Good afternoon. My name is Alex White. I'm delighted to welcome you to this webinar, which is the second event of the 2021 lecture series entitled Rethink Energy Countdown to COP26. The series is brought to you by the ESB and the IIEA. Throughout the course of these webinars, we will convene international thinkers, renowned energy experts and political leaders, all of whom will address the critical issues in energy policy in advance of the next annual annual UN climate change conference, very important conference, and taking place in Glasgow in November of this year, COP26. On behalf of the IIEA, I'd like to thank the ESB for their sponsorship of this series. Today we're delighted to be joined by Kristin Panarelli, Stephanie Jemison, and Dr Paul Dean. The title of the event is The Value of Energy, a framework for the transition to net zero. Our distinguished speakers will outline and assess a new framework for energy solutions which have been developed by the World Economic Forum in partnership with Accenture. The system value framework seeks to evaluate economic, environmental, social and technical outcomes of the energy transition, not just their cost implications. Kristin Panarelli is head of electricity at the World Economic Forum, and Stephanie Jemison is a global industry lead for Accenture's utilities businesses. And they'll outline the key features of this new framework that's been developed and will share the findings of the Irish market analysis arising from it so that we're very interested to see that. In response, Dr Paul Dean will evaluate the system value framework and highlight what he sees as the potential opportunities that it presents to achieve Ireland's ambitious 2030 climate and energy targets. And after these presentations, we'll moderate a brief panel discussion with our speakers, and this discussion will also feature Catherine O'Brien, who's the senior manager of Accenture Ireland, who provide a more detailed assessment of the application of the system value framework to the Irish market. In this discussion, we'll have a Q&A session, and you, you're our audience, glad to have you. You'll be able to join the discussion by using the Q&A function on Zoom there, which we're all also familiar with at this stage, and you should see that on your screen. Feel free to send in your questions in throughout the session, actually when they occur to you rather than waiting until later on, because if you put them in, we'll be able to collate them and they'll have a better chance of being used. Keep them short, keep them tight, keep them pippy, the shorter and the clearer, the better, and we'd like to try and get to as many of them as we can in this relatively short period that we have. Please identify yourself if you are asking a question and your affiliation organization, if you have one, we'd appreciate that. Remember that the entire event today is on the record, we're not switching from one to the other on the record off the record it's all on the record and and also feel free, please if you're on Twitter to tweet at any point, and the hashtag to use is hashtag rethink energy. It gives me great pleasure to hand over for a few minutes at the outset of the webinar to Jerry O'Sullivan, who's the deputy CEO of the ESB as you know, and Jerry is just going to make some opening remarks and set the context for today's event so we're delighted to have you Jerry and it's over to you. Thanks Alex and good morning, good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It's very much like to welcome you here today on behalf of ESB to the second lecture in our rethink energy series in association with IIEA. We certainly had a very fascinating opening session with Airbus on fossil free aviation, including the use of green hydrogen and that linked very much with a recent ESB announcement on green Atlantic at Money Point. As Alex said, the purpose of our series is to bring critical energy policy issues and solutions for broader debate as we head towards COP26. Today's lecture is slightly different that it relates to a project that ESB has been involved in over the past few months with Accenture and the World Economic Forum. And the context is that ESB completed its own internal analysis on how best to support government's very ambitious 7% a year-on-year target to 2030, and the lead was necessary to enable this. And at the same time, we became aware that the World Economic Forum energy action group supported by Accenture were developing a framework that enables policymakers to take a look beyond the bottom line and include a holistic view of social economic environmental issues as we consider investments and technology choices on the decarbonisation journey. This was initially applied to six international markets including China and India, and laterally to the Biden administration in US and UK. The framework can help any country to holistically evaluate the decarbonisation platform regardless of their starting position. So earlier this year, ESB walked with Accenture to apply this global framework to an Irish context and to a specific target of the 7% a year-on-year set by government. We did this to check our own homework, but also to provide an input to the national lead base. This also will be presented today. The study certainly reinforces the key role that electricity has in reducing energy emissions and endorses many of the actions in the climate action plan and the ESB strategy. But it also highlights the limitations of what this sector can do on its own, and the need for a cross sectoral multi-disciplinary approach to finding solutions. The system value framework is important because it takes a worldwide methodology and applies it to Ireland. This kind of global cooperation and information sharing is key to tackling climate change. I think it's also particularly timely as our own government engages with citizens on this very debate. I think it would be great if Ireland could get consensus on the pathway, its phasing, sequencing and pace across all sectors. So I'd like to commend the World Economic Forum Energy Council for developing the framework and also thank Accenture for applying it here in Ireland and for sharing their insights today. So I'll hand back to you, Alex, and look forward to the speakers and the debate. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jerry, for that. And we'll go straight to our speakers. So our two speakers, first two speakers are going to do effectively as well as a joint presentation to you, they'll move over and back as between them. This is Kristin Panarelli and Stephanie Jensen. Kristin Panarelli is head of electricity at the World Economic Forum, the WEF. She focuses on enabling public and private sector activity to identify the most effective policies, actions and cooperation to accelerate the energy transition. Ms Panarelli has 20 years of experience in the government and energy related private sector. Prior to joining the WEF, she worked in electricity sector strategy, acquisitions, project development and financing with the AES Corporation, AES Solar and Son Edison. Previously, Ms Panarelli worked at the White House in various political roles in the National Economic Council and the Office of Management and Budget. Stephanie Jensen is the global industry lead for Accenture's utility business, responsible for portfolio services across the utility value chain. Ms Jensen has a proven track record of helping her clients with energy transition and growth strategies while driving a business transformation programs with utilities in North America and in Europe. Stephanie conducts research and has published articles related to the digitally enabled grid and the new energy consumer and is a world economic fellow with the energy and materials industry platform. So that's two very strong speakers that I'm really looking forward to hearing and I'm sure you are too. Over to you both. Thank you Alex and thank you very much to the IEA for this invitation. So, I'll, I'm going to just just start off with with with a quick introduction as to what the World Economic Forum does so the forum is the international organization for public and private cooperation. And we're focused on bringing stakeholders together to focus on the world's biggest challenges like the energy transition and climate change. So in the lead up to COPE 26, more governments and cities and businesses are committing to a net zero carbon future. And the real question is how to get there after the commitments. So we know that large scale transformation is needed, and more than ever, there is a need to rethink the system. And so the system value framework is offering a new lens to make investment decisions to help with national economic planning. And it's a tool that can help shift decision making from solely focusing on cost to value. And so today Stephanie and I are going to share with you the framework and its applications, the context for Ireland, and then how this all fits into this path to a net zero carbon future. So a little bit of context on why we started this work on the framework. And during the first wave of the pandemic, we had a dialogue amongst the electricity industry CEOs who are partners of the World Economic Forum to discuss what are the possible actions and what is the response that we can take as an industry. And Henry Anderson, who is the CEO of Bestis and the chair of our community shared some of his thoughts on the value that clean energy transition can deliver to society, and