Mr. Tim Gould:

I thank members very much for the questions. I will start with the questions on the International Energy Agency, IEA, and its mission. It is correct that the IEA was founded in 1974 in the wake of the oil embargo, with the purpose of safeguarding the energy security of its members. To a large degree that initial mission remains at the core of IEA. We have an important function in relation to oil security. In the intervening period, the energy security debate has changed. Our member countries have asked us to look at the things they think are the most important on their energy policy-making agenda. Over time we have become a leading policy institution, not just on hydrocarbons but we have a very active energy efficiency mandate and division and we would like, under the leadership of our current executive director, to become a global hub for clean energy transitions. We have received a lot of additional funding from our member governments to work specifically with China, India and other countries that are going to be the key countries for the prospects of meeting global sustainability goals to help them think through the changes that would be necessary in order for that to happen.

In our view that kind of global dialogue on today's energy security agenda, which is very much around sustainability, is the critical function of the IEA and one we are determined to pursue.

That helps me to answer the question on the in-depth review. This review is not conducted by my colleagues in the secretariat. It is a peer review by countries, member states of the IEA, as a way to share policy ideas, guidance and best practices of the sort that came up in the earlier discussion, on the understanding that that might be relevant context. Everyone is facing the same challenges in a way.

I want to talk about what remains to be done. In terms of what has been done so far, particularly in the power sector, we need to give due weight to the importance of the progressive de-carbonisation of electricity. There are some very challenging issues, however, in many of the end use sectors around heat, transportation and industry, where the answers are not obvious. One has to bring in a wide variety of technologies in order to resolve some of them. One that was mentioned is carbon capture, utilisation and storage, CCUS. We will continue to need cement, iron and steel in the future and there are not many ways in which one can reduce the carbon intensity of the production of these products. One of the more promising avenues is through capturing, utilising or storing the CO2. That is why from an IEA perspective, we think that CCUS needs to be part of the conversation about energy transitions and why we have tried to bring leading people from our member governments, from non-member governments and from industry together to see how can we practically move that agenda forward as well.

I will touch on the question on nuclear energy which in our projections varies widely according to country preferences. There are countries that in our view will move ahead new nuclear deployment. China is leading that but there are some others as well, including Russia, and there likely to be some be some additional new sites constructed in India. Equally, there are countries that are moving away from nuclear as an option. The new Korean government has said that it would like to rely less on nuclear and coal in the future and more on natural gas and renewables. We have to take into account all of that variability in policy around the world when we put together scenarios of that kind. What is certainly true is that nuclear, with long-lead times and being very capital-intensive, is having a tough time at the moment in many liberalised markets when one has other renewable options that can come to market much more rapidly.

Wave energy is another good example of a technology that looks to be very interesting but where the costs are currently high compared with other renewable options. Where one has a particularly interesting site, and where one has someone willing to take on that initial risk by putting the capital in, then it can look interesting. As was seen with the recent announcement in the UK, however, particularly with the cost of off-shore wind coming down, one needs someone to take the plunge and try to put these projects in place, so one can have the learning in place and try to get costs for the next round of projects.

I think that applies to wave and to a number of ocean energy technologies that are currently too expensive to come in at scale and where one does need that push to try to get them in larger volumes.

I will return to the beginning of our discussion. We only model our scenario up to 2040. One could plot a number of possible variants for global energy related CO2 emissions after that but 15 gigatonnes would be a reasonable place to think about for 2050. We have not yet looked at how that plays out across the different regions. It will not be long before we do move to a 2050 horizon for our modelling and then we will be able to give a much clearer indication not at country level within the European Union but certainly for the European Union as a whole, and what that might imply for the level of ambition.