Dr. James Carton:

The Deputy's question was what the aim of a hydrogen strategy is. The aim is that it comes out sooner rather than later, gives clarity to industry and investors and kicks off the idea of planning projects. The offshore wind industry is having potential supply chain issues. The demand for hydrogen electrolysers has increased across Europe and the rest of the world so much that lead times have gone from nine months up to 18 and 24 months for large-scale electrolysers. The whole idea of a strategy is to have clarity and that it directs investment, policy and the resources from that and from the industry. It creates the market to grow and evolve.

In response to the question about heavy-duty vehicles, there are 40,000 HDVs that add about 16% of our transport emissions and they will have difficulty going to something else that is not zero-emission. A lot of them will go to hydrogen, some of them will go to compressed natural gas and some of them will go to battery. I can share with the committee a report we have done - it is going to publication - in which we surveyed the haulage industry to see what it wanted. Not knowing anything about hydrogen, it wanted hydrogen because it involved fast refill and was similar to what it was used to logistically. It is really interesting to see the solutions, and hydrogen could have an early market in that sector. Again, it depends on the market, etc.