that if we focus on value, it's a way to move economies forward. And so from there we began to build out. And along with this global group of CEOs and their companies, the conversation evolved to this narrative on how to shift industry thinking beyond cost to value. And we also partnered to help build a stronger narrative backed by analysis, and that is where Accenture came on to support. So together we conducted dozens of interviews to develop the system value framework, and to identify recovery solutions, which vary across markets. So I'm going to hand the floor over to Stephanie who is going to walk you through the framework, Stephanie. And hello everyone I'm really happy to be here as part of this panel. And if we go to the next page. You can now see what we call the system value framework and I'm going to take a minute and go a bit slow because I know there's a lot on this page, and it's really important for you to understand this framework because it's really the starting point and the key to all of the analysis that we've done over the past year and we'll share some of the highlights with you here. So this system value framework has a number of these hexagons that you can see on the page. Each hexagon represents a desired outcome of the energy system. You can see in there that cost is represented, of course cost is represented, but it's not only cost. As you've already heard here in this session is a holistic framework. It includes a number of dimensions and it is globally relevant. You can see here things like foreign direct investment. That might not be relevant for countries in Europe, but it certainly is in other countries around the world like Brazil and like South Africa. It is a flexible framework. It allows the user to first prioritize these desired outcomes before solutions are found. And that's what makes this model so flexible and globally relevant. This model has been tested with all of the strategy officers, all of the CEOs of those organizations that you saw on the previous slide that Kristen shared those partners of the electricity industry with the World Economic Forum so it wasn't a case of Accenture or the Forum developing this in isolation. We spent several weeks really debating and finalizing these desired outcomes. So over the past year it's really been tested and has stood up to that test. And again, it's important for you to realize this is just an entry point into the framework for each one of these hexagons. There's a model behind this. We did bottom up analysis for all of the key markets that were mentioned and as we continue to apply it to new markets. We leverage that model so that we can come up with solutions that are prioritized and relevant for that market and help that individual market such as Ireland accelerate the path to net zero. So this is just a quick overview of the system value framework. Kristen, I think it would be great now if you would share a bit about those markets that we've already analyzed share a couple of the highlights from those markets, as well as sharing some practical applications of the system value framework because Kristen you and I both know through our work together over the last year there are so many applications to this and just sharing that I think would be very useful to the group. So Kristen, I'll turn it back to you. Thanks, Stephanie. Next slide please. So, as Stephanie mentioned, we did test the framework, along with the business stakeholders and worked on an analysis across Brazil, China, Europe, India and the US. And the focus was to test the framework against the solutions. We're going to share some of those with you in just a minute that could help markets recover from the consequences of the pandemic. So the opportunities were selected on the basis of three criteria. First of all, does the solution advance economic recovery. Secondly, does the solution accelerate the clean energy transition. And third, can it drive results within a 2025 horizon. So we were looking at a shorter time horizon here than the typical 2030 2050 horizons. Next slide please. Because the framework offers a much more holistic perspective, it can be used in a number of different contexts by both business and by government. For example, in policymaking, the framework can illustrate how policies can create a range of value streams for people and the economy. And in business, foreign partners have already started using this framework to help frame investment decisions and help with conversations with investors. And this framing, it's also a lens that can be really useful for businesses and governments to work more closely together and to really create a common language so that together they can focus on the solutions that demonstrate the most value. So now that we've shared with you the framework and some of the applications, Stephanie, if you could please walk us through the recovery solutions for Ireland that are maximizing system value over the next five years. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Kristen. Okay, so this slide is quite busy, very colorful, and therefore I'm going to focus your attention on one thing and that is over to the right side of the page you see the gap with the blue circle around it. I'm going to point that out because that was our single focus for this work in Ireland. We applied the system value framework to that gap to come up with solutions that would close the gap between the existing measures in the climate action plan from 2019 compared to the ambitious 7% year over year reductions plan through 2030 so simply put, our goal was to find the solutions that would reduce and potentially eliminate the 1400 megatons that you see circled on that page. Now I'm going to share the solutions. If we go to the next page, I'll share the solutions that we've proposed so far. And if you add up all of the CO2 reductions, you'll see that these don't total, don't close the gap completely, but they do close about three quarters of the gap. So what this shows is this page contains quite a bit of work to do in the next 10 years, but these proposed solutions do find a way to close the gap about three quarters of the way, meaning there's still more work to do. So these are the solutions we found through this work in Ireland. I'm not going to drain all of them because that would take quite a bit of time, but I will just hit on just two or three of them so that you know what kind of solutions we have in mind. So as you heard from Jerry O'Sullivan at the beginning of this call, this is cross sectoral. This does require businesses and governments to work together to close that gap and I'll highlight some of the examples that you see here on the page. So let's just start with the power system decarbonization. Part of our recommendation includes further decarbonization of the power system, and we propose to do that through deploying an additional one and a half gigawatts of offshore wind, deploying storage solutions, a variety of storage solutions, including batteries, pumps hydro and creeps green hydrogen. And finally, we propose to implement carbon capture and storage on one gigawatt of natural gas generation using either local storage solutions or international storage solutions, such as northern endurance and UK, or northern lights in Norway. And those are the recommendations in that power system decarbonization solution. You can see some of the benefits there. These aren't the only benefits, but in the full report you get a view of the full benefits in that space. Next, I'm going to go on to public sector decarbonization because I really do want to emphasize the important points about these solutions that they are cross sectoral. The thing I like about about this proposal is we stretch the emissions reduction target in the public sector from 30% to 80% and that that is applied primarily to buildings. And what that allows the public sector to do is to really leave from the front and create anchor demand for low carbon technologies in Ireland. This solution focuses mainly on heating electrification and energy efficiency. And then finally, I'll cover one more very quickly, which is very relevant for Ireland. We recognize the importance of the agriculture industry to the Irish economy, while also recognizing the challenges that this industry faces regarding emissions. So the proposed mix of solutions here, they are somewhat unique to Ireland, but we actually looked at what the California market is doing and proposed some very similar solutions to Ireland that are being applied in California. And those include using feed additives to reduce methane emissions, selective reading of the dairy herd and the production of biogas from agriculture waste. That's a quick pass through some of the solutions when we get to Q&A, when Catherine O'Brien joins us who conducted a great deal of this analysis, we might have time for more. Deeper dive into these solutions, this gives you an overview of what we found. And Kristen, now I think it's really important if you let's bring it up a level, show the participants the big picture of the path to net zero and where Ireland falls within that path, because I think it shows a fantastic story so far. But Kristen, I'll turn that over to you. Thanks. So, this illustration shows what we call the universal path, where recovery solutions can push markets forward towards a net zero carbon future. So in this path, we start on the left and markets are moving from addressing the foundational elements