community engagement but by and large there is trust by customers and by the public of the industry so how we transition the whole question of affordability and the whole question of we move particularly to distributed energy resources and I believe the distributed energy resource is the key role to play here and and prices are dropping like a stone but if where subsidy collides with distributed energy resources and then collides with I suppose you know people who can and cannot afford to invest in these technologies if we develop a system in the future where the people who can afford to play in this new future and get the benefit from it they are the only people who benefit and as we saw in some of the slides earlier then that means that the fixed cost the piece below the iceberg below the you know below the surface that high fixed cost then is picked up by fewer and fewer customers so the fuel pours are paying more we will lose trust dramatically so I think it behoves all of us in the industry and policy and regulatory to actually make sure that we make this transition while maintaining and building on that trust okay going back to the trust issue right I mean when you look at telco when we talk about telecom developments and some of the IT services that the customers have got into in a big way that hasn't actually happened in the context of a of an of an industry where there's an awful lot of negative feeling because of media or because of whatever that's going on in that market if you look at the UK for example the and Australia of course Australia is happening in a very negative environment and now that the question is I remember one utility in Great Britain who once said that they was a new entrant who said that they succeeded by demonizing the major players and and that was really their strategy now the thing is that that may work when you're trying to win customers from a from utility on just for the energy itself but when you're trying to build a level of trust is there a risk that this negative image that's in the industry is going to work against us not only the incumbents but also then the the new models that are coming through do you think there's a trust problem even for guys like you for your with your services and something the negative can always be turned around think back in this country 25 years ago 30 years ago I don't think the telecommunications industry had there was a positive attitude towards it you know in fact it was a very negative attitude towards it and today electricity is a commodity how do you turn that into services that is what it's all about and of course it can be turned around I don't think some of the utilities as I said earlier that exist today will be around 10 years from now so they won't necessarily be the people who will turn it around but you will have new an entrance you will have the the visionary existing utilities who will reconfigure their product offering their service offering they can turn it around but I go forward and say they will turn around just any other comments on that I mean just to be challenging on this I mean but if you look around at where we are so far we heard with Matthew talking and others the question is I guess we do see these snippets of success around the world but we actually as yet haven't seen an awful lot of success from from all these offerings so it's still in the future right and we've talked about the the catalyst to change that but do you think maybe it's maybe we haven't quite found the golden egg yet do you think maybe that's partly you're talking about the creativity and well look at Denmark yeah Denmark is the standout country in the world when it comes to the whole area of renewable technology and a very very positive community-based engagement with its energy sector and in particular the electricity sector you know and again a negative image around you know this industry at the moment is that it will increase the cost of electricity in it you know it's it's a barrier to economic progress in the last 15 years Denmark's consumption of energy has reduced by 20% and its economy has grown by 50% so they are complimentary and it's created some of the finest industries in the world in renewables Vesta wind turbines so they took a social policy and they converted it into their economic advantage but also they have the highest prices in Europe is that a concern I think the people there are okay with that they're okay that's true it's true with the Irish be okay with that and I think that that's part of the issue of creating the trust in New York they have this initiative that they call reforming the energy vision and the thing that they're doing right there is involving all the stakeholders so the consumer groups the aggregators the solar and wind providers and the utilities all trying to write the rules together and at least sitting at the table together so you know get the arguments on the table in front of everyone and and have some transparency in the way the rules are being created and I see that as as a reasonably successful approach to get at something where consumers can't can see that at least everyone's talking about the issues and where prices are going I think Arizona and California is a dialogue to take place and Sean and I were talking with this in the corridor really Sean actually brought it up that you know you couldn't have had this conference here today five years ago Ireland wasn't ready for it and I think it's incredible that we're having it here today and what's needed is to join up all of the pieces and take a dialogue out to the people I for sure the investment that's needed in new technologies is going to have to be rewarded and it's going to it has the potential to be price increasing but in conjunction with you know different technologies deployed in different ways energy efficiency the price of electricity might actually go up but the overall cost of electricity on an annual basis might actually come down so we're not but we're not having that