Dr. David Connolly:

On the licence, if someone wanted to put an electricity cable or a telecoms fibre in the road, they would apply to the regulator - the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, in the case of electricity or ComReg in the case of a fibre cable - and get a licence to put the cable or fibre network in the road if one has reached certain tests. However, because we have no history of district heating, there has been no need for the regulator to have the power to hand out a licence to someone to put a district heating pipe in the road. Without that licence, we expect it will be immensely challenging to build district heating networks that will stretch 5 km, 10 km or 15 km in length along the public road. It would be necessary to have that to have the right of way to physically construct something in the road. We think the planning and development legislation could be a place to enable that. We are trying to raise awareness that this is something we need as we are conscious it is going through the Houses at the moment and this might well be a window to enable that.

On distance, when we speak to people in Ireland who are looking at district heating, the perception is often that heat can be moved hundreds of metres or a kilometre or two. However, take the example of the Copenhagen network on which Professor Mathiesen lives. The spine of that network alone is about 100 km long and the entire pipe work on the system is probably thousands of kilometres long. I am not sure of the exact figure. The first phase of a project in Ireland would be more than capable of transmitting heat at least 5 km or 10 km. It is probably back to perceptions. In different countries experience leads to different perceptions of what is possible. From talking to many stakeholders, it seems there is a perception that one can move heat a much shorter distance than is possible. Professor Mathiesen is quite correct that the heat sources still need to be close to the heat demand but what we find when we engage with stakeholders is that what close means is very different from what is possible. People think it has to be right next door whereas it can be a couple of kilometres away and still be very viable.