Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Connolly for her opening statement and all the witnesses for their opening statements. There is a great deal to think about. It is hard to know where to begin when asking questions. Can I get agreement from the committee that members will take only two minutes to ask questions? I will ask our witnesses to be as brief and as succinct as they can be, notwithstanding there is much detail that must be covered and I will give them latitude. Are we agreed on two minutes for asking questions? Agreed.

I invite members to indicate if they wish to contribute and some have already indicated. If I may, I will kick off by with a question about hydrogen. I will put my question first to the regulator. She spoke about storage in her opening statement but not so much about green hydrogen, which is something that has come up significantly in the series of meetings we have had. From our previous meetings with the regulator, she is on record as having stated she sees a role for liquified natural gas, LNG. It seems the conversation around LNG and green hydrogen is changing quite rapidly even within a matter of months, and in the context of the current crisis it is being talked about much more. If I had asked her about it six months or a year ago, she might have said green hydrogen is something around which there is a whole economy to be developed post 2030, but the narrative developing now is that it is something that perhaps can and should be accelerated. What is the regulator's view on that?

The issue was broached last week when representatives of EirGrid appeared before the committee, and it was said then that we will need gas for when we do not have the renewables on the grid and that we will need gas storage. The implication was it would be LNG storage. The question of green hydrogen storage and whether that is an option have not been explored fully. Can we bypass the conventional discussion that LNG is the storage we need and perhaps we can go straight to green hydrogen? I would welcome the regulator's view. I get the sense she might think it is premature to be making plans in that regard but I would argue it is not. We are in a very serious situation with the whole world changing and energy conversations evolving very rapidly. Perhaps we should be talking about expediting that green hydrogen reality.

I will also put the question to Ms Connolly. There are risks associated with green hydrogen as much as regular hydrogen. She might speak to some of those. We have touched on this in the committee previously. We do not want a situation where green hydrogen is being used to reinforce or lock in natural gas. The idea is we would inject green hydrogen, which is great as it is generated with renewable electricity, into the gas grid up to, say, 20%, but that would perhaps, somewhat perversely, prolong the use of natural gas and we do not necessarily want that. Ms Connolly might speak to that also, but I will go first to the regulator.