dialogue with customers and you know so I think the leadership that's needed right throughout the industry and Troy policy is to start engaging on that and ask the ask the country and ask customers and ask the public what kind of an energy system do we want in the future what are we prepared to pay for it and what benefits do we see and I think that's what you've seen in Germany right that's what we've seen in in even in the Netherlands to some extent certainly in Denmark where they have actually that's it in those markets where they developed a lot it's been everyone has accepted that they have to invest they have to develop there's gonna be a cost and initially it is everybody benefiting it is absolutely key because the nature of electricity for a hundred years it has been societal greater good and there has been socialization of parts of the cost of electricity right across all you know all of the economy so how everybody participates in the future and gains in the future is a key policy issue so looking at the disruptions that are actually creating this need for new business models I can envision and it's already happening companies like Airbnb or in other industries where they offer the platform for consumers to trade with each other in a deregulated manner and avoid some of the restrictions that you might find from policymakers and I think people that are looking out for such opportunities might actually take advantage of any mistrust that might exist to create these models and it won't take long before they are considered as the norm and then they come into play we had one question over there is it is it still okay to ask you if we could have the microphone a second just I just want to sort of and if anyone else has any questions I will sort of yeah I'll sort of in sort of flow you in so that okay yeah I've got loads now my question is that would this transition that everybody is talking about be accelerated by a complete separation of generation from the wires business in this country in particular in other words complete separation in ownership and separate companies not any of this management fiction we have with the transmission grid at the moment and to what extent also would the kind of remunicipalization of the distribution grades as has happened in Boulder Colorado and it was done after a popular vote in in Hamburg I believe and I know a hamburgers two million people with that also help the to have more innovation by let's say larger more informed purchasers rather than individuals high-network individuals like the Tesla people we heard I suppose that's a question that's directed at me and I would say and I would say this did know I don't believe the separation of the value chain along the way along the lines you mentioned necessarily improves anything I don't believe the configuration or the ownership in the market today has hindered in any way the progress that has been made Ireland has made huge progress I can see you shaking your head but our Ireland has made huge progress we have one of the most competitive retail markets in Europe we have the greatest amount to turn next only to Great Britain so that is some achievement for a small market of about 2.2 million customers and we must look at the uniqueness of Ireland and the scale of Ireland we have six times more electricity network than than the average in in in Great Britain so you know that there are structural issues around Ireland and what we need to do is cut the cloth to suit the measure I believe we have a structure that works and will that structure remain like that for all time it's likely to change and evolve and that's what it's doing as we speak just a market for kilowatt hours just an energy market then you know that's that's gonna whatever we do with the structure isn't going to matter because we're not rewarding the flexibility services and the capacity services that we need to make this whole portfolio work and so regardless of how you structure things we need to create incentives markets some form of rules for contracts to get these services from all the resources that are out there and those those resources determine the viability of conventional power plants as well it's you know energy markets don't determine whether they survive or not other markets determine it wouldn't we get in this new world I would say the transformation in fact would be achieved much much easier and quicker if it was a more consolidated industry because if you're if you're trying to bring around change and you're dealing with three four parties it's far far more difficult than if you were dealing with one single party so I think that I think the whole fragmentation of the industry and the deregulation of the industry has actually made the transformation incredibly more complex and difficult to achieve and we see that ourselves as we go to certain markets where they don't have I mean you go somewhere like Korea for example it's an awful lot easier to implement smart grid when you're still integrated in that in essence but I would say what you said I mean there are other markets of course and other places that have where they're bought back the grid and in Germany itself there was another town recently that did the same but I think it from at least when I've seen the question the question would then be in those places where they've taken back the grid has that led to any better services or has it led to any better life for the for the customers themselves at least I haven't seen it. There are examples in the US especially where municipals and co-ops can innovate a lot easier than regulated utilities. They don't have a regulator to approve things they have a board and if they want to do something for the good of their town like put in fiber to every home which is happening in Ireland as well but in Chattanooga, Tennessee they just decided to do it and it cost money but it ended up being a very good investment. So then we're going back to regulation so the question there would be do you think that