Professor Barry McMullin:

Yes, exactly, but it will potentially resolve a number of the problems with hydrogen in this specific context of providing firm electricity capacity. The committee would have to invite in Professor Browne, and I think he would be very happy to give it evidence. He has been looking at this intensively and thinks that, even from a direct-cost point of view, this is very close to being pencilled out in a situation where there is access to large-scale renewable energy generation where otherwise there would be difficulty.

The danger at the moment, although this is a silly thing to say, is that if we are too successful in building out our wind energy, we will have too much electricity at certain times. Let us be optimistic for a moment and assume success in rolling out that offshore wind deployment. In parallel with that, we will need to work on the routes to market for that additional energy at peak wind conditions, and the methanol route is an interesting one. The basic technology is not quite off the shelf, but it is not low level. It is fairly well-established technology.

I commented there on the storage issue but I am not sure whether I said enough in response to the Cathaoirleach's question.