In this second session, we will discuss residential heat decarbonisation in Ireland and the recently published Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, report on this matter. I welcome to the meeting associate research professor, Dr. Niall Farrell, who was here before - he is welcome back - and Dr. Muireann Lynch, senior research officer. Were you here before Dr. Lynch?

Not at this committee.

Not during this Dáil. You are both welcome.

Before I invite the witnesses to deliver opening statement, I advise the following on parliamentary privilege. Witnesses and members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make any charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

The format of the meeting is that I will invite the witnesses to make an opening statement of a maximum of five minutes. Once it has been delivered, I will call on the members of the committee in the order they indicate to me to put their questions.

I thank the committee for the invitation to appear today to discuss the recent ESRI research on the decarbonisation of residential heat. I am joined by my co-author Dr. Niall Farrell.

By way of context, a considerable amount of research has been undertaken in Ireland and internationally on residential heat decarbonisation in recent years. This is due in no small part to the large volume of high-quality data that has been made available to us and other colleagues by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, the CSO, and various energy industry participants across the public and private sectors. We have also been able to avail of funding from the SEAI, Research Ireland, Horizon Europe and various energy industry organisations. We are extraordinarily indebted to these bodies for the data, funding and their expertise.

As the research in question uncovered some common and under-appreciated themes, we decided to prepare a review paper to summarise and synthesise these findings with a view to informing policy. As per the latest projections from the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Ireland is expected to fall short of carbon reduction targets, including in the residential sector. Current policy envisages decarbonisation of the residential sector primarily through energy efficiency and electrification via heat pumps. These require considerable investment by homeowners and by the State, as well as behavioural changes. The financial barriers are well understood in the literature and our paper touched briefly on those figures. However, the behavioural and technical barriers are less appreciated. On the former, the majority of policy levers for residential heat decarbonisation are modular in form, by which we mean they rely on individual homeowners to take the initiative. I have summarised that in the first table of our submission. This approach contrasts with electricity decarbonisation policy, for example, where no direct action is required by homeowners. Research also finds that a sizeable proportion of households are unlikely to undertake any home improvements, including retrofitting or energy saving measures. Householders also report considerable variance in how disruptive they perceive home improvement measures, such as retrofits, to be. These findings suggest that policy interventions may be improved by accounting for behavioural considerations alongside financial and environmental considerations at design phase.

On technical barriers, a wide range of international literature has found that actual energy consumption does not perfectly align with engineering-based predictions contained in energy performance certificates, the Irish version of which is the building energy rating, BER. Across BER bands, energy usage does not vary as much as predicted by engineering models. We do not have data to fully explain this result in an Irish context, but there are several likely reasons. The first is the rebound effect, whereby energy efficiency investments can induce an increase in energy demand. This is because occupants may set higher comfort levels upon upgrading their insulation and the emissions saving is less than predicted. Second, there may be error in how BERs capture the performance of the building fabric. BER certificates and the assessment that goes into generating them often involve the use of standardised parameters. BERs in general provide a useful indicator rather than a perfect prediction of energy performance. Third, householders may anchor against a particular energy budget and curtail their energy usage when they sense that their expenditure on energy is going beyond what they can afford. In addition, we have no data on the actual performance of heat pumps in particular in an Irish context, but data from the UK suggest that heat pumps do not perform at the efficiency levels assumed in various modelling exercises. Finally, homeowners may not operate their appliances or their homes in an optimal manner. For example they may open windows rather than turning down the heating.

The final sections of the paper have received rather less attention. They focus on potential policy responses to these results.

While the long-run goal is most certainly full electrification of the housing stock, the literature suggests that supplementary, bridging measures, to assist in reducing emissions in the short to medium term, may be worth considering. Measures that require minimal investment or behavioural change from homeowners, and-or measures that move the onus from the homeowner to energy suppliers, may prove effective if targeted towards households that are least likely to retrofit or electrify.

Previous research estimates that 13% of households within potential connection distance of the natural gas network would switch from a higher carbon fuel to gas if there were no connection charge, leading to a 3.9% reduction in emissions. For homes that are not proximate to the gas network, lower carbon fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas or zero-carbon fuels such as hydrotreated vegetable oil, HVO, biodiesel or new-generation e-fuels can replace kerosene with far lower financial or behavioural barriers. Local authorities currently have financial incentives to upgrade existing stock to heat pumps but not to install district heating.