regulation in this dynamic future when we don't even know what the services are in the future we don't actually know from a regulator's point of view it's difficult right how do you regulate something if no one even knows what it's going to be is that there's a regulation that need to be responsive in that sense it needs to be reactive to those changes. It needs to be fast also because things are changing very quickly and that's you know you can only talk about things so long and then there has to be trust that we're all out for you know for the good and to try things. Yeah. Those those look there's about two and a half thousand municipalities in Europe. These are integrated distribution and supply companies would have a disaggregated retail from distribution and for sure it becomes city or town policy then to do certain things along the value chain and becomes much much easier to do that. We've a different model here in Ireland and you know the rest of Europe has a different model as well. It's moving towards disaggregation or breakup of the value chain. I don't believe that regulation end to end is is the answer. I think what we need to do is to find sensible regulation for that piece that makes sense. Regulation then will look after the societal greater good and we need to create the dynamic where markets and technology can come together to provide the mechanisms where the customer then becomes the poll on the whole system. Yeah. Brendan Halligan the chairman of the Institute a question to the to the panel as a whole what advice would you give to minister Alex Alex White in writing the white paper in respect of its strategic trust and is energy to narrow a focus for the white paper? I suppose energy is all pervasive and you know energy touches every part of society and when you look at it through the stove pipe of an energy white paper you miss that for sure. I suppose there's something interesting to if I speak for the electricity industry the electricity industry is about 20% of the usage of total energy in Ireland and policy and regulation around decarbonization is focused on the 20% of the problem but there's an 80% of the problem which is which is transport and heat you throw agriculture into that it's even bigger and so that's part of the broad sweep around climate change it has to come together the advice I would give Alex White minister Alex White is that you know we need to be careful that we don't set an expectation that a white paper is prescriptive it can never be prescriptive that he has to find some way of creating the framework and the environment where the kind of changes that we are talking about can take place and I suppose specifically he needs to be very careful to make sure that policies do not self-select the technologies to leave the framework and the policy for the for the technologies to come through without doing things that preordain the technology choices to keep it flexible I'll ask some questions just one yeah do you want to say just one question how big a game changer is is storage in all of this thinking for us we hear a lot about people saying that storage is the game changer is it what do you think or is data would storage data yeah I think it's a catalyst in the change that is taking place I once heard a utility company say that there are one storage solution away from bankruptcy again it's what it's the change that I mentioned at the beginning rather than supply following demand demand follow supply and storage makes that an option what I like about storage is it's really the poster child for everything we're talking about you know it involves all of the controversy and energy versus capacity and services who owns it does it is it customer is it on the grid you know all of those questions that we have to answer we have to answer about storage yeah the storage we have time it's still way too expensive so you know even even as as inexpensive as as a a three thousand dollar Tesla battery is for your garage you know it's actually there's no market for anything to pay for that three thousand dollars so hopefully it does look really nice but it it it it provides a lot of services that have more and more value the more renewables we put on the system so realizing that we have to pay for that that flexibility but the more renewables we put on the system the more value storage has and then we have to answer the questions of how we're going to allow it to be on the system personally I think residential energy storage is the winner that gets all the value streams that a twenty megawatt battery on the transmission system has and reliability and local distribution benefits which the other ones don't have storage is fundamental to the flexibility that's going to have to be built into the grid and distribution system of the future without question it's that that question the answer to that is over I agree with Mark residential storage will be the winner and our group isn't that secure we are in residential thermal heat for space heating and water heating 36% of all primary energy consumed in the OECD is consumed to provide heating space heating air conditioning and hot water we all require a sanitary hot water you know 24 hours a day 365 that is a very flexible residential store it's a thermal store it's not a two way store but you're decoupling the generation from the consumption of the energy and for five, six months of the year and a lot of the European countries we require space heating and again that can be stored in a thermal store those technologies have existed for the last 40 years the downside to them in today's world is they're inflexible the connectivity is now there the type of technology we have for example can take a frequency request from a network operator in 30 milliseconds can be switched on or switched on I agree with Mark residential whether it's our technology residential battery technology that's going to win out in this industry in the next 10 to 15 years I can storage electricity has had storage probably