At a time of increasing concern around energy supplies and rising costs, next month’s Hydrogen Ireland Conference is very timely as hydrogen moves from strategy into the much harder question of deployment.
Ireland’s National Hydrogen Strategy identifies three fundamental opportunities, according to Paul Cullen: decarbonisation, greater energy security and industrial development. It particularly sees renewable hydrogen providing long-duration storage and dispatchable electricity, as well as serving sectors that are difficult to electrify directly.
“For Ireland, the attraction is that we can ultimately convert a potential vast indigenous resource, renewable electricity, into a storable fuel. Hydrogen is not a replacement for electrification; we should electrify directly wherever that makes sense, but there will be sectors where electrification won’t be practical. But as renewable penetration increases, we will also need solutions capable of moving substantial quantities of energy not just between hours, but potentially between weeks and seasons. That is where green hydrogen can become strategically important.”
He says the conference therefore provides an opportunity to move the conversation from ambition towards the practical questions of production, demand, infrastructure, storage, regulation and investment. The most important lesson the ESB has learned from its hydrogen demonstration work is the value of learning by doing. “It is relatively easy to draw a hydrogen value chain on a PowerPoint slide. Actually producing, compressing, transporting, storing and converting hydrogen back to electricity exposes the engineering, safety, regulatory, certification and commercial interfaces very quickly.”
ESB’s Hydrogen demonstration programme has deliberately started small to build competence before moving to much larger projects, he explains. ESB’s Lighthouse development at Aghada brings together a roughly 1 MW electrolyser, compression, mobile storage and hydrogen power units. “We have also learnt that the project-development burden for a small hydrogen installation can still be substantial. Technology and suppliers are evolving rapidly, documentation and compliance matter enormously, and supply-chain developments can materially affect schedules. Our own project material captures that quite bluntly: projects take time, markets change quickly, and technology changes rapidly.” Commercially, the other big lesson is that production cannot be developed in isolation – credible demand, logistics and certification are needed as well as the electrolyser.
Cullen is also Project Director for Project Kestrel – a joint venture to develop large-scale underground energy storage off the Cork coast, initially focusing on strategic gas storage and eventually transitioning to green hydrogen. “The concept behind Kestrel has always been the long-term provision of a hydrogen storage facility. We will develop strategic natural-gas storage while designing the facility, with a future transition to hydrogen in mind.”
The Kestrel facility in the depleted Ballycotton gas field off the Cork coast will have the capability of storing circa 90 days of Ireland’s average natural gas consumption, and when transitioned to hydrogen will be capable of delivering over a third of Ireland’s expected hydrogen storage needs. “The hydrogen transition will be driven by the market rather than an arbitrary date. The important milestones will include sufficient green-hydrogen production, significant hydrogen demand, appropriate transport infrastructure, a functioning regulatory regime for underground hydrogen storage, confirmation of technical performance and, critically, a commercial model that rewards long-duration and strategic storage.”
Ireland is already developing that regulatory framework, he adds. The Government’s 2026 geological-storage consultation explicitly recognises geological hydrogen storage as potentially important for seasonal storage, security of supply and integration of renewable electricity.
Importantly, Ireland’s storage potential can become a strategic advantage for energy security, reducing its exposure to imported fossil fuels and periods of low wind generation. “In my view, due to its intermittent nature energy storage has to be considered alongside renewable generation, not after it. Ireland currently imports a very large proportion of its energy, while the National Hydrogen Strategy sees indigenous renewable hydrogen as an opportunity to improve energy security.
As we develop significantly more wind generation, the challenge increasingly becomes how we capture energy at scale when it is abundant, and make it available when renewable output is low.” Batteries are extremely valuable for shorter-duration flexibility. Hydrogen potentially addresses a different problem: large-scale, long-duration and ultimately inter-seasonal energy storage. “That combination of abundant renewable generation and geological storage could become a significant strategic advantage for Ireland.”
Having worked across different areas of Ireland’s energy sector, the experience has reinforced for Cullen that energy infrastructure has to work as a system. “Producing hydrogen is only one component. You need electricity, grid access, water, planning, storage, transportation, customers, regulation, certification and financing to develop together. That is why demonstration projects are so valuable. They identify the interfaces that aren’t obvious during strategy development.”
Experience has also made him pragmatic: “Hydrogen needs to compete for capital and ultimately customers. We therefore need to concentrate initially on applications where hydrogen solves a genuine problem that electrification alone cannot readily solve, and where customers have a real decarbonisation requirement.” As regards what skills and expertise will be needed to develop for Ireland to become a serious player in the hydrogen industry, we start with many transferable capabilities: power-system engineering, renewables, process engineering, gas infrastructure, offshore engineering and major-project delivery.
“But hydrogen adds specialist requirements around electrolysis, compression, hydrogen materials, hazardous-area design, storage geology, fuel cells and combustion, together with safety, certification and hydrogen-specific regulation. Just as importantly, we need commercial capability: people who understand energy contracts, renewable-power sourcing, certification requirements, logistics and how to structure bankable projects.”
The employment opportunity is therefore wider than manufacturing electrolysers, he adds – it potentially stretches from engineering and construction through operations, maintenance, ports, offshore development, storage and professional services. Cullen believes it is realistic to see Ireland recognised as a future successful hydrogen economy, but he would qualify what we mean by “successful”. By 2035, success should not necessarily mean producing vast quantity of hydrogen.
“It should mean having established several things: operating green-hydrogen production, genuine industrial demand, functioning infrastructure and regulation, proven storage capability, and a credible pathway towards much larger renewable-hydrogen production.” Ireland has excellent renewable resources potential and the National Hydrogen Strategy explicitly identifies the potential for domestic hydrogen production eventually to exceed domestic demand.
“But potential isn’t the same as delivery,” he concludes. “The period between now and 2030 is really about building capability, infrastructure and demand. The early 2030s should be about scaling what works. If Ireland does that successfully, then by 2035 I think we can reasonably be viewed not simply as a country with hydrogen potential, but as one that has built a functioning hydrogen economy.”
The 2026 H2 Summit takes place at Fota Island Resort, Cork on November 18 & 19
