Mr. Noel Regan:

The legislation has created two distinct types of renewable and low-carbon hydrogens. There is pure renewable hydrogen, which is referred to as green hydrogen, and which Ireland supports. They have created a second category called low-carbon hydrogen. The test is that there must be 70% emissions reduction versus current levels. There are a couple of points on that. First of all, there are a limited amount of ways in which one can make hydrogen: renewable hydrogen and electricity from the grid. If one is not located directly beside the renewable power station then one might take electricity with some level of carbon. That is the question. Low carbon gases would seem to fall into this category. Nevertheless, there is still the ability to create hydrogen from fossil fuels, for example, without carbon capture and storage, CCS, which would not even fall in that category. As the Chairman has said, one is simply replacing one fossil fuel with another form of fossil fuels. That does seem to be an issue that needs to be addressed. The Commission has not addressed it in a way that stops it, essentially. Rather, it has addressed it in a way to incentivise the other two of renewable hydrogen and low-carbon hydrogen. That issue is going to have to be resolved. Where we are today is that the hydrogen in Europe is largely made of natural gas and it is done without carbon capture and storage, so it is not a good process, and I would certainly not want to see an extension of that process.

On the use of hydrogen, yes we absolutely want to see a focus on where the use of hydrogen in Ireland should be. We intend to do a consultation on that very question during the year leading up to the next climate action plan. In the positive sense, we have some good signals. We will be developing offshore renewable electricity, which could be a good source for hydrogen. With hydrogen use in Ireland we know that heating will focus on energy efficiency, district heating and electric heat pumps. It is not an obvious place for hydrogen to be used in Ireland. Similarly, with transport it is about public transport and electric vehicles. The likely home for this in transport, if it is to be used in transport, would be for heavy duty vehicles, maritime and possibly aviation somewhat further down the line.

I echo what the Chairman has said, that this should be used after energy efficiency and after electrification. The benefit is that it can find to those difficult to decarbonise places, for example high-temperature heating in industry, which is proving very difficult to decarbonise.

That would be Ireland's approach as is set out in the climate action plan. Through our scrutiny of this legislation we must assess whether the gate is too open and that we do not go in the direction of the fossil fuels. We must also recognise that each member state will need some differences. For example, Ireland is not a heavy industry country compared with others, so they might put more of their hydrogen there versus our use. There will be some changes but ideally not enough that fossil fuels would be the answer.