since the dawn of time it is limited and is expensive the storage we're talking about particularly at the distributed end right out at the end of the consumer battery particularly shown talks about heat I think for the electrification of heat through the storage of heat as you start to profile and shift demand then you get different price characteristics over the course of the day the storage heating has traditionally suffered if it hasn't stored efficiently and it can't be boosted chiefly during the day that is changing with wind generation so I think you can potentially see much more electrical storage heating I think battery storage is definitely a game changer if you get the price point down to a point that is competitive but it's the co-existence of battery storage with solar PV with technology then it integrates those so I could have a solar panel on my roof and my neighbour could read a battery that I'm storing it and an energy company then and I'm making it all work in a way that is efficient and cost effective so when we're talking about timing and we're talking about when this is all going to succeed and how it's going to succeed do you think then that what we're saying and what you're saying that we need all these things to come to play at the same time as like the stars in a way when everything is sort of in place then it all makes sense I mean do you think it's going to be a sort of a case where we get to a point where things come together and then suddenly I don't think it's all going to fall into place neatly there's kind of no monopoly on wisdom with this there'll be mistakes made there'll be things that will not quite fit together and I think what we're seeing is you're putting the customer much more in control you only get the customer beginning to plug and play the components the components they don't quite plug and play I think over time it's going to fall to something very different Tony Walsh, ESP Networks the panel actually started to discuss the point I was going to make which was generally that everybody's been looking at how much electricity has been generated what's the grid being used for but the other side of it is the whole decarbonisation also refers to can you electrify heat and can you electrify transport if you put a typical ESP customer domestic customer would use around five and a half thousand kilowatt hours a year and have a demand of two kilowatts an electric car would take three and a half thousand kilowatt hours and have a three kilowatt demand 50% higher than a normal ESP customer 25% of all new houses built last year all had heat pumps in them which you have a demand of about one and a half kilowatts and use around a thousand kilowatt hours the cost of running a grid are all fixed so if you increase the throughput you just get better value and you get a sale income or even a higher income from spreading your costs over a larger volume so I think that aspect needs to be looked at I think there are some impediments to that at the moment coming from the EU such as that the putting in direct heat electric heating doesn't seem to meet some of the EU criteria even though much of the heat has come from wind but obviously if you have a larger electric load you can accommodate a lot more renewables a lot more easily and you can actually have a virtuous circle so maybe the panel would like to come to some of those points part of the answer to that is a technical one that perhaps those colleagues would understand in this event would be and it goes back to something that's called the primary energy factor and the primary energy factor determines what can and cannot be put into a new built environment and primary energy factors are historical and they're based around what the composition of electricity generation was 15-20 years ago there has been massive massive decarbonisation of the electricity industry across Europe we need forward-looking primary energy factor what will the industry look like over the composition of generation 10 years from now, 20 years from now when you're putting in heating systems into new buildings that is an investment for 20 years and that needs that system should be determined by what the generation of electricity would be not over the historical period where a lot of it came from coal generation electricity just on that, I don't know if one was the Chief Executive of the Electricity Association of Ireland when you headed up your Electric Environmental Committee you made a lifelong campaign of this in the EU and it's exactly as Sean says we need to change the EU to the primary energy factor for electricity which then makes electricity as it becomes more and more decarbonised comparable to gas in terms of space heating in buildings I think Tony in a way might have answered your question but the one thing that I think about this is that if we continue just with electricity as our focus and more and more of these new technologies come on the system and customers start to go off grid or degrees of off grid even the 50-50 that Matthew Warren spoke about the cost of the grid is going to go up everybody in particularly those who rely on the grid 100% of the time so one way of optimising our energy the investment has already made in the system, in the grid coupled with the carbonisation of the generation side then is to move to the electrification of transport and heat Sean's own company has invested significantly in technologies around improving heat heat pumps and storage and direct heating vehicle technology and battery technology still hasn't been to go even if you take 20 minutes on a motorway station to charge your battery 80% of the time don't pick anyone and wait for 20 minutes but battery technology for vehicles is going to change over time and for sure electric vehicles have a role to play in cities so I think to keep the cost down on this trajectory to the future we need to look at electrification and change time then for a decarbonisation so moving on to subsidies I can't sort of not talk