Mr. Brendan Murphy:

On Deputy Smith's question as to whether CCS is a proven technology, CCS has been has been running since the 1970s. There are about 17 large-scale CCS plants around the world right now. Four are being added this year. It is a proven technology. The issue of cost has been holding it back, but cost is coming down. There is one plant in Saskatchewan in Canada, for example, where they reckon if they did it now the cost would be 50% less than what it was when they did it a couple of years ago.

This ties into the rest of the conversation with Mr. Allen earlier about the use of hydrogen, which we fully understand. There are two ways of getting hydrogen; one is from wind farms and the other is from splitting natural gas, storing the carbon dioxide and pumping hydrogen through the network. It is the same hydrogen. The idea that we would not use our natural gas to burn in power stations and capture the emissions, or split the natural gas, pump hydrogen and store the CO2 - it seems like a very settled way of using natural gas.

In respect of 80% of fossil fuels having to be left in the ground, much of that is coal. Clearly, coal is a much more polluting fossil fuel than gas. The question is whether the world can get to a point where coal is left in the ground but gas, as the cleanest fossil fuel, is used in this long-term path.