Professor Rebecca Willis, University of Lancaster: In the home

Kaela: So before we get into giving you time to have conversations in your groups about well, what does this topic really mean to us? I'm gonna hand you over to Rebecca. Just give us a bit of an introduction about what the scope of the topics' all about.

Rebecca Willis: Thanks and lovely to see you all here. And we're gonna be together for a little while, really getting into the meat of this topic. So I'm very happy to have you with us. I am biassed but I know what's coming and it is one of the most interesting areas that we're going to consider. So I'm really happy to be working with you on it. All I'm going to do now is run through what will happen today and tomorrow on this topic and then we're going to do some discussion and then hear from our speakers. So the main thing we're going to look at in this group is how to get to zero carbon in the home. So the things we're including within this are, firstly ways of making homes more energy efficient. That is ways of using less energy by being more efficient about the way we use energy and that will be explained to you. The second thing is by changes that we might wait we might make to the way that we live in our in our homes. The third thing we're going to look at is how you phase out fossil fuels, that's oil, gas and coal, which we currently use quite a lot for heating and cooking and we're gonna have a deep dive into zero carbon heating options because, as you will have heard so far from from comments that different speakers have made this is this is a really Trixie area. How we how we move to zero carbon heating. So that's something we're going to spend quite a lot of time on.

I'll just tell you what isn't included partly because there are overlaps and there's never an ideal way off dividing up these topics. So the first thing that we're not looking at in a lot of depth is generating electricity. So we had we had those talks from Jim and Jenny this morning who introduced some of the ways that we can generate electricity and we're not going to be talking about in detail but what I would just point out that as you will have seen, there are ways of generating electricity at household level and particularly solar panels, which you'll have seen on roofs, which can feed in to help the energy use in that house and which can also go into the electricity grid. So there are ways in which he can generate electricity at home. Those will be mentioned, but we don't have a specific speaker on it. We're not looking about transfer on transport cause that's another group. But again, there are some overlaps, really interesting overlaps around if we moved to electric vehicles, how we charge electric vehicles, how you know how, how they take their power, how you plug them in and how that fits into the sort of home energy system, if you like. So that's another interesting area that we might touch on. But we're not looking at wider transport issues. And we're not looking at food or things that we buy or use. The exception to that is, we are thinking about about appliances in the home which use electricity so, you know, gadgets, phones, I.T. equipment, other electrical appliances in the home, things like washing machines, that sort of thing so we will be talking about those a little bit, but in terms of their electricity use rather than the products themselves. So there's a little bit of overlap there. This is what you're going to get speakers on. But I would, you know, the whole point of this is to try and make connexions. So if there are connexions to be made between what we're talking about today and some of the stuff that you heard earlier about electricity generation or hydrogen or carbon capture, they all link up. So I would encourage you to make those connexions wherever possible and to ask questions about those.

Looking at how our discussions are structured. Broadly speaking, we're going to start with the question of what needs to happen, and then we're going to move on to how it could happen. Okay, so looking at first at what needs to happen. This is an overview of the changes that will be needed to our homes if we're going to phase out carbon emissions and how is, who will bring that about? What people in organisations might be able to help us do that? So the first panel you'll hear, you'll hear from speakers firstly, about making homes more energy efficient, trying to get trying to get them to be as efficient as possible and use as little electricity and heating as we can. We'll also look at reducing demand, maybe through changing the way that we live in our houses. Maybe through changing or improving the technologies that we use and then we're gonna have this deep dive on heating and look at different technologies that can be used for heating and hot water, and those include things like heat pumps and hydrogen boilers. And don't worry if you have no idea what hydrogen boiler is at this stage or a heat pump, for that matter, because we're going to go into some detail about what those technologies are, and you'll have some pictures as well about what they look like.

So that is essentially what needs to happen and then we will have our second panel, which looks essentially at how this could be brought about. So by the time by the end of the first panel, you'll have an idea of how our homes need to change and in the second panel, you're going to be presented with a whole range of speakers, telling you the different ways in which we could we could achieve those change. So this panel is tomorrow morning, but the kinds of perspectives you'll hear from are what could be done through local authorities, what kind of strategies could local authorities like cities play? What role could they play in making our, getting our homes to zero carbon and you'll have some examples of cities and local areas that have done some really good stuff already and you'll have an idea of what, what will happen, what could happen in the future. We're gonna be hearing from a speaker from a community organisation. Who will say what what community groups can do and what's called a nonprofit organisations which are essentially organisations that provide a service but don't make a profit out of it, that they reinvest the profits into the community. So we'll look and you can get an idea of whether you think that's an approach that might be useful to move towards zero carbon homes. We're going to look at the role of businesses, both what services business can offer to help us do this and also what support they need. In order to do that. We're gonna look particularly at a new approach, which we're calling heat is a service. We'll explain what that is, but it's basically rather than selling you gas, it's selling heat. It's selling you the service of heating your home. So again we're going to a lot more detail of that, so you know it will be explained in full All those speakers will offer what they, will sort of set out their store for what they can offer to get our homes to zero carbon. And they will also say what they would need from other actors in order to bring that about, so what they would want government to do, what role there might be for businesses and what they would expect of us or as people who live in houses. So they will and they will talk particularly, given that you're advising Parliament and government, they will look particularly at what they would want government to do for their approach to work.

Right across this theme is our questions around fairness and consumer protection, because when you're talking about changes to people's people's Homes, it's obviously really important to consider the circumstances of people living in their homes. If they're asked to make changes, can they afford to make those changes? If prices change, can they afford that? How do you help people who might be vulnerable because they have particular needs for heating? So there's lots of questions around vulnerability, fairness and consumer protection, consumer protection? How do you know that, you know, if you're being sold new equipment, how do you know that that's fair and that is, how do you know that you're not being conned when you're sold something. So we've addressed fairness and consumer protection in two ways. The first thing is, we've asked all our speakers in panel to talk specifically about how how under their approach that they would ensure fairness and consumer protection. And we've also got a separate speaker who will cover those issues directly. So that should be a theme running through it. That is like a whistle stop tour of what we're going to be looking at. I've just condensed it all into less than 10 minutes, but there'll be a lot of stuff there that hasn't been explained fully yet but that will evolve as we unpack it. We just wanted to give you an overview at the start of what we'll be doing together both this weekend and in future sessions. Thank you.