about subsidies because there's a big issue here two things in a way, subsidies and who's going to be included in all of this future going forwards first of all just a very blank question do we need subsidies and how do we need subsidies what should be the role of subsidies going forwards maybe from a sort of non-European perspective I think from a US perspective where we like to use this thing called net metering as our hidden subsidy for distributed generation period but especially solar I think that transparency of subsidies to me is the most important thing that people understand what the subsidies are I think a lot of society is on board with subsidies that moves us in a direction of decarbonisation but hidden subsidies and subsidies that transfer costs from one part of the customer to another category of customer are very difficult in Arizona we implemented a new rate structure that has a demand charge it still is net metering but it's net metering with a demand charge which is actually a lot more fair in terms of the impact on all the customers the rate base in it do the customers understand that do the customers feel that they understand it they understand it but they have to listen to a lot of publicity from a lot of different stakeholders in terms of the evil utility and that kind of thing but in the end customers are pretty knowledgeable they figure things out and are on board with things like that and things like that that reduce the subsidy for solar only move the penetration of solar out in time a little bit it's happening we're at a tipping point in solar there's no question about that a lot of the speakers have talked about that it's economic on a kilowatt hour basis we shouldn't be talking about levelized cost of energy really though but regardless it is it is becoming less and less expensive and it will happen and how we accommodate that and how we deal with that is very important I guess what I'm getting at is that if you look at Germany one of the reasons why Germany subsidized so heavily and they said it themselves which is that at the time that they were subsidizing very very heavily they didn't really have much experience they didn't know what were the best solutions what was the best way forward they subsidized everything to give everything a little bit of a chance until they knew what was really the best way forward and now they're kind of more letting them go their own way increasing or planning to with energy storage we're doing electric transportation and those are societal goals and as long as it's transparent and people are on board it's a good thing I think Germany did something in subsidies that would be a revolt here in this country if it was done so what Germany effectively did with subsidy was it lumped all the subsidy for renewable and new technologies onto the domestic customer so it didn't burden industry and obviously the domestic customer in Germany is prepared to tolerate that 35 or whatever it is yours a sense of kilowatt-hour but I think subsidies have a role to play if I speak from an industry perspective I don't think it's in the interest of the industry long-term to be an industry based on subsidy so I think subsidies the role of subsidies have to play is to incubate and to support R&D so a point has to come where renewable technologies do not require a subsidy and but then other technologies while they're going through the evolution phase will need subsidies I think the danger with subsidies particularly if you take the subsidies we've had in the system say and in Ireland we have exposed explicitly the subsidies a line item on your bill so customers know what the subsidy is so while you're building grid-scale renewable generation like large wind farms that subsidies socialize across all of the customer base but as you go towards more distributed forms of generation then the subsidy then that socialize across everybody goes to people then who can afford to invest in new technologies I think that's something that we need to think very carefully about and have an open and honest debate about just first of all I guess the thing is what I'm getting at them is also that this issue of as we've heard before things are getting more and more competitive and there will be a time when certain offerings will be attractive to consumers and they become attractive consumers is it worth paying big subsidies to support a mass rollout of things in a sense or trying to push a mass rollout of something before it's ready or is that just throwing money down the drain I guess that's in a way the question or is the idea of subsidy incubate things to help them to the technology to grow until you know to actually have a chance I can address that from the perspective of a consumer and also an R&D institution subsidies are always good to get someone who is skeptical to get on a solution so as an initial incentive yes they can work however they have the negative of expecting that subsidy for years to come and that can lead to a lack of competition and a lack of positive results and I can say the same for R&D while they are needed to start to jumpstart something a prolonged time of subsidies can then lead to negative so it actually in a way encourages the development of the less competitive technologies and you shouldn't have it more yes create some type of complacency good okay yeah sorry yeah sorry this subsidy question is a little thorny I used to work in the European Parliament and we had this conversation in the 90s when we started talking about the renewals directive and it's the same old broken record I'm afraid and the lady is correct people get stuck on subsidies but I'm talking here about the fossil fuel subsidies of 500 billion a year plus the nuclear subsidies which are never talked about including in Finland of course we have a civil liability guarantee which is given for free and is effectively a trillion dollar insurance that's not paid for and if you also include the external costs we're talking trillions of dollars of