There are, of course, advantages and drawbacks to all these policy options. They are summarised in table 3 in our submission. We present them as potential supplementary measures to consider in tandem with continued energy efficiency and electrification, as part of a potentially broader policy mix as we move towards decarbonisation.

I thank Dr. Lynch for the opening statement. We will now take questions from members, beginning with Senator Noonan.

I thank the witnesses for being with us. I have just a couple of questions to start with. The research generally caused quite a bit of stir, to say the least. The ESRI would know more than anyone that this is about behavioural change. Our big collective challenge here is around behavioural change. It is also about the confidence of consumers and homeowners. Dr. Lynch referred to the absence of data to explain the results in an Irish context. Could she elaborate on what seems to be a significant absence of data in an Irish context? Much of this is based on assumptions as to the reasons that Irish homeowners are not taking the actions in question. Despite this, the evidence would suggest something different, namely that we are doing quite well on the installation of domestic heat pumps and retrofitting.

The policy was set before much retrofitting had taken place, so we had to set it on the basis of engineering models based on how much energy buildings use based on their fabric, what they do and what is assumed about occupancy. Since setting it, we have done a fair bit of retrofitting. We have also done an awful lot of building energy rating, BER, assessment. This means we now have data that allow us to see how houses are actually performing relative to what the engineering models predicted. In general, the data show that more efficient homes are overconsuming relative to what the BER would suggest and that the less efficient homes are underconsuming. The latter result is not in any way surprising. This holds across the entire body of literature, and many international studies have found the same thing. The Senator’s own constituents will often tell him how cold they are. Quite simply, people in very energy-inefficient homes tend to underheat them. They might not heat them at all or might just light a stove in one room or whatever. However, the BER assumes all homes are heated to a comfortable ambient temperature. The implication is that if you are in a very inefficient home, you will burn a lot of oil or gas. In practice, that does not happen. This almost certainly explains the under-consumption by the least efficient homes.

With regard to the overconsumption by the more efficient homes, the reason we do not have data in an Irish context is that although we know what the engineering model implied before the fact and are now getting some data on what occupants of the homes are doing after the fact, we do not know why. It could be really helpful to use sensors or fit tracking devices to the likes of heat pumps and EV chargers in order that we could just have, subject to data protection, a better sense of which appliances people are using, when they are using them and how. I am referring even to sensors around doors and windows. I have got four kids and our back door is open all day long, especially in the summer but also in the winter. The members will know that this lets all the heat out. These are the kinds of things that might be going on, but the absence of data is related to a lack of access to real-time data on what people are actually doing in their homes. That kind of data is extraordinarily difficult to gather. Even getting smart meter data is very difficult.

Would it have been better to hold off on the report until such data were gathered? Deputies Byrne, Cronin and I would have a way of gathering data. It is called canvassing. Anecdotal evidence from householders is that retrofits are largely very positive. There are two issues at play. The BER system needs to be constantly reappraised. That is important. Second, there is a lot of criticism of the SEAI grant process. Significant improvements are required in terms of the means by which people apply and the simplicity of the process. Many people bypass it. We speak to many who do not opt for the grants because they feel it is easier simply to engage a builder and do the retrofit in that way. The absence of hard data is a genuine challenge for us collectively in moving towards significant behavioural change.

Notwithstanding the challenges in gathering the data, it is important that we do gather it and be able to make informed decisions about reappraising the SEAI and BER processes. I would welcome the witnesses’ thoughts on that.

As a researcher, I am never going to say no to more or better data. In particular, this is something the institute will focus on as the research comes out. On the Senator’s first point, the reason we wrote the paper was because we had seen so many pieces of research stating the same kinds of things, things we believed were important to draw attention to. This is why we decided to synthesise all the research in a single paper. If we could obtain better granular data on what is actually happening in homes before and after retrofits, it would be super helpful, but it is incredibly difficult. Those kinds of data all count as personal, so it takes a couple of years to set things up in advance, get all the approvals in place and that kind of thing before gathering the data.

