Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 22 February 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals

Mr. Noel Regan:

The Commission rules are that they have limited cross-border trade of hydrogen to 5%, so there is a natural restriction put in the legislation. That will be there. What we must work out, through our consultations, is the transition period. Essentially, Ireland has no market and if there is a role for the natural gas grid, it must be asked whether it is injection or for a period where it is put in and used for specific customer uses such as high-temperature heating. There may be value there. For example, those customers who use high-temperature heating in Ireland would typically use natural gas and they are connected to the gas grid. There may be such cases that makes sense. With the package, over time the idea is to transfer completely to hydrogen and with the transition there may be some scenarios where it would make sense, but possibly not for heating homes and other certain areas like that.

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