support for fossil nuclear so please let's talk about all of the subsidies and if we're going to make it transparent can we make all of those subsidies transparent please so that at least consumers can then see how much tax money is being spent on subsupporting the external costs are not being included in the cost of running these industries how much the civil liability guarantee is worth and then let's talk about subsidies and in terms of the subsidies not encouraging improvement the German support scheme was degressive became degressive over years it started if I remember correctly at 99 Fennig for solar which is about 40 eurocent or something and gradually was decreased every year as the because it reflected the improvement in the cost and that is to move the cost down which is why we're benefiting from solar today so you can have a support scheme which is a subsidy let's call it which has the effect of making the products more efficient which is what we're benefiting from so I think just to say subsidy equals bad news but you're yeah so I mean good points I mean what do you think I mean because what we're saying is then you should I mean you're totally correct I mean I'm based in Helsinki and I've never supported nuclear for sure but the reality is that but the question is here is about are we using subsidies in the right way subsidies are a finite resource they're a scarce resource and we have to use them and in a sense I guess what's happened in the past shouldn't reflect more mistakes of the future but I mean how should they be I mean I guess that's the question any more comments on that a subsidy should be a catalyst not a life support you know that's a stimulant to get an industry going or to get a technology going but it has to have a finite life you cannot build a sustainable business a long-term substance yeah good any more yeah one more question then sorry then oh sorry yeah Ian Lumley from Antashka and it's a very much ESB question our co-host here we've heard much today about this concept of energy citizen and the collapse of the old-time relationship between the customer and the power generator and grid transmitter there's a major impediment in Ireland which is not the case in other European countries whereby a micro generator whether it's residential or a small business commercial operator is not able because of the current Irish regulatory regime to be able to sell a surplus micro generation into the local distribution grid it's only for the big investment boys can do that so the question is when is ESB networks going to lift that barrier and follow European practice in allowing surplus micro generation to be sold into the grid it's not an ESB network restriction like technically the networks can allow power to flow in any direction it's more a market, a regulatory and a policy it was then ESB's customer supply it's now electric Ireland had an arrangement for a fixed period of time where we gave a tariff at a cost to ESB we gave a tariff to promote the kind of thing you're talking about but ultimately that all has to stack up in the context of the economics if I give an example from Portugal and it's based on their learning from Germany where a tariff a very attractive solar tariff started to dump people were putting solar panels on their roofs for more than their own need and taking the commercial opportunity of exporting it that drove quite a lot of requirement for investment in the local grid that had to be socialized across everybody and people got a tariff for that so in Portugal what they do now is they use they look at micro generation as in the same way as they look at energy efficiency so you invest in micro generation to make your own situation more efficient and to the extent that you want to export that you take your chances on the export price and so I suppose we're talking about markets we're talking about subsidies there isn't a bottomless pit of resource where people can be paid more than the market values their export and I think that's again a debate it's a harsh sounding position but that actually is the reality and I suppose what we need is we need the regime in place to encourage micro generation and that micro generation in all its forms is seen then as a way of making people much more energy sustainable to the extent then that they want to export the system and the regular regime and the market should allow but it should be at a market price with a market value Imaro Chakru FASTA and the US Future Design I want to not talk about subsidies but I want to talk about a carbon price and a distribution of that value to everybody equally that is a proposal being made in Paris shortly by FASTA the reason why that is better than subsidies and refits and so on is that a lot of the sort of narrow thinking that would inform the panel indeed to support electricity for heating comes from the fact that you're not really considering carbon and you're not looking at the other utilities of water and waste that because it all really comes in a package that if you were to consider water and waste and carbon implications of those you would definitely plump for distributed energy generation with distributed heat you'd be looking at bio energy certainly for that critical backup because it would also do your waste treatment it would also manage your municipal waste so what I'm telling you is to a certain extent I think you're too focused on electricity and energy you've got to think broader the world is short of every resource but the most critical one is carbon and a carbon price particularly if that price those receipts is given equally to everybody as a base of a citizen's income is the way to have a proper level playing field I agree with you completely in relation to carbon price I think the confusion in EU policy since the 2020 package was put in place was they had multiple instruments to drive decarbonisation and you had those multiple instruments interacting you had the ETS or the carbon price and you had renewable targets so I