past these pivot points in the middle where you have significant annual variable renewables, all the way to the far right to a net zero integrated energy system where there's a strong focus on digitalization and systemic efficiency. Now, most markets are currently in that first phase, which is about building out wind and solar efficiency, plus grid upgrades and interconnections. Now, every market irrespective of their current situation, these are the core things that can be done first. Then you move to the middle ring, which is what we call the transformational stage. And that happens when the annual electricity generation mix hits 20 to 30% variable renewables. And this is when the system will start to require more emphasis on power market reform or redesign and much more flexible solutions and demand optimization are also going to be needed because the market has evolved. Now, it's important to note that there is continued focus throughout on efficiency on renewables additions on grids throughout the transition, especially as the levels of digitalization and systemic efficiency are increasing so throughout you see that that path of those those core developments. And then we finally get to the far right. And this is when the energy system is integrated to achieve that net zero future. And it's important to note that you that to get to net zero in each of these sectors like transport and industry and heating. That requires strategic linking of all of the different energy sectors and much higher levels of additional zero carbon electricity. But I want to go back to the middle ring, and take a look at where Ireland is along this path. Ireland is in fact in the front. And that is because of the greater than 30% annual variable renewables, which is successfully being integrated into the power system. Ireland is really best case example, when it comes to the integration of variable renewables. But that said, and as discussed by Stephanie earlier, the path forward for Ireland, it's, it's not easy there's still there's still a big challenge that needs to be overcome. It's the same for all the other markets where where we've done analysis. And what it's really going to require is a significant step change to reach the ambitions, especially those ambitions that are set out for 2030.  We do hope that this framework can be a useful tool to help Ireland and others transition to a low carbon green economy that can be a source of significant social and economic value. Thanks. Alex. Yeah, thank you so much. No, there's so much there to reflect on. I found that really interesting. And, you know, the debate is still so often at the high level. It's the big picture debate. It's so great to see the thing. It's reduced to its component elements and kind of putting it up to people like this is what you mean when you make the big statements. These are the things that those big statements need to translate into in terms of action in the different sectors so it's extremely useful and very, very valuable indeed and it touches on a lot of presses a lot of buttons that are bouncing around here in our discussion data centers you know we've had Mark Foley from air grid making some observations about that even just in the last week. Agriculture is a constant kind of presence on the public discourse in respect of all of this and scaling up the ambition in terms of public sector. There's just so much to talk about and thank you very much for presenting it to us in such a clear manner. And so our next speaker, I'm delighted to welcome and I will thank thank Kirsten and Stephanie again for that but we're Christian and Stephanie we're coming back to them again in a few minutes. I'm going to introduce now Dr Paul Dean, who's senior research fellow in clean energy futures at the Environmental Research Institute Marae and the Marae Center in UCC. He has authored and co authored over 120 technical reports on the future of energy in areas such as electricity markets, European and global power systems renewable energy integration and energy access. He was first author on Ireland's low carbon roadmap in 2015. And he provides Paul provides technical assistance to several electricity modeling projects in Ireland and in Europe. Dr Dean is an active contributor to European policy thinking on clean energy. And in 2019. He was the Royal Irish Academy speaker in computer science and engineering. There's a lot of expertise there. And I'm looking forward to Paul has to say, and it's over to you, Paul. Thank you very much Alex and thank you very much person is definitely and thank you all for joining today we were just talking offline before we went live about what an important day this is for our country the ability to go and see people who haven't seen an ages to go to go out and get our hair cut. So thank you all for, for, for giving up your time and for listening to us today. And thank you very much person is definitely for that fascinating presentation you know it's, it's really interesting to be the idea of value and the value of putting things is really topical at the moment you know and how we react to global events how we react to national events is very much shaped by the definition of our values, what value we put on things but also importantly, the boundary that we put around. That definition of value and a narrow lens or a narrow view on value can often need to distort outcomes. I've been reading a Mark Carney the former governor of the Bank of England Bank of Canada. It's a really nice book over the moment it talks about this idea and talks this idea of values we have as people as communities, and the values of markets and values of commodities and there's a really interesting example about what can go wrong we take a very narrow perspective on value and he writes the observation of Amazon the company and Amazon the region now from a market value perspective, the market has judged that Amazon the company will be very successful and put a high value on that because it will be resilient in the future and it will make a lot of profit. The values on the region will only ever attain a market value, once it is cleared, once it's planted, and once it is trying to transition over the department, of course, that's really wrong and that's one of the challenges when you take a really narrow view on value and what I really like about the work that Stephanie and Kirsten have done is that it expands that role of value from climate action from narrowly looking at emissions from narrowly looking at energy into the wider societal view and you know it gives us a new vocabulary gives us a new way for talking about climate change. And that's really, really important. And, you know, stepping back and looking at the framework that was presented today okay look it's a little bit dense and a little bit tricky in places but there's a lovely narrative, weaving through all of this and it fundamentally says that if you reduce emissions you can increase healthcare outcomes if you reduce emissions you can increase employment if you reduce emissions, you can increase resilience and I think that's such an important message to come from from this work, you know, and even from a political perspective you know you can actually turn that upside down, and you could look at from another perspective you know if you want better homes better farms and better businesses within one of the ways we can do that is actually by reducing emissions and I think that's really important for us as a society for us to rethink that series you know we're here talking more about this rethink series and that's a really nice way to expand our view on carbon dioxide I've been working in CO2 and in research as Alex said for many years now you know and it's difficult to engage with people when we talk about CO2 because you know you don't see the consequences of inaction we might see it on our TV and we see it happening in countries abroad with the weather and bits and pieces, but the consequences of action are actually sometimes missed and you know what Stephanie and Kirsten have shown is that it's really not just about reducing emissions it's also about increasing well-being, increasing welfare, it's about our health system so I really welcome that message and I think it's very important politically and it's very important socially and as Stephanie alluded to you know we're heading into a remarkable number of years for climate action here in Ireland, so what Ireland is setting out to do reducing all our greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030 is something that no modern economy has ever deliberately achieved in any peacetime period, it is remarkable, it's going to be really difficult and I think you know what it's important to acknowledge that's going to be difficult because when we acknowledge it's going to be challenging and there's going to be difficult choices ahead and we can plan, we can prepare and we can make good policies for that you know and to do something that we have never done before and that nobody has done before we have to be prepared to talk about things in a different way and try things that have not been tried before and Kirsten spoke about some of the options and that are presented to Ireland and it's going to be challenging you know and it's challenging for a number of perspectives number one, okay Ireland is really strong in the supply of electricity that's really good and that's a story we can share with the world but on the demand side it's really