Mr. Brendan Murphy:

I will come back to the Deputy on that point. I strongly believe that it is cheaper, but my opinion is not important. The point I have made is that the International Energy Agency, IEA; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC; the European Commission; the UK Government and the UK Committee on Climate Change are all stating decarbonising the power sector will be much more expensive without carbon capture and storage. It is not just me who is saying it; all of those bodies are stating it. The numbers are very big. That is the evidence I can provide straightaway.

There is no question that we need to maximise the use of wind energy. The other question is how can we decarbonise the other 30% in meeting our energy needs. Of all the options available, the only one that will have a meaningful impact is using gas-fired power plants and carbon capture and storage. That is my overall point. We can come back to the Deputy with more information and particular numbers, if he wants.

How the process works is simple and it can be done in several ways. For a gas-fired power station, emissions are captured and put through a chemical process that strips out the CO2, cleans and compresses it. It is then either shipped to an offshore field - in the case of Kinsale, it is shipped 56 km offshore - or compressed into liquid form and shipped out for processing. In the example of Equinor ASA, it would be brought by ship to Norway and injected into a field designed specifically for that purpose. Depending on exactly how it is done, up to 100% of the CO2 emissions from a power station can be captured by that process. It is happening around the world. None of the technology for carbon capture and strategy is new; it is proven technology. The issue up to now has been economics, specifically cost and who owns the associated risk. The process is without question technically feasible. The question is whether it is economically feasible.

It is crucial to note that one cannot simply compare wind energy production with a CCS power plant. We should, of course, maximise wind energy generation. However, when wind does not blow, there has to be a back-up, the cost of which will be more than the cost of the power produced when the wind is blowing. Taking that into account, dispatchable CCS power is significantly cheaper than any alternative.