would support a carbon price being the driver of decarbonisation absolutely because if you get but the ETS hasn't got to that point yet and there's a lot of deliberations going on the EU Commission about that now the second point you make waste and energy and waste to energy that's all part of distributed energy resources and I think the future is moving towards more distributed energy resources biomass, bioenergy it makes sense that biomass is burnt where it is collected in small scale or medium scale power plants at the level of maybe a town or a municipality the same waste to energy it's all in the mix and I think they are all the technologies of the future that will coexist with other technologies that will make up the future of the electricity system good I think we're kind of short just one last question here because we're very short on time now and we'll wrap up Eamon Connolly from Claymote question for the panel particularly with the comment about residential storage will win out the logic of that is that it requires some new technology to be in many thousands of customers houses does the how does the panel see how that technology would be deployed in volume and do the traditional industry have the consumer marketing skills to implement it successfully question and I would give Apple as the example of how to do it properly in terms of consumer deployment of technology I would add to that that the industry needs to bring in more skill into the industry I mean it is a challenge but I guess also that who else is like Apple is there anyone else that's done what Apple's done so you could argue that they're a lone dog on that but any I'll give a view I think as we move to this more customer centric world that utilities like ESB are going to have to develop the marketing skills and the customer centric skills that haven't been a feature of our industry in the past they didn't have to be a feature of our industry and for example in Electric Ireland we're doing a lot in terms of marketing in terms of engagement with customers we're doing a lot in terms of innovation in supporting your own business climate we're in a collaboration with Google and Nest we've had a lifelong association with Glenn Dimplex True Heating and Water Controls and we're doing customer trials in all of that and I think the utility that doesn't embrace that then won't be a player it'll be a background player it won't be a foreground or a front of house player in this new world everything's there we don't need new marketing approaches Tesla knows how to market Nest knows how to market you guys know how to market technologies we just need to create the value streams and the utility has to create the infrastructure to link that residential resource to the DS3 services that are being developed here in Ireland that connection there's a project right here in Ireland that's the center of a project for Europe called Real Value projects like that create the infrastructure along with the market so the value streams are there in Arizona it's happening if there's a demand charge at the residential customer level people will buy home energy management systems they will buy climate systems they will buy Nest systems they will buy batteries to manage their demand because it'll be sold at Walmart and Home Depot and everything else it just happens if the value streams are there Mark has just touched on the project that we're leading here in Ireland called Real Value and this is a consortium of 12 pan-European some from the utility industry some in the whole area of consumer behavior but it is looking all of the technologies exist and it is how do you monetize those technologies when you bring it all together on an aggregated basis so the it's around installing the technology whether it's the hardware, the connectivity the responsiveness to demand side management enabling and it is going to be structured around 1250 homes 850 of those are here on the island of Ireland some of them are in the United Kingdom some in Germany and some in Latvia so the technology as I said exists the two key items that that project is striving to unlock is number one what are the value streams that can be converted into business models and the second one is the whole area of consumer behavior and engagement with the consumer and yet they are the two primary objectives of it last comment from Eleni as a consumer I envision that in the future I will be taking my phone right before leaving from work and saying home or I might even call it Watson I'll be leaving for home please make sure the house is warm oh and by the way I have guests coming tonight for a swim please make sure the pool is heated I don't have a pool but if I need extra energy please check with my parents they might have some spare to give me or get on the grid if it's above this price don't go for it so I envision this interaction through technologies like what we've seen today and many more I believe on their own they exist as a whole there's still work to do but it's very doable and as citizens I would say that I started at the beginning saying in the past citizens adapted to the city in the future the city adapts to the citizens I think the same for energy we're becoming very sophisticated as customers Interesting point to wrap up just to wrap up then thank you very much just to say that then trust residential storage accessible regulation and certainly correct facilitating regulation flexibility from the industry to respond to the changes focus on community and certainly a focus on consumers and consumer behavior extreme creativity from the industry or from the new entrance in that industry and unlocking the value so that we can pass it on to the customer because if there's a value there will be a chance for it and basically then put it in the oven let it rise and eat it so I think there's a lot of potential here and I think there's a lot of barriers as well but hopefully we're getting closer so thank you to the panel and thank you to the audience thank you