challenging and what amplifies this challenge is that it's such a short period of time that we have to do this you know so there's the turnover of stock, it takes time to do these things, the supply chains so that really amplifies the difficulties and the challenges that lie ahead and if I'm being honest and I'm not trying to be smart here, I'm not trying to be mean, I'm not trying to be nasty, nasty but I don't think the penny has dropped politically or socially and how challenging a path that we have ahead and again I'm saying this not out of disrespect but out of concern for what lies ahead because we have to be able to plan for it. I was listening to the Iraqis debates last week on the climate bill and there's huge level of support and there's a huge level of ambition and that's really good but often that level of support and that level of ambition comes with a conditionality that is attached, that often makes the end goal unheavable, there's resistance to climate, there's the carbon taxes, there's resistance to offshore wind farms, inter connectors, pylons, challenges to changes in farming you know we really have to rethink how we're doing all these things and as Stephanie mentioned what's required is really a step change in how we think about things and how we talk about things and in Ireland yes we're very good at talking about ambition, we're very good at talking about being hopeful but you know what, being ambitious is not a strategy, being hopeful is not a strategy and any credible energy transition strategy needs two things, it needs a clear definition of an emissions reduction trajectory and also needs a clear and detailed financial pathway and that's kind of the question mark that's kind of missing from Ireland at the moment, I know people are working on that but this framework is very timely because it allows us to talk to those things it allows us to look beyond the cost of emissions reduction and look to the benefits and just when one of those slides is up there Stephanie I quickly scribbled down to the numbers, I calculated a quick health outcome of almost 240 just under a quarter of a billion euros in health benefits alone for our political leaders you know and it's going to take massive political bravery to live on this as well as social interaction, having those numbers is really important because again it's so difficult isn't it you know when you're knocking indoors when it comes to election time, talking about CO2 is very different but talking about the employment opportunities, talking about the health outcomes, talking about the resilience in our society is something that I think will increase our chance of success and increase the chance of achievability for this and just in terms of my last point in terms of the overall achievability itself, you know Alex if you asked me, if you had asked me this time last year or even 16 months ago, would we achieve this goal? I would have said no, you know it's too difficult, the man side elements are the turnovers to store and the time is too challenging. I don't know what COVID has kind of changed my perspective on this a little bit and maybe tipped it down slightly in our favor, okay it's still going to be remarkably challenging, but COVID is in a couple of things, it has first of all released this massive injection of cash into the global economy, there's a financial stimulus system in the Green Deal in Europe, there's stuff going on in the States with the Biden administration in the UK, and there's a lot of learning going on. This has a lot of teaching to give out there in terms of what we've done with renewable electricity, that's very beneficial, but those rising boats internationally I think will have all of us get a little bit closer to our goals. But when we step back and actually look at it from a social perspective, you know, the pandemic has been remarkably difficult for many people, but for some of us it has allowed us kind of simple experiments in simplicity. I know we're all jaded from looking at zoom calls, but none of us had to travel today, we're all at home, family and people around us, you know, it has allowed us to try things that we've never tried before. And that's actually a helpful thing. Now we need to manage our expectations, none of those things that we're more working and reduce travel are going to be silver bullets, but they help us get a little bit closer to our goals. But if we stand back and look at, you know, the way the government has managed it, we've never managed it before, we've tried things that we've never done before, and you know, okay we've made mistakes along the way. We're getting there, you know, and part of that journey was the, in my perspective, the incredible communication from Professor Tony Gulen and his team, Nefit on clear scientific communication, clear communication of the risks of the challenges. We weren't all told that everyone's going to be okay. We were told it's going to be challenging and it's going to be trade off when we prepare for that. And one of the things that I really like doing actually is stepping back from bound the headlines and looking at the data. And if you look at the behavior and attitude surveys that the government release every week on around around covid. So they ask it 2000 or 3000 people reviews on covid every week and you can see different trends and trajectories emerging. There's a very interesting question in there. They ask people, what are you most worried about.  The vast majority of people say two things. They say, number one, we're doing it for others. We're doing it for our loved ones, we're doing it for the elderly people in society we're doing it for vulnerable people who we know. The answer is that we're doing for the healthcare system. There's an awareness that if we don't manage this correctly the healthcare system would be overwhelmed and I often like to reflect on that is in a wonderful level of altruism and common sense in Ireland that comes from a situation where things are communicated beyond the value of virus but we put it to the wider society. And you know even though there's lots of different views and beliefs about how covid should be managed our climate action should be managed, but our values as a society are really strong. You know, and those values unite us, and those values bind us and those values motivate us.  We all value our mental health, we need to pop outside in a clean environment, value of fresh air, the value of a natural environment, the value of a resilient economy, all these things are really, really, really important. The value of looking after each other. I think one of the opportunities for us when we're looking at this framework is looking at the things and the benefits and opportunities coming from this framework in terms of, in terms of those values and mapping those outcomes onto the values that we've shown so strongly as a society over the last 14 months and certainly be a helpful conversation. It will increase our chances of success in this area. It still won't be easy, but it might make things a little bit easier to expand that conversation beyond just emissions or society or values and our community. So, Alex, I hope people do get a chance to read and support it. It's a wonderful piece of work. It's visually beautifully communicated. It's very digestible and it's very readable. And hopefully we can talk about climate change and we think the way we act to it. So, back to you, Alex. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was terrific, Paul. Thank you so much for that. And I mean you asked the question, has the penny dropped? And when will we know when it's dropped? I suppose it's a subsidiary question. And in a way what the IEA wants to do and the ESB I know very much as well in terms of their participation in these kinds of public forms is that we want to try to help the penny drop. You know, we want to guide the penny and help it drop. And I think that's what each of our speakers has been doing. And I just repeat my point that I made earlier. When we saw when we saw Kristin and Stephanie's presentation, it's like, that's great. Big picture is really important. Big picture is motivational. Big picture is what everybody wants to embrace. But show me what that means. Put me up a few slides up there and show me what that means. Show me what it means from my sector. Show me what it means from my house, my job, my region, my city. Show me what that all means. And you know, I even already see on the questions coming in and it's not for a moment to criticize the questions that there's some really, really, really good questions. But the questions would always be, oh, you can't do that. Or you can't do that. Oh, no, this one over here, you certainly can't do that. And then there's other one here that other slide, you couldn't do that either. And the problem is that if we, if we aggregate all of the things that we're not able to do, that means we don't do anything. It's in a way like the penny drop. I'm not, I'm not in active politics anymore, but I really feel so strongly and I know I'm chairing this discussion so I'm not going to abuse my position as chair, be more than to say this, that the big role of a politician is the communication of the real meaning of what the challenges are. And to make big speech is important and I don't decry that, but is to break it down and to be a leader in the community and in the society as to what that is actually going to mean. The bad news as well as the good