Professor Rebecca Willis, Lancaster University: Ways of making changes in the home

Kaela: Well, we're gonna start off with Rebecca again, coming back to set a bit of a context for us. So Rebecca Willis from Lancaster University. She's going to give an introduction and she'll tell you a bit more about what you're going to be hearing about as we go along. Do you want to come up?

Rebecca Willis: Thanks. Welcome back everyone and welcome (indecipherable) I feel she's with us in this room. Before I go into my presentation, I just want to do a clarification about what we heard yesterday because I know there was a lot of discussion about it on the table. So let me just clarify what was laid out yesterday in terms of the costs, the cost estimates of the various things proposed. Just so that wizard of all in the same place with costs.

So firstly, there was discussion about the costs of hydrogen heating versus heat pump heating and whether with the cost of whether the costs of switching to hydrogen or heat pumps were different or the same. And I think the figure that we need to keep in mind for that was Jenny Hill from the Committee on Climate Change, who are independent and look across the different sectors, she said, that we should think about the costs is broadly similar when you look at the costs of the whole system. So for hydrogen, that includes some costs, which are quite uncertain, like the costs associated with producing hydrogen from natural gas and capturing the carbon and storing it. So they're expensive costs. But they are not things that you do to the home there further upstream. But if we think of them as broadly comparable with maybe a few more uncertainties for hydrogen than for heat pumps. So that's the hydrogen heat pump thing.

The other cost clarification is how much it costs to retrofit a house. So that's how much it costs to get it up to a really good energy efficiency standards. And I have done my homework. I've checked a few sources of figures on this, because again there were a lot of estimates yesterday and the short answer is, it completely depends on the house. So I know that there was a figure yesterday which is quite high. It was like 30 or 40,000. I think some of you were talking about and that is an upper limit. So that's if you take an old house that has no insulation, and you put it all in. So you change the windows, you insulate the walls, you insulate the roof and maybe the floors as well. So that is gonna cost. You know, if you get a big house and you do all those changes that is going to be in the tens of thousands. Some houses, more modern houses might just need a top-up of roof insulation or wall insulation and that might not even be £1000. So it does - there's a huge spread, and that's one of the challenges in the sector. But just to make it clear that it's not £40,000 for each and every house, it really, really varies on depending on what sort of house or flat, of course, it is.

Okay. Is that all right on costs? And we can come back to this anyway, we've got time to come back to it.

Okay. So, as Kayla said, we're now moving into the how bit, which is great, because we're starting to talk about solutions and how we can get these changes made. And I know it was a long time ago, but does anyone remember my blue triangle? So... vaguely? Yeah, I know you've had so much input since then, but I'm just going to recap it for you. So one theme that's come up throughout the Assembly is this idea of the different roles played by government, central government, and local government, by businesses and community actors, and by ourselves as individuals. And what I said when I introduced this triangle at the first weekend was that it's wrong to think that any of these three sectors can do it by themselves. So if you're an individual and you want to cut down your carbon footprint by driving your diesel car less, you can only do that if it's possible and affordable to switch to an electric car, you can only switch to other modes of transport if they're there and available, you can only cycle if there are cycle paths, and you feel safe doing it. So all those changes that are needed, some of them are your changes as individual. Some of them are business changes. Getting the bus service is in place, the car companies changing the manufacture of cars to move to electric vehicles and some of them, the government changing the price signals, changing laws and so on, so that those options are more affordable and more accessible. So you always have to think about what is the relative role of these three different groups. And it will vary from issue to issue, and even within the home topic, it varies. It varies between the different interventions about which of these actors need to work.

So we're going to hear different perspective this morning on who can bring about these changes that we need in the home. And we've got an amazing panel with a lot of knowledge, but also a lot of really practical experience. These guys have actually been there and done this work. So you're gonna hear different perspectives about the role of different sorts of organizations. So, Polly, can you give us a wave? Polly? Polly is going to talk about the role of local authorities or local areas. So for example, cities including Birmingham, the one we're in now has coordinated quite a lot of work on buildings, energy efficiency, and home energy efficiency. So we're going to hear some examples of local areas who've taken action on this, and Polly is going to tell us what that might look like in the future to achieve our targets. And then we've got Jonathan, give us a wave Jonathan, over there, almost in the corner. Who's going to talk about community-led approaches. What community organisations can do. And then we've got Dan. There's Dan and he's going to talk about the role of businesses. Then we've got two slightly different and super interesting talks. We've got Matthew, give us a wave, Matthew. He's going to talk about this idea of heat as a service, and he will explain that. But it's basically were, instead of buying gas coming down your pipe or electric coming through your wires, you actually pay for a service of heat the way you might pay for a mobile phone contract. That's a different way of buying energy services and he'll talk to you, talk you through that. And then we have Dara to finish off. Remember, we were talking yesterday about the importance of making sure that this is fair and making sure that people are protected, that you're not mis-sold things. And so that's a topic that we've asked all our speakers to address. And then Dara will finish off with a real focus on that.

So as you're listening to their presentations, I'm gonna put a few questions up that you might want to consider. You'll have questions of your own as well. But just to give you an idea of some of the things that we're gonna need to start, start thinking about. Obviously, and we got into a lot of discussion of this yesterday already, Who should pay? And how should they pay? So should it be, you know, should it be through energy bills? Should it be through taxation? Should people pay for their own heat pumps? Should someone else pay for them? All those questions around who should pay will definitely come up. Remember as well that when we're talking about who should pay, there's also a question about who benefits. So Nick told us yesterday that energy -that measures to improve the energy efficiency of houses make houses warmer to live in and cheaper to run. So there are big benefits to this, but we need to think about how we pay for those upfront costs.

How can we make sure it's fair? And then remember, given that you are advising Parliament and that you're saying what your role is to advise Parliament and to you have a think about what government needs to do. There'll be a particular focus on what you think central government needs to do. So you know, I've listed some of the things there, they need to provide information, advise. Do they need to spend public money differently? Do they need to invest themselves? Is government need to invest? Is that something you can do through the tax system? Subsidies, which is like tax but giving money rather than taking it away. Or regulations. They're all things we talked about in the previous weekend, but they're all things that our speakers will might suggest as well. And then, lastly, coming back to this question of who should do what between businesses and communities and individuals.

So that's just a summary. And we'll come back to these questions and unpack them a bit as we go through the debate today and also the next weekend. So the reason you might want to start thinking about some of these things is that the next time we meet, we're gonna use all the amazing input we've had from our speakers to discuss and develop recommendations on this topic. So it might include depending on discussions today, it might include your views on things like, What is the role of government? What do you think the role of other groups should be? What models that you've heard, do you think would work well? What do you think its fair? And of course, there's a lot of different definitions of fairness. And we'll all have different ideas in our heads about what we mean by fairness. What worries you? What are your areas of concern? And anything else. So those are all things that will really home in in detail in Weekend 3, and so I think our job for this morning is to harvest as much of the amazing experiences we have from our speakers to prepare ourselves for the job in Weekend 3. Great. Any question? No we're not doing questions now. Actually I've got a spare time, but it's fine we can carry on. Great. Thank you.