Would the sustainable energy communities be a means by which the data could be gathered? There is a defined cohort of businesses, industry and dwellings.

The kind of data we are thinking of would require having extra information. We would need more than just billing data. Even getting access to billing data is challenging. The kind of data we are thinking of is more than just billing data.

There are a few things to say. There are two elements to this: what is happening and why it is happening. We have some data and some insight into what is happening. We reviewed what we could and have given the insight we could to the extent this was possible. The nature of doing research is such that you are always learning. We have presented what we know at this moment in time. We know a good deal in an Irish context about what is happening. It is harder, for the reasons Dr. Lynch has outlined, to get the data to understand why it is happening. We outlined what was happening and then outlined, given what we know from international experience, what the reasons could be. Are those reasons different in Ireland than elsewhere? I do not think so but it will be useful to examine the matter in an Irish context.

On another point that Dr. Lynch mentioned on the difficulty in getting Irish data, the real stumbling block is the GDPR requirement. This requires a lot of legal over-and-back, which takes a lot of time. It is like multiplying by three the time taken to engage in all the discussions that go on among lawyers when buying a house. Everyone has experience of that and should know what it is like. There is buy-in from every side. Industry is very interested in doing this, as are we. It is just that getting over the hurdle I have described makes it really difficult.

I thank the witnesses very much for their research and what the ESRI does in general. My point follows on from Senator Noonan’s. I am one of those who is currently looking into retrofitting.

I love the point made about one of the big fears of consumers being the level of disruption, and the idea of just handing over the key and letting somebody just do it and then going back in. I have spoken to people who have gone through the process and a lot of what we rely on is anecdotal data. The more evidence-based decision making we can have as policy makers and as individual consumers, the better. Thinking about it from the perspective of the consumer, what would the ESRI like to see in terms of the State making particular data or information that is not there at present available to people, which would either honestly address concerns or provide a greater incentive to explore options?

When it comes to consumer behaviour, information tends to move people less than we would like, or less than we would expect. This is especially true when we are trying to get people to change their behaviour. A counter example is something like the vaccine campaign. With one or two jabs per person, Ireland had an incredibly high uptake of vaccines and getting good quality information out there almost certainly played a role in it. On the climate side, what information tends to do is increase people's awareness and they score better in terms of tests and when they are asked questions. It does seem to change people's cognitive awareness on what is going on but it tends not to move behaviour. When it is a really big behavioural change, such as changing how we drive or heat our homes, especially when it comes with a big financial tag, even the best data in the world is limited in what it can do to overcome the behavioural barriers. These are a hard thing to get households to do, even if they have the money available.

Having said this, it is certainly the case that SEAI and others are very interested in trying to see how this can be communicated better to the public. A lot of research in this area has been funded, and I have availed of funding myself in this area. One of the big things that is very helpful right now is that there are various websites. Anyone can go onto the ESB Networks website and download their smart meter data. They can take that smart meter data, and not do anything to it except download the file, and then upload it to any price comparison website for various utilities. This will estimate the electricity bill. This type of thing is great. It would be even better if we could get it to the stage of uploading a bill with the BER so that people would get some idea of what their post-works BER would be. This is a difficult thing to estimate and it would need to be done on the basis of the real-world data we see rather than engineering-based models.

What needs to be done to be able to achieve this goal?

I guess we would need to talk to some of our engineering colleagues. There might be something to be said for the Department's website or something like it having a tool where people can-----

Having real-time data would be really useful.

Anyone can get their smart meter data. Making a tool like this-----

But it is about applying it.

I suppose people would probably need to do it-----

If there was an innovative app developer who could-----

Yes, honestly off the top of my head it would not be that challenging but I do not know of anyone who is doing it right now. I honestly thought of it just this second.

Something to add is that when it comes to information that can help, a lot of research says if we provide information to people it should be targeted at whatever barrier is stopping them or prohibiting their uptake. A good example could be the huge administrative burden involved in certain activities. If this is what is limiting people going ahead and taking a grant, any information that comes out should be about how to overcome it. Actions taken should be to make it as easy as possible to get over that hurdle. Information in and of itself is less effective than information that has picked up what the issue is and tries to target it.