news, you know, the challenges as well as the opportunities. And I think, you know, as well as marshalling, if you like the deploying public resources to make changes, legislation, all of the things that we're seeing at the moment that are so welcome. It's also a communications job to actually explain, understand themselves first and then explain. Anyway, I shouldn't be going on. I'll be sacked from this job as chair. If I, if I go on any longer, and don't let our speakers participate in the discussion that they came here to do and thank you again, each of the three of you. Stephanie, I was going to actually ask you just because you're able to look at this for a comparative point of view now looking at the, the analysis as you've applied it to different countries. Can I just and you did touch on it and you were being very diplomatic and very nice but can we just ask you, how do we compare, you know, how does Ireland compare to the other system value analysis that you've done. You can tell you can tell us straight, you know. Don't worry, I will. And I think a question came in that that's linked to that as well so I would say two things really stand out in the analysis for Ireland compared to other markets, and that is interconnection so a lower level of interconnection compared to a number of other markets, and the agriculture sector, that's not completely unique to Ireland but it is, but it is still pretty unique that the, that Ireland has such a big agriculture sector so I touched a bit already on the agriculture in the earlier part of the discussion. I'll comment on the question that was asked to about market reform and grids and I will say that every market has to go through reform and grids and it won't happen overnight, as we all know. Sometimes these things happen iteratively so in that way, Ireland is no different. The question also was what other markets might be more advanced, and while I'm not sure I would consider this to be more advanced but let's say blessed, other markets that are more blessed are those that have strong interconnections, like Germany, or have like Iberia in a country like Denmark has both. So, in those ways those markets are very different and might get to the end a little faster at least in a shorter duration than Ireland but the market reform and the need for the grid upgrades aren't unique for Ireland. They're important for every market they're very important for Ireland, because the, the goal is aggressive, the bar is high, and then the only other market that comes to mind which many of us are all of us are familiar with is in the UK, with the goal to have a net zero network by five. And I think that's something that Ireland needs to think about, which is, when will the net zero network be in place so that all of the other goals can be achieved as well. So, I hope that answered your question, Alex. I'll let you then go on to someone else. So, Kristen, you're there. Do you want to, I have a couple of questions I was going to ask you is going to ask you just something about levelized cost of energy and how, how sort of, you know, relevant how that fits in but do you want to pick up on, on, on, do you want to pick up at all there on Stephanie's response to that kind of broader question because I'd be interested in your view about just comparatively where Ireland is if you want to add anything to it. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly not, I don't think we should be too focused on how Ireland compares to other markets I think every market needs to look at their own journey, and their, their own system and, and the solutions that are most relevant for the outcomes that they want to be achieving because every market is starting from a different place. And so it's, it's useful to, to look at the broader context of all of the solutions that are, that are globally applicable, but I think everybody's starting has a different starting point and so we need to be respectful of that and to be focused more on, on the overall process and what we can do to bring the right stakeholders together to, to make the right decisions and I think that that's, that that's, you know, one of the interesting things about, about this work it's, it's not just about the government. And it's not just about business, it's about, you know, the actions and the strategy that that both of them can do together and on their own. Sure. And so I think that's why we like this, this framework because it's a useful tool to bring stakeholders together and to identify what are those outcomes that we most want to achieve and then working backwards from there. Catherine, Catherine or Brian, I think you're on the call with us Catherine, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, I'm excited. Right, there you go. Thank you for being with us. Well I mentioned you earlier, just in terms of from Accenture's point of view on the work you're doing I just thought just look at one aspect that is not peculiar to Ireland but it's a big preoccupation for us at the moment. There's a lot of basic centres and so forth and the implications of what's happening in that sector. Do you want to share with us just any, any thoughts on, on the analysis that you've, you're aware of it that you've come up with in terms of. Absolutely Alex and lovely to be here first of all, as with my immediate overarching reflection is just how hard it was to get to 7% on an economy wide basis and Jerry touched on it in the introduction in terms of needing both green electrons and green molecules. I think beyond that we need to think about the role of circularity and energy efficiency and I think that has to absolutely underpin our approach be it in terms of the electricity system, gas system or broader in terms of contribution. Well one interesting area where we saw this come together and saw the different dimensions play out was in the data centre sector. As we looked to 2030 we're looking at potentially 30% of demand coming from the data centre sector alone and as we looked globally at solutions and options there's one interesting example where Google are looking to match their demand on a 24 seven basis with clean energy by shifting you know the times when you have very high renewables and grade the likes of high wind and it's a, it's a very interesting example of what can be achieved in terms of deploying kind of smart computing and forecasting so we applied that in the Ireland context and it resulted in a one megaton reduction as we do which is quite significant in the context of what we're trying to achieve but there are some interesting global examples broader in terms of the application of waste heat and the circularity associated with that. And we see stats from the US of 30% of input industrial heat loss so there's significant opportunity there and we see a good example in in our local talent scheme. The last piece I think that's interesting as well is the opportunity for hydrogen fuel cells in the data centre sector. We see Microsoft looking at that and displacing diesel generation and an opportunity for it to support grid balancing and in fact in in the US they're looking at data centre supporting hydrogen for trucks and long haul transport demand as well. I think the last point on data centres is, you know, the alternative or option looking at on prem solutions or on extension analysis points to 65% energy reduction. By moving to cloud and public infrastructure so there's some interesting debate about data centres but I think that's an interesting point if you look at it, look at it at a more macro level. Great. And okay we've got loads of questions here and thank you very much Catherine and do stay with us and we you know we're going to try and get through as many of these questions with hundreds of people at the call thank you all so much for being with us. And I mean really hundreds and we're going to stay on till about 10 past two or so we might get to quarter past but more likely sort of that sort of region of 10 past quarter past if that's okay with everybody. And I've got lots of questions I'm going to put them Paul I'm going to sort of go to the questions if you don't mind and if you've got some additional things that occur to you since you spoke, you can always say those things when you're responding to some of the questions, because there's so much to try to get through Catherine Sheridan of our via would love to hear the speakers view in relation to integrating the European gas and electricity networks and what opportunities that presents for Ireland. Paul, do you want to have a quick bash at that and add anything that you'd like to say yourself in relation to that overall target to 7% point that kind of point that that's been touched on by a number of speakers. Yeah, thanks very much. It's very interesting pointer on gas we did a piece of work for the electricity Association of Ireland. And it's just this year. And what we do is we looked at about a quarter of a million hours of weather data passing around. And what that means for the variable renewables and we found out two things that were very interesting. Number one is that you wind and solar are by far the best way to decarbonize our electricity system. And that's obvious that's really important. But now from that we found was surprising we're actually going to need more gas capacity in Ireland, but we'll use it less so when we talk about gas often there's a narrative I will have 70% renewable electricity. Big reduction emissions that means