Pathways for Local Heat Delivery - Video Transcript

Title:               Pathways for Local Heat Delivery - Policy Commission Launch

Duration:        3:36 mins

Begins

[Professor Martin Freer, Director Birmingham Energy Institute] We’re here at Westminster to launch a policy commission on pathways for decarbonising heat. Heat remains our biggest challenge in decarbonising energy. Electricity, we've done great things, decarbonising the grid. Transport, we've made great progress. Heat, we've barely touched. And the policy commission, led by the Birmingham Energy Institute, the University of Birmingham, is setting out a series of pathways for delivering that transition.

[Steve McCabe MP for Birmingham, Selly Oak] It's a real pleasure as a Birmingham MP to be supporting this venture.

[Sir John Armitt. Policy Commission Chair, Chairman, National Express Group and the National Infrastructure Commission] This is fundamentally a political challenge. How do we get 24 million homes off of natural gas? The technical issues, we know how to solve them, but fundamentally, it's a political will that's required to drive what is really quite a complex and potentially not popular change.

[Jane Dennett-Thorpe, Head of Net Zero Transition, Ofgem] Everyone in this room, as you continue to be part of that conversation, I think it is one of the most important that we face.

[Lisa Trickett, Co-Founder, Places in Common] I think what we need now from politicians is for them to look at the energy crisis and to actually look at how investment and coherent planned investment in housing retrofit is actually a much more cost effective and equitable way of taking families out of risk of poverty as they currently are.

[Sir John Armitt] This report sets out the options, clear recommendations for a way forward.

[Cheryl Hiles , Director of Energy Capital West Midlands Combined Authority] In the West Midlands we have particularly high levels of fuel poverty. The opportunity we have to address that through solutions to heat is really significant. It's also really important for us that that's done a community level so each of the solutions are appropriate to the communities involved and that they come along with us and appreciate that journey.

[Professor Martin Freer] And at the moment of devolution, there is a chance for government to think about how they deploy resource back into the regions. 

[Ryan Jude, Programme Director, Green Finance Institute.] What’s incredibly important now of all times because the cost of living crisis that we’re seeing and heat is massively impacting that, driving people's bills up, we now have a moral imperative to accelerate the retrofitting that we planned and also to decarbonise our heat supply. This report sets out ways that we can do that.

[Lord Duncan of Spingbank] The important thing is it contributes a debate that must be had and it must be had now.

[Lisa Trickett] The devolved approach and the need to look in-depth at different neighbourhoods and actually understand how a city as complex as Birmingham, with its many layers of deprivation, polarisation, how actually we can make retrofit part of that route out of poverty.

[Sir John Armitt] This is a way to decarbonise, which actually also addresses the challenge of levelling up, because this will create thousands of jobs. It'll grow local economies and it will help us to deal with the whole question of energy security.

[Ryan Jude] Well, I'm excited to make sure that people actually look at these recommendations and implement them. There's plenty of politicians here today who can read this. There’s plenty of practical advice in there that they can follow and make sure that we actually act upon these recommendations and it doesn't just end up being something on a piece of paper.

[Sir John Armitt] And if we don't do it, then we will not get down to net zero and in fact we'll still have 17%of all our emissions coming from those home boilers.

[Professor Martin Freer] We're not asking for lots of money. We're asking for the possibility of working together with government, with industry, with local authorities, combined authorities to deliver these programmes.

[University of Birmingham Logo, Birmingham Energy Institute Logo, Energy Research Accelerator Logo. birminhgam.ac.uk/heat-commission] 

[Image of the report cover]

Ends