Any idea of the future should at first seem ridiculous

Recent visit to retrofit conference

Last year I had the pleasure of attending a retrofitting conference in Belgium. It was great to learn about the projects that are working well in their market and share ideas and examples from Ireland. 

One idea made by the keynote speaker, Rob Hopkins, really struck me. Rob  himself a noted English activist and writer on environmental issues, quoted Jim Dator an American Futurologist. Jim Dator said, “Any statement of the future should at first seem ridiculous”. It was a powerful statement that got me thinking. 

The quote was delivered in the context of trying to envision the society of the future and how we would like to live and work in a decarbonised society, perhaps an Ireland of 2050. The quote was, in my view, like turning a mirror on ourselves, looking at where we are today, and then using this experience to try and envisage where we will be in the future. 

Did Bill Gates sound ridiculous in the Eighties?

Back in the early eighties, Bill Gates gave Microsoft the mission of putting “a computer on every desk and in every home”. Bill Gate’s mission statement would certainly have qualified as a ridiculous statement about the future. When he set that mission, the rate of household computer ownership in the US was a mere 2.8%, it currently stands at approximately 96.2%.  

Could Bill Gates see into the future or around corners? probably not, but what he did have was an understanding of the potential power of the computer and how it could make society better.  He made a bold statement about the future. Arguably this became the ‘North Star’ for Bill Gates and Microsoft. 

Big strides in the building sector

Now let’s take Jim Dators quote and apply it to the building sector, think….  indoor plumbing. It would be inconceivable to build a house today with no indoor plumbing, yet indoor plumbing did not become a normal thing in the UK until the mid-1960’s. According to the 1967 House Conditions Survey 25% of homes in England and Wales lacked a bath or shower, an indoor WC, a sink and hot and cold water taps. By 1991, only 1% of households lacked one or more of these items. So, if the Bill Gates of indoor plumbing was around in the early 1960’s, the mission might have been to have a ‘a toilet and bath in every home’ or if they were more visionary, they may have included an ensuite too. 

We can look back at things across all facets of life which are normal to us now, but when they were first mooted, seemed absolutely ridiculous. Indoor plumbing, ensuites, pedestrianised streets, mobile phones, disease eradication, mass vaccination programmes and the list goes on and on.

The year 2050

So, what seems ridiculous now, that the society of 2050 will look on as being totally normal? This is actually quite a powerful question, because for these things to be ‘normal’ in 2050, a mere 25 years away, they should probably in their early adoption phase now.  

Well, the obvious one is living in a decarbonised society, and this was the topic of Richard Hopkins’s visionary presentation in Belgium. In the residential building sector, every home will be insulated and heated without using fossil fuels. Heat pumps or district heating will be rolled out at scale, or some other innovative technology which we have not even countenanced yet will become prevalent, but homes will not burn fossil fuels for their energy requirements. The young generation of 2050 will look back in horror, or perhaps mirth, to think of their parents and grandparents using oil and gas to heat their homes, and supplementing this, in some cases, with an open fire or stove! 

Heat pump deployment

We are struggling to achieve the level of heat pump deployment required to meet 2030 targets and the 2050 vision. And by ‘we’, I mean, pretty much, all of Europe. While central heating has been around since time immemorial, it is only since the late 1960’s early 1970’s that it has become mainstream in domestic homes and replaced individual room heating. 

Presumably central heating was at the time the ‘must have’ technology for new homes. Over time though, existing homes also had central heating retrofitted, with all of the commensurate disturbance etc. Today, according to a recent EPA report, in 2016 only 1.4% of homes were recorded as having no central heating. 

We are in a very similar place with heat pumps in the new build sector today that central heating was in the late 60’s and early 70’s. In 2023 more than 95% of new homes installed a heat pump. As these homes are occupied and people experience and understand how heat pumps and decarbonised heating works, and the technology becomes more mainstream, existing homes will retrofit heat pumps, in much the same way as central heating was retrofitted in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The issue we face on this occasion, is that we have to significantly accelerate the speed of retrofitting heat pumps and decarbonised heating systems, as we now know of the severe impacts of carbon emissions on global warming.

SEAI home grants

SEAI offers significant grants and incentives to retrofit a heat pump into a home. But we need to do more.  I envisage a time not too far away when it will not be possible to install a heating device which does not achieve a certain level of energy efficiency. This is exactly the direction of travel in the motor industry where the acceptable emission levels from combustion engines have been systematically reduced, forcing manufacturers to design ever more efficient vehicles. The end point of this journey will be when internal combustion engine (ICE) are no longer being mass produced. 

The direction is set, we know what to do, we know how to do it, all we need to do is to figure out how to bring people along on the journey and support them appropriately.  I look forward to a really positive 2025.