we won't need gas anymore well actually our gas reduction gas consumption would be a little bit lower than today we've about 20% lower, but not significantly lower and that's because gas provides a really important foundation for energy security in Ireland that comes back to one of the points that Kirsten was making in what comes to decarbonizing the electricity sector and the magic number here Alex is 4 million tons. In that report, we found it very difficult to go below 4 million tons without something else without either decarbonizing that gas coming into the system and there's lots of questions about CCS there on the forum. CCS is, is it economical? No, but you know, we have to move away from economics when we're talking about things remember if you look at climate change to the lens of solar economics, we're going to have a world that's three to five degrees warmer. So we need to try things that we haven't tried before and CCS with all the technical challenges is something that we're going to have to get to grips with not only in Ireland, but right across the globe in the UK, and in America because decarbonizing that gas coming into the system is fundamentally important. And the other thing that pops out in that analysis is the role of things like large scale energy storage and this role of large scale hydrogen. Now it's very difficult to see those things being deployed, but in a meaningful time scale in the in the in the capacities that we need up to the year 2030, but in answer to the question, we are going to need gas on the way between 30 because it provides security supply, it allows us to keep the lights on and it helps when it's not a competition to renewables. So we need to have a complementarity to renewables. What we need to understand is how can we decarbonize that gas and looking at CCS is certainly one of the ways they are. Sure. And actually that there were two questions early on on CCS. And I don't know, Kristen or Stephanie, if you'd like to just quickly comment on that. I suppose a little bit of skepticism is maybe too strong a point as the description but Michael and own Clifford both had questions on CCS thinking it was interesting Michael did but not realistic by 2030 as the technology for CCGT is not is not developed and own Clifford given the lack of progress today to you see one gigawatt CCS being economic or even feasible by 2030. So that CCS for either Christian or Stephanie, or indeed Catherine. So let's take an initial comment Alex in relation to the other markets and jurisdictions we looked at and obviously the UK is looking at CCS and quite a strong way linked to some of their industrial clusters but if we take Scotland as an example just by scale and size. So we're looking at one plant there I think it's of the order of 500 megawatts and about one. I think it was half of what we proposed so I think there's two plans in Scotland, cross Scotland and the UK SSC plants that you know are similar size scale and similar size type or similar timeline in terms of coming on stream between 2030 so you know we do see that the market is there and I think by way of comparison to scale of what we propose for Ireland is not the similar to what we see in Scotland or some other similar similar markets. And if your colleagues like to add to that. And I go on to the next question the next question I spot here from a man Connelly and I suppose a broader sweep question but a very interesting one. What, where are the biggest technological gaps that my hinder getting to zero, like what needs to improve the battery capacity, hydrogen infrastructure, you know, so that's I think it really follows on from the kind of modeling that you're that you're doing. So Stephanie, do you want to pick that up or or or Kristen. I'll give it a start and I know that anyone in the panel with would add to it I think some of the technologies that that have, you know, doubts have been expressed about carbon capture as you said, if you think about the whole list of energy technologies. Wind and solar have advanced quite a bit of in the last 10 to 15 years so they're much less in doubt, but with the cost of storage needing batteries still needing to come down. Carbon capture is certainly at the top of that list those are technologies that that we have to find a solution for and a low cost solution in order for us to to achieve net zero depending on the market right certain markets will rely on different technologies than others but those are those are at the highest level, my reaction to the question but there are probably others in the panel who can add to that as well. I'll only invite the other is on the panel to tell me if they disagree with what's just been said because if so many other questions, I think we can proceed and do come back to that question if it occurs to you. And Caroline.  Yeah, please do. I don't disagree but I would almost. I agree with what Stephanie said but it's, it's more about how to scale certain technologies as well that that exists and I think that we, we often focus on, you know, the challenges about CCS and hydrogen. Yet we have technologies readily available and I often focus on on efficiency and electrification and are we electrifying everything that's possible. And I think that there are many light to medium industrial processes that can easily be electrified right now because the technology exists and it didn't a few years ago. So how do we just scale on those technologies and do some switches and so I think that that's a really big opportunity for business. Good, Paul you're nodding your head. Virtually. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, yeah, great. Okay, Caroline white from faster, which is the foundation for the economics of sustainability at thanks for organizing seminar she has two questions. I'll put one of them anyway. What does the system value framework take power asymmetries into account for example by comparing the values generated by community owned energy with those generated by foreign direct investment. So when she's talking about power asymmetries she's talking about power in that broader political social and community sense. Anybody like to take that one up. Catherine will I throw that one at you. Is that a bit unfair. She's saying like, okay, let me let me reframe it like what kind of role do you think there's a role for for community sponsorship community involvement, community development in this in this in this entire agenda. At a high level in general absolutely yes Alex because I think, yeah, we do need communities at the heart of the transition that's abundantly clear when we think about the size and scale of the behavior and change that's going to be required across every sector of our economy be that in agriculture be it in transport and heating so I think the best way that we can affect change there is through community effort and I think. To that extent, I think community owned investment is going to play an important role alongside these bigger utility grade and other investments and I think a nice example where we've seen that play out is the ESP's Dingle Peninsula project which is really bringing stakeholders from right across the community together and I think it's a nice potential model for how we can look at affecting that change on an economy wide basis across sectors. Sure. And Christian, I was going to ask you earlier about the levelized cost of energy I see pooric Fleming has a question for the panel and noted that was referring to it earlier. While the UK has adopted the enhanced levelized cost of energy. Are there many countries other than the UK using a similar metric to enhance levelized cost of energy to assess policy and investment decisions. Christian. And you want to just talk generally about the levelized cost of energy. Yeah, I mean, I think that levelized cost of energy for the for those of you who aren't familiar with the term it's it's just a standard measure to say how expensive it is to produce a kilowatt hour of energy. And, you know, it's just a standard measure and it matters right. It's important, but it's not enough. And so when we start talking about competitiveness and that's that's what it's used for to compare. It's not just about costs, then we have to be looking at the positive or negative value streams that a technology or a solution can provide to the energy system. Often that value is not compensated. And so it's overlooked when you're making those those decisions. So for example, demand when you're looking at the options for for, you know, demand response or looking at demand centers. That the value that it provides is often overlooked. And so that's why we want to move away from just looking at solutions using LCOE and really be thinking much, much more broadly about value because it's not measured. Great. So thank you for that. And there's a question from Bruno Galakor. And I see Jerry, I know Jerry you're still on the call here so you're very welcome to come back in at some point you might like to come in on this but feel free. Bruno Galakor, where do the panels see as one the key business opportunities and to the key opportunities for communities arising from this analysis. Now we've touched on some of these points already touched just briefly there in the community to mention the principle of business opportunities. Brian, Brian is wondering about as I say Jerry, feel free to come in at this point if you like, I don't want to force anybody to contribute when when they're not