I thank the witnesses for coming before the committee and for their presentation. The research has confirmed to me that I was right: relying on individuals to make the changes we need is not going to happen. When I was growing up it was all about the ozone layer and we had to get rid of the gas that was in the propellant. The Government did not bring in a carbon tax on the propellant, it told the companies to stop using it. We need much more State intervention rather than relying on individuals. Individuals either cannot afford to make the change, and retrofitting is very expensive, or they show us with their feet that they are not willing to do it. We have to put more obligations on the energy providers. I thought this was very interesting.

The climate policy we have designed is not changing behaviour and this is a problem. It has been mentioned that local authorities have the financial incentive to upgrade existing stock to heat pumps but not to install district heating. We need a complete change in Government policy if we are to meet our carbon objectives.

District heating is part of Government policy for decarbonising residential heat. There have been changes made to-----

It is very slow rolling it out.

Exactly and I know work is being done on this. Certainly right now, if a local authority wants to upgrade its stock with heat pumps it can avail of funding for this.

There is financial assistance for this.

Exactly. I would hope that something similar for district heating will come but it seems to be a missing piece of the puzzle, given that district heating is explicitly supported by Government policy. I know there have been challenges around regulating it because having a district heating network would be quite a valuable asset. We would not want it in the hands of a nefarious actor and probably not a private sector actor. Network utilities in general are a tricky and important space to regulate. I appreciate there may be hold-ups for these types of reasons.

On the behavioural barriers, one thing I have been interested in for a long time is the fact that we have done comparatively well on our renewable electricity targets, even though they were the most onerous. We have not done so well on the transport or heating side, even though those targets were less onerous. I wonder whether this is at least partly explained by the fact that when it comes to electricity the consumer did not really have to do anything. Consumers continued to use electricity as normal and we changed the fuel behind the meter.

And put more obligations on the energy providers.

It is not so much an obligation on the energy providers. The Government sets targets and renewable electricity was invested in, supported by subsidies. It is about the mode by which the consumer is expected to do something. In this case they did not need to invest in anything. They did need to pay a subsidy on their bills, which is quite a small subsidy and it has been negative recently. For heat and transport we ask homeowners to do something entirely different, which is to make these modular investments.

District heating would be a very good example of doing more like what we do with electricity. It would change heating for people behind the meter. The analogy would almost be that at the moment we have a big gas generator burning and we send electricity to everybody's home. In the same way, we would have a source of heat and the heat would be sent to everybody's home. At the moment everyone has their own little boiler. It would be like everybody having their own little wind turbine or their own little diesel generator. That is nonsense and we would not design this from the start. District heating is great in the sense that it also addresses behaviour barriers. Of course, there are regulatory barriers there also.

Dr. Lynch also mentioned switching to lower carbon fuels, such as biofuels and LPG, with minimal hub changes and removing the gas connection costs to enable cheaper fuel. This goes against the grain because they are still fossil fuels.

Yes.

The damage might not be as much from them. It was certainly an interesting report to read and I thank the witnesses.

I want to come back to district heating. Does the ESRI have a view as to why it has been so slow? Do the witnesses have a sense of this? I was a member of Dublin City Council and it has been talked about for 20 years. The heat source was built, which is waste to energy. Do the witnesses have any views on why this has been so slow?

It is one of the big known unknowns for me. I do know the regulation has been a challenge but outside of that I do not know whether it is because of planning or the usual hold-ups in construction. I do not know whether Dr. Farrell has a view on this.

I do not. I imagine planning is probably an issue. I am not as familiar with it.

It has been extraordinarily slow. It has been part of the policy mix for at least a decade, if not two.

At least. Okay. I thank the witnesses. I refer to one of the criticisms of the work they have done, which I think is very welcome, by the way. It goes to Deputy Cronin's point. It seems to be indicating that, realistically, gas is on the table for the future. It chimes a little bit, in that we had representatives of the Irish Academy of Engineering in here and they made a similar point in regard to the gas reserve. They thought the gas reserve is absolutely essential but too small. How would the witnesses respond to the criticism that it is effectively embedding gas, for want of a better description? If some of these policy measures are included, it would mean that gas has a longer lifespan. What do the witnesses think?

