Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 1 March 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Energy - Ambition and Challenges: Discussion

Dr. James Carton:

I will make a point on the gas grid. Hydrogen needs to be created and used for a reason. We understand it quite well at a small scale. Once it is scaled up, a lot of storage is needed. It will probably be geological storage. Ultimately, it has to be moved around. It will not be moved around by trucks but in pipes, whether the gas grid is segmented into hydrogen sections or new pipes are installed to move hydrogen from offshore to an onshore industry facility or such. It will depend on how we scale our renewables and how we then see hydrogen scaling. We will see what infrastructure will be necessary, hopefully at the lowest cost and lowest possible carbon intensity when it is being moved around. When we talk about energy, we talk about electricity, all transport and all heating together. This is about much more than the ambition of decarbonising electricity. It is also about decarbonising our energy system.