ready to do so but you know, would you like to come in or would any of you Paul you've got your you've indicated their policy perhaps. It's kind of an overlap in terms of farming farming is a third of our greenhouse gas emissions and Stephanie mentioned it's really important that we've got solutions for farming, but I think there's really big opportunities for farming. Now it's you mentioned about communication Alex in your in one of your comments and you know, the conversations we have about farming sometimes are really terrible that's either you know the debt of rural Ireland or else we're all going to go vegan or vegetarian and you know those two things are unhelpful and they're not very realistic but like you know farming will be the main source of food or food production will remain the main source of farming and then juice in Ireland that's that's true we're very good at it. And we need to get better at it but farming needs to be done in a way that's very sustainable and it kind of comes back to the system value framework that we're talking about today. You can seek out evidence that shows you that in Ireland we can produce a unit of milk or unit of meat as a very low carbon reduction value and that very narrow value is really good. We can't ignore the other evidence coming from the EPA coming from different authorities which shows us that the wider environmental damage done by agriculture is really accessible and really agriculture has gone beyond its land use holding capacity and that's when you just take a systems perspective when you widen it out Alex again to a societal perspective. You know we have a situation in Ireland where you know most farming families if you're not in dairy right so dairy is farming is essentially survival of the biggest but if they're outside of dairy, you're probably in your 60s and you're probably earning less than 20,000 euros a year. So from a societal perspective, that's really unjust and it's really unfair so I think it's really unhelpful, a lot of the conversations we have about climate action in Ireland and being detrimental to it I think the bigger risk for farming in Ireland is in action and not changing and it needs to change and where the smart money is moving it's moving in terms of sustainability and we need to think different ways of using our land, either using it to absorb carbon, using it to produce biomethane, using it to produce energy crops are using it in different ways but ways that allow people to stay on the land would reduce the livestock that remain on the land and now one of the things Alex where I think agriculture does get caught short is that and I did we did a piece of work recently with my colleague Professor Hannah Daly for the business post last week or two weeks ago where we looked at the agri-food strategy now it's ambitious and it's talking about bringing agricultural emissions down from 22 million tons to between 17 and 18 million tons that's a really good start but that would mean Alex in that the wider energy system to achieve the government target would have to reduce all our emissions by 70% but that's not possible. So we need to do bigger and we do better for agriculture and to remain relevant in the world that's demanding higher standards of sustainability, not only from an environmental perspective but from a moral and ethical perspective. I think farming needs to change and some of those actions can come there and just briefly, where agriculture does get caught short is things like agriculture can be a very much an enabler of things like energy crops of biomethane or forestry, but those emissions productions don't get credited to agricultural sector, if you produce biomethane and it's used in transport the emissions benefit rests with transport so I think that needs to be acknowledged I think there's lots of overlapping business opportunities particularly for small farming communities, cooperative alternatives from looking at the energy sector so I'd like to point to the area of farming there. Just to add Alex. Yes, Jerry, yeah. In terms of opportunities for communities. I mean, I think the value of all this discussion is that we tend to focus on costs rather than the whole value and that's what everyone has been saying on this call. But I mean to use one of the examples is said a deep retrofitting of 700,000 homes in rural Ireland were particularly warm. Yep, we speak about the cost of that, which is heavy. But if you add in the other benefits of that, in terms of health of people, in terms of creating skills and opportunities for people walking in rural Ireland. And for the next 30 years to do a deep retrofit program. If you talk about people then being able to walk remotely rather than in big cities, you can suddenly see that the actual cost benefit is very broad. And I think we do have to get into that and communities have a huge contribution to play on all of that. And it's about the involvement and taking the bigger picture. So deep retrofit is one example to spin off some that are immense. Yet we speak about just one element is costly, isn't it? Initially, yes, but in overall, no. And actually, isn't it the case that how we even talk about cost and investment in terms of the general public discourse, we're always conscious and politicians are rightly so you know budgets we've got a budget for a cost. And I think for what this is going to cost us, but we haven't yet developed a sufficiently sophisticated way of understanding and explaining the value and the, you know, the we I think we understand it in terms of investment in physical infrastructure.  We're investing in the future, we're investing in the future but we probably need a more sophisticated sense, Gerry, I think you're right of how to match up the undoubted value that is going to happen in the future and perhaps even the quite near future with the cost side of the ledger. And that's also part of the communications of this of this whole debate. Any, our colleagues like to come back in just on that on those points. On the wider business point Alex I see an opportunity for business to fold so one, when we look at the wider grid challenges and the challenges that will meet and enter in terms of very high renewable system on the grid side or significant opportunity for business particularly daily use large energy is to play. I think a big role in terms of demand shifting in terms of flexibility services battery. So everything on the demand side contributes to value. When you look at this on a wider systems basis and we did quite a bit of analysis in that regard so that's one area of opportunity for business in terms of solving the problem of high variable renewables. Another aspect I'd look at is as with the wider sustainability imperative for business when we look at, you know, how shareholders consumers are demanding more and something we're seeing very much amongst our clients is the real intensification of that demand for sustainability and it's a huge opportunity for Ireland and business here to really, you know, have it be supported by a green economy and I think, you know, the analysis we've done suggests that over over a five year recent period looking at shareholder return for business high on ESG metrics, you know, it's it's twice that of business that's low on the same ESG matrix and that very much also includes and I think we have to think about in the context of wider just transition. Yes within that and the social aspect of that as well but you know the evidence and the metrics and the data is there in terms of the ability of high ESG environmental and green economy to contribute to to growth for business. Okay. Thank you very much for that. And a couple of more questions. And in fact, Paul what you were saying anticipated a question from Jim Carol, and who had asked what challenges are obstacles are expected to arise in regard to our system of demand ownership and I think you were you were touching on some of that in terms of the, how that those changes can align, you know, I need to align with what's required. I think that's what Brolycon mentioned, he said, Paul that you mentioned more storage, and he's wondering what forms of storage, and do we need to be thinking most about is it more hydro pumped is a battery is it, but what are you talking about storage generally or do you do you have a preference for. So storage is great, but the difficulty is in Ireland we don't really have the natural terrain from massive amounts of punk hydro storage like they do in Norway and they said that so don't really what we're talking about is everything we need more batteries. We need, we did a piece of work recently for wind energy Ireland looking at the net zero system of the 2015 we found that we're going to need lots of batteries we're going to interconnection we can't rely on interconnection all the time. We need hydrogen storage and also the, you know, the simple stuff like thermal storage storing hot water on homes when it's smart loads but I was really surprised in that study is that smart loads are the ability to move loads across the day to chase variable renewable generation becomes a proxy for storage. And that's something that we need to look at so I guess really Alex is kind of all of the above and probably a little bit more. Okay. That's terrific and anything. Christian or Stephanie would like to add on what you've just heard the last few minutes, most conscious. These are great. This is a great forum because it can bring so many people