Mr. Graham Brennan:

I can respond to a few of the Senator's questions. On the hydrogen versus battery debate, when a hydrogen fuel cell is used and is made from electricity, the round-trip efficiency is 50%. If that is done by battery, the efficiency is around 87%. If we are using electricity in both cases, hydrogen will always lose to a battery, economically. We find that all of the manufacturers are making battery EVs. For the cars, the feeling is that the batteries have it. There is ten years of development in EVs. The price of fuel cell vehicles is around €50,000 at the moment. That is where EVs were ten years ago. No one is really building infrastructure for fuel cell vehicles. When we move up in scale, there is even uncertainty as to whether hydrogen will work for heavy vehicles such as trucks. It looks like the medium-sized vans will all be electric. The trend is certainly there. It is based on efficiencies. Around 40 battery factories are being built in Europe now, so there will be tonnes and tonnes of battery production capacity in Europe. Hydrogen is probably better suited for aviation. It might also work very well in electrolysis for grid storage and perhaps in shipping. Those are the niche areas where it can be used.

On mining, cobalt mining is the big issue. Around 60% of that comes from Congo. On the evolution of the technology, all the manufacturers, including Tesla, are planning to stop using cobalt.

They are replacing it with nickel. Tesla is boasting that already some of its vehicles have stopped using cobalt. There is also battery recycling to get the cobalt back. The evolution of the battery has moved to lithium and sulphur. This is possibly all there will be in the batteries in future. There is tonnes of lithium around and sulphur is fairly cheap. This is probably where it will go.

The point on EnergyCloud is a very good one. We are switching the home charger programme so that we will only fund smart chargers. The smart meter and the smart charger are separate entities. Smart meters tell people how much energy they are using every 15 minutes. Based on this, the supplier can decide to give them a package. With a smart charger, if someone knows the price of energy will plummet because the amount of wind on the system that night will be enormous, they can use a smart charger to charge. This is how it is evolving. We will see it emerging. The smart charger is essential. I will leave the point on photovoltaic energy for someone else.