Anyone who is serious about climate action says that in the long run, we need the whole housing stock electrified, off fossil fuels and as efficient as possible. There are no arguments there. All we were trying to say is we are not going to get there as fast as we intend to. The Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, figures are quite clear on that. The question is: what do we want to do in that context? Even if we did manage to retrofit 500,000 homes by 2030, we have got about 2 million homes in the country. The question is: what are the other 1.5 million doing? We have about 700,000 homes that burn kerosene right now, which is a really high proportion relative to the rest of Europe. It is a fact that it would be a lower carbon solution for them to burn gas instead of kerosene. That is not to say they should burn gas forever because, in the long run, everything should be electrified.

It is incremental.

Yes. The fact that there is a connection cost associated with that and there is a new boiler can lead to what we call fossil fuel lock-in. There are arguments against it. There are disadvantages to all of the proposals we made and we want to be up front about that. We included that in the paper and the supplementary material. For us, it is not so much a question of whether we should electrify or we should do this other stuff. The answer is that we should definitely electrify. The only question is: given that we are not going to electrify to the extent that we want to, do we want to do nothing and miss the target by a decent chunk, or do we want to do some extra stuff and miss the target by a smaller margin?

It is kind of like the enemy of the good is the best. Dr. Lynch is saying the ideal is electrification and if you are not going to get to electrification in time, you are better off going part of the way with something like what she has outlined in regard to gas as an option and as a policy. Is that it?

Exactly, yes. It is about additional, supplementary, complementary or bridging measures. It is not about replacing or substituting anything.

I noted the table, Table 3, which is very useful because it sets out, in policy terms, the levers that could be pulled. There has always been this question around heat pumps. There is a behaviour bar, which says significant if tied to retrofit. I refer to the house having to be fully sealed and airtight, etc., before the heat pump goes in. That is what that is really.

It is. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, is currently undergoing a pilot study. The reason you need the house so well retrofitted is that the heat that comes from a heat pump is a lower grade heat. Your radiators do not get as high as they normally would, so it is harder to heat the house if it is leaky. However, the barriers to retrofitting have been well understood at this point. There is a pilot being done in higher temperature heat pumps. Instead of having a 4 KW you might have a 5.5 KW or 6 KW heat pump. You could just plug that into a house without needing to do the retrofit. We need to wait and see what that pilot shows. I have done some modelling work and I know SEAI has done some modelling work. Given the fact that heat pumps are not performing as well as we thought initially, I would say that may not be the silver bullet we expect it to be but let us see what the pilot shows.

I thank Dr. Lynch. How much is economics and cost factored into all of this analysis? The renewable heat obligation, RHO, is definitely the decision-maker supplier in Government but the unit cost of that organic methane, while very welcome, is more expensive than, as it stands, regular gas. Did Dr. Lynch factor any of that into this analysis?

The analysis was mostly a review of existing literature. Around the specific question of-----

Cost. So it did not, really. I refer to energy costs and the cost of your bill, in terms of the behavioural impact and how high the bill is.

Most of the literature we are reviewing looks at things like costs but it looks at things like costs assuming we want to decarbonise. The review was in the context of decarbonisation. It is certainly more expensive to decarbonise than not decarbonise but, given that we want to decarbonise, how do we do so in the cheapest way possible and yet make sure that we do it? If we had no behavioural barriers on the table at all and if we had no financial constraints because people could just borrow with no issues, then we would stick with electrification and retrofitting and we would be doing it way faster than we are right now. However, we have behavioural, financial and construction sector constraints, all sorts of frictions in the economy and planning constraints. Supply chains are an issue for some of the components of various technologies. In that context, the question is: given all these constraints, what else could be on the table?

I have done some research with a colleague, which is due to be submitted for publication soon - I can certainly send a copy of the working paper in once it is available - that looks at biomethane versus heat pumps, using microdata from houses that use gas. For most households, it is more economic to go with a heat pump but for those houses that do not use much gas, it is actually more economic to use biomethane, even assuming that the biomethane is four times more expensive than natural gas. Looking at Figure 1, one of the things we are uncovering is that the one-size-fits-all policy is maybe not the best because households vary greatly from one another in their usage of energy, the occupancy and those kinds of things. I refer to having better targeting, where the households that are going to retrofit get the grants and, for the households that will never retrofit, maybe there is an alternative policy measure for them around an alternative fuel or something.

