Mr. David Connolly:

People are reliant on their neighbours. However, they say natural gas is not a monopoly because many suppliers can offer different rates on gas. However, what is behind those suppliers? Over the past 12 months we have established that there is very little flexibility behind the suppliers. We may have a different supplier, which uses a different logo and can tweak the rate by a couple of cent per kWh, and we can switch between those each year. However, the only thing that can be put into a natural gas grid is natural gas. That means we are reliant on whoever supplies the gas supplier with the natural gas.

While district heating is a monopoly locally, the one big benefit it has as long as everyone is behaving in a fair and reasonable way, which any person who wants to continue to have customers and grow a network should be, is that it is possible to heat water in many different ways. Even the cavemen knew how to heat water. It is possible to get a geothermal heat pump, a biomass boiler, solar thermal and all the waste heat flowing out of industry. When push came to shove in 2022 the reason that Denmark had stable heat prices was that it could rapidly diversify that supply. Even though the network might be a monopoly, the suppliers into the network have choice in how to heat their network. It is possible to heat water in many different ways.

Unfortunately, I do not have any examples and it is a pity that Professor Mathiesen could not give the committee one. People in Denmark on a district heating network that was using gas would have likely rapidly transitioned over to something else because it has a central energy centre. It is not like the example the Deputy has given where the boiler is in the basement of everyone's apartment.