together without people having to travel all the points that Paul was making. But there's some little limitations to it because of course you can't kind of nudge somebody and say do you want to take that question. Well, while I don't want to be putting people on the spot who may not necessarily want to come in I want you to feel that feel free to come in on the particularly since we're coming towards the end. And if you want to go for any wrap up points that occurred to you, Kristen. I have put you on the spot. And I saw one of the questions is what what are the business opportunities and I think there's a real opportunity around demand demands can do so much more for the system than it does right now, not only in Ireland, everywhere. And I think that that's the real opportunity is how do you help shape that demand. And we spend a lot of time at the forum, looking at ecosystems the city ecosystem or the industrial ecosystem, and how do you leverage those ecosystems in order to scale the right technologies and in order to create that step change that's needed. And, and I think that it's a really interesting way to look at the to look at the system as a whole we spend a lot of time looking at supply but we also can look at using that ecosystem lens as to how to manage both the supply and the demand and so from my perspective the real opportunity for for businesses to be looking at demand, looking at smart loads looking as Jerry was talking about what can be done in homes in buildings in order to reshape our loads so that we can, so that we can make that step change that's needed. And there is an interesting question here from Miguel Tovar of the Economic Associate Research Institute. And now it's slightly, it's slightly worded and almost like as if it's an exam question. So it says, what are the EU regulations are policies that link the security in the supply of raw materials to make the energy transition possible, for example, lithium cobalt, etc. It's a really interesting question I wonder it Miguel means is drawing attention maybe to the, to the absence of a sufficient amount of policy and regulations and so on that regard. I wonder if that I don't think I'm sure he didn't mean to ask a question to see if you knew the answer but he was really raising it as an issue of debate. Is there is there something there that you want to add to that Kristen in terms of a gap, perhaps there in terms of regulatory and necessity for more regular regulatory and more policies. I think that is a hot topic right now. And I think the IEA just came out with a report on that maybe last week and I think that it's, it is definitely seen as, as one of the bigger challenges, and I don't have the answer for for Miguel but Stephanie can, can you agree, you look, you'll agree with them that it's a good question something we need to be thinking about. Yeah. And Stephanie, would you like to say anything before we finish. I'll just, I will just reinforce some of the points that I think everyone made Jerry really talked a lot about people and community and something we say within Accenture is that people are are really at the center of the energy transition and that includes community and that that's linked to energy efficiency that's linked to the jobs that are available in this space that can make a big difference in the energy transition so we spend so much time talking about the technologies. But actually it comes down to people who who really can make a difference, including demanding for governments and businesses to do more we all have a job to do in that regard. So just wanted to really express my opinion on that topic and reinforce what some of the others said, Alex. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Paul, I'm going to give you the last word. And if you think you can do them sort of a minute a minute and a half. Thank you very much for the honor Alex. You know what I do I just encourage people to read the report I presume it's up on the website Alex so this is a lovely report. We just find something find interesting in it and you know I said that the start today is really important day for our country we can get out there again, chat to one person about it. So you know I saw this interesting report today, you know, and you know what, it's actually about climate action and then before their eyes glaze over say well actually you know what, it's actually about better health outcomes it's about how we can have jobs it's about better businesses better farms start the conversation that way we just need to normalize these conversations that we have about climate action, move it away from emissions that are lovely opportunities that we have in the country into the years ahead. So go out there read the report and chat to one person socially distancing about the report and what you like inside. Absolutely. And thank you so much, and Paul for your insights. And thank you to Kristen and Stephanie and Catherine. The report is very accessible. I mean, I think that's important to say you look at you might just take one glance at it and say oh my God I'm not an engineer I'm not a scientist I'm not, but it's it does. It really does repay those few minutes to sit down and look through it, no matter what your expertise is, but your background is, it's really worth looking at looking at it is really worth studying it. And I think the, you know the excellence of the scholarship that went into it is pretty clear, but also the real genuine and I think successful attempt to make sure that it's accessible to a broader to a broader audience which is what we're all about which is what we're about here the IAA. Also, thank you for your attendance today thank you very much to the ESB Jerry O'Sullivan, all your colleagues for your continuing support for this series. And I think this has been a really really for me anyway stimulating opportunity to debate these questions, and to understand a little bit more the nature of the future that we have ahead so once again thank you all very much for being with us today, and we'll see you all the next time.


Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of HSS on Time. Today, we're going to talk about two watches under $1,000 that would be perfect under the Christmas tree. So as I've gotten into watch collecting and developing my own collection, I've sort of become a go-to guy for a lot of my friends looking to start their own collections. And in many cases, they never had a really nice watch. And in many cases, they don't want to spend a whole lot of money. And talking to a lot of my friends, it seems like a right about $1,000 or under is what they'd be willing to spend. Or now that we're in the holiday season, what their wives or their girlfriends are interested in getting them something, that's sort of what they would be comfortable spending as well. So today, two watches at that price point that I think are really good buys. So the first one we're going to take a look at is by Tiso. Now, this is the Tiso Carson Powermatic 80. It's an automatic watch with an 80-hour power reserve. It's a really beautiful looking watch. It's a steel case with a PVD coating, 40 millimeters. And I have to say 40 millimeters can be sort of big. It's like about my breaking point for how big of a watch that I'll wear. But this one at 40 millimeters wears a lot smaller than 40 millimeters suggests. It's a really, really nice dial with Roman numerals for the hour indices. The hour and minute hands look really nice. And one thing I really want to point out here is the date window. A lot of people can get kind of hung up on the date window thinking that it really kind of ruins the harmony of a dial. But this one is very subtle. It's at three o'clock and you really hardly notice it. It does nothing to ruin the way the dial looks in my opinion. This also has a see-through case back and a brown leather strap. It's a really handsome watch. If you're looking for something to wear every day, but that you can also dress up, the Tiso Carson Powermatic 80 is a fantastic option. Now the other watch we have here is by Bowman Mercier. And this is an update to their classima series. This is the My Classima. Again, this is a stainless steel watch. It has a stainless steel band. Also comes with a leather band as well, a black leather band. Also a really, really elegant dial. And again, the date window is very subtle. It doesn't do anything to ruin the harmony of the dial in my opinion. This watch is much thinner than the Tiso. This is a 5.6 millimeter thickness. Whereas the Tiso watch is 9.6 millimeters in thickness. So it wears a little bigger on the wrist. But the Bowman Mercier again is a very versatile watch. If you get it with the black strap, I think you could wear it in more situations. But the stainless steel strap is my personal favorite. I really like the way this watch looks. Now the trade-off with the Bowman Mercier is that it's a quartz movement. The Tiso is an automatic movement. Bowman Mercier is a quartz movement. So if that's a priority for you to have an automatic watch, I would go with the Tiso. But the Bowman Mercier, very elegant. So price point. Under a thousand dollars, the Tiso Carson Powermatic 80. Retails for $725. And the Bowman Mercier is $990. So those are two really good options. If your significant other is looking to put something nice for you under the tree, send them either of those two. Whatever one you like, I think you can't go wrong with either one of those picks. Thanks for watching.