Mr. Tom Marren:

I will address the hydrogen question and someone else can answer about the other issues. We are not trying to compete against hydrogen. That is another technology. What I will say is that I am not aware of any report in the world that says hydrogen is a superior technology to address temperatures that are below 120° or 130°, which is industrial heat. This technology is just so efficient. It is like when we were all doing our intermediate certificate many years ago. I am sure Deputy Bruton did the intermediate certificate rather than the junior certificate. Energy goes in and does not go anywhere. Typically, with gas boilers, we put energy in and then we dump that energy somewhere else through cooling towers, chillers or something else. This technology just recycles the energy. Very often, we can achieve hundreds of percent efficiency. It is called coefficient of performance, COP. Typically, our systems will be 300% to 400% efficient. We reuse that energy all the time.

All the reports say this is a technology for heat, including industrial heat. When we get higher temperatures, maybe above 200° or even a bit lower, that is reaching hydrogen territory. Our industrial heat is 40% of all the energy used for heating in Ireland. Just over 50% of that is the lower-grade heat, which is heat pump technology. It does not need hydrogen. It is much more efficient to use heat pumps and address this imbalance in the operational cost.

Someone else will pick up on the cost but the other thing is that this is deliverable in a short period of time. We can deliver 2 million tonnes of carbon reduction because we are going after quite a small target area. It also gives our industries competitiveness. It achieves our climate target reductions on the heat side and it will assist our industry. That is the first part, regarding hydrogen. I do not know whether the Deputy is happy with that. Maybe someone else would like to take up the question of whether now is the right time but I do not think time will change this. The technology is not getting any more efficient. It is all based on the Carnot cycle.