Dr. James Glynn:

That is quite a suite of questions.

On the export of CO2 emissions, in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the inventories that are used in gases are all production-based, that is where the emissions are produced. There are other accounting frameworks on consumption-based emissions and there is quite a difference. Generally, the developed OECD countries have higher consumption-based emissions than they have production-based ones because they are service-based economies rather than industrial manufacturing-based economies where industrial manufacturing is far more energy and CO2 intensive than service-based economies.

In recent legislation in the UK, it is still using the UNFCCC inventories around production but is also acknowledging and tracking consumption-based emissions in the UK. I am unsure if this is in any legislative targets but it is being acknowledged, tracked and accounted for within the Climate Change Committee, CCC, in the UK.

On the issue of producing carbon dioxide and a carbon capture and storage, CCS, plant in Ireland and then exporting it for sequestration in the North Sea, this is a matter I am unsure of between production and consumption because it is being produced in Ireland but is being stored off the island. That is an interesting case that perhaps needs to be explored if that becomes a common occurrence which is possible to probe, given the terms within Europe.

On the investment and technology transfer question, within more international circles and not necessarily within Irish research but within the green climate fund and inter-development banks, there has been a shifting trend in using international aid that would have been given more towards development and humanities projects and are now going into the development of low-carbon technologies in developing countries. I do not see this as a get-out-of-jail in the reduction of our ambition in the developed world. The developed world needs to be mitigating as ambitiously as possible while again acknowledging capacity and responsibility within the Paris Agreement.

Globally, we need to reach net zero and stabilise temperatures by 2°C probably by 2050. That means that developing Africa and Asia might reach net zero by 2060 or 2070, but the developed world, in global analysis, should reach net zero before 2050.

Access to capital and finance is a big issue in the developing world. International banks, even inter-development banks, and rating agencies put a higher risk on investing in low-carbon infrastructure in developing countries than they do in the developed world. That access to finance is difficult. Ireland has a role to play in maximising our ambition as we agreed in our nationally determined contribution, NDC, in the context of the European Commission, to the Paris Agreement. There is also a role with international aid being properly accounted for in terms of its original purpose within development and security and within future security for mitigating climate change and all the risks to developing countries that have received aid in the past.

It is difficult to explain technology transfer within that. Some of my colleagues might be more expert in the area. It has a role to play in educating and giving capacity to developing countries. We have given international energy systems in carbon market analysis to Vietnam last year, for example, and some South American countries, in our area of expertise and that is ongoing. Knowledge transfer is useful for them to develop their own policies, carbon targets and carbon taxes. Technology transfer is not my area of expertise so I will not comment.

Could the Senator remind me of her question on long-lived and short-lived gases?