Did Deputy Cronin want to come back in?

I wanted to ask about the building energy rating, BER, bands. What kind of engineering models are used? Do the witnesses think we need to look at them again? They mentioned that the heat pumps are underperforming. Should we be looking at those again?

I can deal with the BERs. Dr. Lynch might know about heat pumps. On the way the BER is done, my understanding is the BER assessor goes in and there is a standard, deep-dwelling procedure that assesses the heat performance of the building. That entails a standardised assumption. Essentially, they look at the wall and see that this wall is X, as opposed to understanding exactly how airtight different elements of building material are. That can lead to a deviation between what is actually going to happen and what is recorded as potentially happening. That is essentially one of the sources of the deviation between what the BER might predict is going to happen and then what is actually going to happen.

On the heat pumps, a heat pump works like a backwards fridge in that it takes heat from outside and concentrates it into the home. The coefficient of performance that is typically assumed is that for every one unit of electricity you put into the heat pump, you get four units of heat out, which kind of seems like magic but it is a really good deal. However, in regard to that number of four, it is not that it is wrong but it applies under laboratory conditions when the heat pump is the exact right size for the dwelling, when the dwelling is very well insulated and all those kinds of things. We also have not had as many heat pumps in a humid climate like Ireland or the UK. There is a some research to suggest that the humidity might make a difference as well. If the outside temperature goes very low but in a dry climate, then the air the heat pump is pulling in is cold and it has to do more work to heat it up. If the outside temperature goes very low then you also potentially get ice. It is harder to heat cold, damp air than to heat cold, dry air. For that reason, the performance is certainly not four units. It is not four anywhere. The question is: how much lower than four is it? There are some data from the UK - only small studies - suggesting it could be as low as 2.5. It would be really great to get some actual data on how Irish heat pumps are performing. We have installed so many at this stage that it would be fantastic to get some data on how they are performing, particularly in the winter, to see what coefficient of performance, COP, we are working with here and then we can do better modelling on that basis.

Keep us updated if the ESRI gets that data.

Similar to Deputy Cronin, I have a question on the BER. The ESRI’s research shows that BERs do not correspond with the real energy usage of households. Has the ESRI looked at alternative modelling or ways that would more accurately reflect the real energy usage?

Yes. We have not done it but work is ongoing in TU Dublin, the University of Galway and places like that. They are taking the data available to try to understand what is happening. We are in a world of big data so we should be able to use this to our advantage. Instead of predicting what we think is going to happen, we can observe what has happened and then use that to better predict exactly how a particular installation in a household with certain characteristics leads to a specific outcome. We could know the performance of households individually, house by house. We could better predict how a new installation might perform in a new household.

The witnesses from the ESRI have mentioned that every household differs significantly. A house built in the 1970s, with its cavity walls and windows and doors, etc., might make a huge impact compared with new-build houses, etc. The witnesses are saying that, with any type of new modelling, it would still be difficult to provide an accurate reflection of the reality. Currently, BER is kind of seen as a one-size-fits-all model and households fall somewhere within that scale.

No matter what you do, there is room for error. We can minimise the error, however. Essentially, we can do a lot better than we are doing. The data can be used to better understand what people are doing. Looking at a house and what the household is doing is an observation. There is no error in that regard. Predicting what might happen to another house, having used the observed data from previous houses, is better than it being based on an ex ante engineering prediction where household behaviour and nuances surrounding the energy building materials are not taken into account.

One quarter of households are not willing to retrofit regardless of the incentives. I am trying to square a circle here. While I am not trying to encourage more carbon use, should there be more incentives around the likes of biodiesel and HVO fuel, as well as biomethane fuel, which was mentioned? Should there be more incentives to use those clean fuels, rather than what seems to be a policy reliance on retrofitting as the only way forward?

