Dr. James Glynn:

The statement largely reflects what is going on in terms of the global analysis of the state of technology development in the area of carbon capture and storage. There are different types of technologies for the five main chemical processes and some other CCS technologies, including the likes of direct air capture technology. The International Energy Agency monitors the technology readiness level of these technologies. There are some 18 different plants globally that are capturing nearly 30 million tonnes of CO₂which is approximately equivalent to 70% of Irish emissions annually. The problem is that, according to most of the global analysis, the amount of CO₂being captured from some of these technologies - even in the near term, by 2025 or 2030 - is in the order of 1 gigaton, which is only some 8% of certain global emissions.

There is a risk involved in focusing on the technologies. I recently co-authored a paper, published in Nature Communications, on the risk of relying on yet to be fully commercialised technologies like CCS and DAC. There should be a two-pronged approach. We should hope for the development of effective technology and encourage research and development with a view to accelerating the availability of a good suite of technologies but, equally, we should hedge our bets and not expect the technology to deliver, certainly not in the near term. As I said in my opening statement, if we do not have CCS or CDR technologies available in Ireland in the short term, then we need to look at more rapid mitigation. Reducing our CO₂emissions faster means more ambition, which means more efficiency, more energy to non-production, more retrofitting and more additional measures. Unfortunately, I do not think an either-or approach is the right one. We need to be ambitious and to carbonise as quickly as possible while also looking to invest in research and development for CCS. That may help us out in the long term because it is likely that we will be required to have some level of negative emissions from some sort of bioenergy CCS, either to produce hydrogen or to produce negative transport fuels using the initial development of CCS. It is likely there always will be residual emissions from the energy system. Cement production is something that really stands out in Ireland. It will be very difficult for some companies to produce cement in the long term without this kind of technology. That sector will come under increasing pressure as we get closer and closer to net zero emissions.

I am not sure a cap on reliance is something we should be looking to put in place. Good practice in energy systems analysis and uncertainty analysis across decarbonisation pathways would say that one does not pick one path but, instead, one should try to explore all the uncertainty across all the paths that will get us to our compliant pathway, using good practice in risk management. Capping the reliance on CCS does not come up in international best practices.