This narrative document sets out, five steps, the main rationale for hydrogen storage development at scale in the UK:

  1. To meet net zero, the UK will need considerable energy storage:

    • There will be significant periods of mismatch between renewable energy supply and energy demand, within-day, on cold winter weeks, and seasonally. And renewable energy constraint payments are forecast to rise to a peak of £1-2.5 billion a year in the mid-2020s.

    • Energy storage at scale is therefore needed to maximise the energy recovery from the UK's vast wind and other variable renewable resources.

  2. Hydrogen storage will be a major and essential part of this:

    • Of the main electricity storage options, batteries are short duration and not at sufficient scale, and there are limited new pumped hydro sites.

    • Hydrogen production and storage can also offer a solution to electricity grid constraints, enabling more renewable capacity installation, and maximising the usage of that capacity, with lower curtailment.

    • The recent Long Duration Energy Storage report for the UK Department for Net Zero and Energy Security (DESNZ, formerly BEIS) concluded that longer duration storage solutions reduce net zero system costs by £13-24 billion a year, and that the largest savings arise from a combination of hydrogen storage and hydrogen CCGTs.

    • DNV's modelling for this project found that, to ensure continued energy provision in the coldest periods with very low wind generation (such as in early December 2022), hydrogen storage will range from 29-65 TWh – equivalent to 20-45 new salt cavern facilities with each facility comprising multiple individual caverns.

    • Not surprisingly, scenarios with hydrogen heating require more hydrogen storage. But the electrified heating scenarios would require more electricity generation, storage and transmission infrastructure, which are not quantified here. These investments can be very large indeed. DNV recently carried out a study for Eurogas, looking at Europe as a whole, and found that in an electrification scenario, electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure investment would need to be €106 billion a year, compared with €63 billion a year in a balanced electricity and decarbonised gas scenario. A balanced scenario would therefore save €41 billion a year on power grids, with only an additional €2 billion a year needed for gas transmission and distribution infrastructure.

You can access this article if you purchase or spend a download.