The fact that only renewable electricity, grants and those kinds of things are attracting policy support at the household level is a policy that should be justified. The justification, until now, has essentially been that electricity is the best, cleanest and most efficient way to do it. That argument stands for sure. I question whether the progress to date and the behavioural and other barriers covered in the literature are enough to prompt a rethink. If we are to give policy support to alternative fuels, it is incredibly important we ensure they are certified and sustainable. We know there are problems with the feedstocks. We know they are fraudulent and all that kind of thing. Perhaps, having looked at all of it, we will decide that the arguments against alternatives are too strong. That is fair enough. In that case, however, the policy choice is essentially to not decarbonise to the extent that we hope to and have set binding targets to meet. I cannot see us meeting the targets we have set under the current policy mix.

What I am taking from what Dr. Lynch said is that there is a need to consider the diversification of energy sources rather than this sole reliance on electricity.

It depends on what we want to do-----

It depends on what we are trying to achieve.

Maybe fossil fuel boilers will be banned and everyone will have to electrify whether they like or not, or freeze. That is also a policy alternative. It is in the context of what we want the policy to do.

To add to that, one point made in the document is that electrification and retrofits are the first and best method. However, if we are not going to meet that target and we want to try to get closer to it, do we want to do something else that is lower carbon for those who are not going to retrofit? It is about discriminating as best we can and having a policy in place for those people who are least likely to adopt electrification. It is not substituting one policy for the other. Rather, it is an additional measure.

I have a couple of quick questions. I thank the witnesses for this useful conversation. With regard to biomethane and HVO fuels, there is a significant issue with the availability of HVO fuel to put it into the mix. Biomethane fuel causes significant challenges from a land use perspective. That is where the feedstock, which Dr. Lynch mentioned, will be challenging given the multiple land use demands we will have. Limiting demand for gas must be the number one priority for the State when it comes to the use of fossil fuels.

The other big picture is to put aside emissions and targets and think of the significant impact retrofitting homes has for the thermal comfort of families. That is critical. There has been a lot of discussion about the carbon tax in the past week. These schemes are targeted towards low-income households. Many low-income households receive a 100% grant. The core of this must be behavioural change and people understanding and appreciating the wider benefits.

There is a research gap in this regard. While this session has been useful, can we look at an opportunity to do a deep dive and a more qualitative analysis of households? Perhaps we could take sample households from different cohorts and housing types to participate in a longitudinal survey or some research in this regard. Is that something the ESRI could lead?

Were the scenario descriptions in table 1 designed by the ESRI?

Yes. We constructed them. Table 1 contains the current policies that are available. I think I have the titles broadly correct but it may well be the case that there are other policies missing from the table.

I am talking about the respondents to the statements. Do the witnesses agree that there still is a significant research gap in order to get into the weeds about people’s uses of their houses and why they do or do not do certain things to them? Is that something that might help to inform future policy, because that is what this is all about?

It is “Yes” to both questions.

The witnesses from the ESRI have already said there is a data gap.

Yes. We would love to fill that gap.

That gap could be tied in with the grant system. People get a grant but, in return, they share research out.

Yes, that would be fabulous. I would have loved if we had collected the eircode or small area of the recipient of the electric vehicle, EV, grants. It would have been fantastic to know where they were going and we would have been able to predict where they will go.

There are in excess of 120,000 pre-1919 buildings in the country. A lot of work is being done around the urban and town centres first policy, as well as the retrofitting grants. There has to be a different process for accessing those buildings, including that point around thermal comfort. Sometimes, simple measures in those houses, such as lined curtains, can make a big difference. There needs to be a separate process. If we are going to scale up the retrofitting and reuse of above-shop buildings and those in our old town centres, we need to have a whole different approach.

We are coming towards the end. The witnesses mentioned further research they are planning. The SEAI is doing work around a pilot-----

Yes. The SEAI is carrying out a pilot on high-temperature heat pumps.

Is the ESRI involved in that?

No, we are not.

I have two papers on biomethane, one from the agricultural point of view and the other on biomethane versus heat pumps for households. We hope to submit that to a journal soon, so a working paper will be available at that point.

When they are available, will Dr. Lynch share them with the committee and we will circulate them, as they would be of interest?

Yes, certainly.

I thank the witnesses for coming and presenting on this subject. We will publish the opening statement on the committee website. I presume that is okay.

Yes, it is fine.

We will now suspend briefly to allow the witnesses to leave the meeting.