Dr. James Carton:

I will start with the question on the strategies that are out there, who is doing it and what we can learn from them because that fits in quite nicely with the Chairman's question. Most European countries have developed a hydrogen strategy.

We thank Deputy O'Rourke for adding the development of a hydrogen strategy for Ireland to a motion. In my opening statement, I went through some of what was needed. As to which countries are doing this and whether we can copy and paste from them, the ones to look at are Germany and the Netherlands. Other countries have regional industries that affect their hydrogen strategies. Some countries are heavily industrialised and some may develop hydrogen power from solar power. Fortunately or unfortunately, Ireland will have its own hydrogen strategy and it will be quite different from many other countries' strategies. We will focus on building out large-scale renewables to supply it, which one presumes will make it a green hydrogen strategy. We have the capability of developing that.

To answer Deputy Bruton, hydrogen should go into our internal market first and foremost. We need to think of exporting as something that we can do and build up to and we can develop our strategy to enable that, but we need to decarbonise our economy and our industry first. That is, unless there is a good economic reason to export hydrogen instead of keeping it.

Senator Dooley asked who would pull the strategy together. That will probably fall on the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, engaging with the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, and academic and industrial stakeholders on the island.

This covers some of the points on the strategy. I can cover some other questions.

Regarding the hydrogen export market, Deputy Bruton asked about the scale of the technology involved. Hydrogen electrolysis has been deployed at multi-ten megawatt scale. Now, projects are being built at 100 MW scale and there is the capability to scale electrolysers upwards to gigawatt levels. The proposed offshore renewable site's 1 GW could be fully produced via hydrogen. However, the first thing to remember about thermodynamics and energy efficiency is that we should bring our energy into Ireland via electricity where we can. The key issue with hydrogen is to use it where we can or where it is necessary. The first offshore sites would be facilitated via electricity and, as they are built out, we would develop them to produce energy carriers.

As Mr. Daly mentioned, if hydrogen is being moved tens of kilometres to 100 km, doing it by truck is fine. If it is being moved 100 km or more, it should be done via pipes. If it is being moved 3,000 km or more, energy carriers such as ammonia are suitable. Liquid hydrogen depends on the process. There are processes that are cheap and useful. Japan is examining liquified hydrogen but ammonia is an interesting one for today. Most of our agricultural fertiliser comes from Ukraine or Russia. We do not have any security in that respect. Ammonia is a key component in producing agricultural fertiliser. If we are considering ammonia as a potential export, we will be engaging with the island's energy security as well. The solutions need to be considered together. It is not just a binary solution.