Professor Brian Vad Mathiesen:

What I am about to say is based on a number of scientifically based research projects financed by the European Commission. We have a project called sEEnergies which can be viewed on our website. We also have a number of projects that we jointly call Heat Roadmap Europe where we also have a website. The heating sector is subject to quite a lot of turmoil these days as we have an energy crisis that is not at all over. We have seen that with initiatives in REPowerEU and the high prices where we have 20% to 25% less gas consumption in the winter period which is a significant achievement by the European Community. There are vast differences across Europe but the general picture is that quite significant savings in natural gas have taken place.

The issue is how do we understand and continue these savings because there are differences between the countries. Some countries have created quite significant structural changes through changing the heating systems. Some have got considerable savings based on pure savings like end demands not being met. I will come to some of the solutions that we can talk about.

As Dr. Connolly mentioned, the heating sector is really an underestimated part of the European system. The map on screen shows how much of the entire energy demand for Ireland is represented by heating and cooling - it is around 45%. Therefore, what we do in the heating sector matters and, in my opinion, it has been hugely neglected not only by the European Commission but also by most member states.

In our research we try to understand the heating sector as part of an overall energy system transition meaning that we have to understand the entire supply chain of a future green or decarbonised energy sector. This is what we have tried to do in many projects. A slide illustrates our approach in a project called sEEnergies where we look at buildings, transport, industry and energy grids. We also try to relate this to the European Commission's ambition for a decarbonised climate-neutral Europe in the publication called A Clean Planet for All outlining scenarios for a carbon-neutral Europe. We try to compare our results and those results.

When we analyse these kinds of systems, we try to understand how we can use the different grids in a smart way. There seems to be considerable focus on how to integrate renewables based only on the electricity sector, which is highly problematic.

As I said previously, since heating is such a big part of our problem then of course it does not make sense to solve the problems of integrating renewables isolated in the electricity sector. We need to look at the transport, industrial, and heating sectors as well. There are huge synergies in doing that and I will just mention one that Ireland could benefit from, which is the storage of energy. District heating really creates a possibility to use the cheapest storage available. The most expensive electricity storage is the Tesla Powerwall, which some members may be aware of. I believe this is problematic. In our transition we should be careful with these very expensive solutions. When we go to large electricity storages, there could be pumped hydrogeneration on a hill where it could go down to close to €100 per kilowatt hour. If one compares this to the thermostat side we can have individual storage at €90 per kilowatt hour, even down to €1 per kilowatt hour, if we have pit storage.

When we look at flexibility the individual heat storage is really not very flexible. If Ireland focuses solely on integrating renewables and balancing its system with individual heat pumps and the flexibility they may provide, this is really not going to help a lot and Ireland would have to install quite a lot of capacity on the electricity side to support transitioning the heating sector solely by heat pumps. When it is cold it is going to be cold for weeks and it is not very well correlated with electricity supply from renewables. On the other hand, thermal storage provides a very flexible option where one can use electricity, large-scale heat pumps and other sources that I will come to shortly.

In the synergies project, we look at the different sectors and we try to identify the different solutions. We try to help this smart energy systems approach, and by doing that we can have a much cheaper transition than otherwise. We have also looked at Ireland in this project and people may go to our website to have a look. In any case, we are able to decrease the primary energy consumption in Ireland and in Europe by more than 40% - in Ireland it is by up to 50% - because there are some huge inefficiencies, for example, in using boilers in the heating sector currently.

The heating supply in our vision for Europe is illustrated on the right side of our presentation, where one can see the Clean Planet for All strategy. The 1.5° Tech scenario represents the European vision and the sEEnergies1.5° scenario represents a balanced system that we have identified, which is 20% cheaper and still as resource efficient. What we do here is to reduce the existing building demand by 40% which means that we insulate the building. Insulation of buildings goes hand-in-hand with district heating. A significant amount of excess heat can be integrated. As Dr. Connolly said, in Ireland there is enough heat to heat all of the houses. This is also the case when we look at Europe as a whole. We have waste heat enough in Europe to cover all the heat demands if they were, of course, located next to the heat demands, which they not always are. In our scenarios we then choose to use less of the excess heat demand than there is potential for. We identify different solutions for all of the EU 27 countries, plus the UK. We can see that there is a vast possibility to use excess heat. Looking at the presentation, we can see figures for excess heat in Ireland and the UK.

If we take the example of the UK, which people may be familiar with, it can be seen that we actually have excess heat to more than half of the district heating we propose there. On average, we suggest around 50% district heating plant supply for Europe, which is currently at 12%. This figure of 12% is higher than what Ireland has, as the committee knows.

What does this heat production look like? What we can see is that to harvest renewable energies other than electricity from wind power through individual heat pumps, we need to build a thermal grid and the thermal grid is able to include quite a significant amount of industrial waste heat. We are also talking about power-to-X heat in the future. We have geothermal. We have waste incineration, also in a scenario with significantly more recycling. We have a small amount of solar thermal, and then we have very large-scale heat pumps. As opposed to what many on the committee may think, we will need power plants in the future. When we operate these power plants, they will operate much less than today but we can still use the excess heat from those. What we can see is that there is really huge potential to use a diversified heat supply in the district heating system that enables us also to be much more robust against any kind of price fluctuations on the sources we have. We have made a roadmap for expanding district heating in Europe, and I am happy to share that.

In sEEnergies, we created policy recommendations. We also have a number of other projects where we have done so. One of the key elements is to look at a building envelope, to have strict rules about the building envelope and not to mix the building envelope demands with the demands for sustainable heat supply. When these things are mixed up, it is difficult to see the possibility for community-based solutions, which will always be more cost effective if people have a neighbour. We also have other recommendations about local screening for waste heat, local heat planning procedures, and recommendations for ownership models and deployment models for district heating.

I would like to end by saying that in Denmark we have more than 60% district heating and, as part of our response to the energy crisis, we are currently increasing the district heating supply to cover more than 70% of our district heating demand within the next three or four years.

That concludes my opening remarks. I am happy to take questions.