Yahoo Finance Plan to store gas under the Irish Sea to defeat Putin
Gas reserves would be stored in a vast salt cavern under the Irish Sea under proposals discussed by ministers as they scramble to bolster Britain's energy security in the face of Russian aggression.
Officials are discussing plans to revive the so-called Gateway project in which caves south-west of Barrow-in-Furness would be used to contain 1.5bn cubic metres of natural gas or hydrogen, reducing the country's dependence on international markets.
The scheme was shelved a decade ago when ministers decided to scale back gas storage capacity, but in the past month civil servants have met with Stag Energy, the company masterminding the proposal, to see if it can be revived.
The talks come after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent gas and electricity prices soaring, with millions of households now facing rising energy bills and a cost-of-living crisis.
George Grant, Stag's chief executive, said he had held exploratory talks with the Business Department and the Crown Estate - which owns the seabed - about the feasibility of reviving the Gateway scheme.
“The potential for a very large facility is absolutely still there and it is certainly on their radar," he said.
“Their main priority at the moment is things that can be done in the next year or two, so it is not top tier, but it is going in the hopper of things to be considered.
“Will they decide to move forward with it? I don’t know. Are we happy to engage with them? Absolutely.”
Gateway was originally approved by Gordon Brown’s government but was later shelved under David Cameron when ministers decided to primarily rely on imports instead of storage.
The UK’s biggest gas storage facility at Rough, off the Yorkshire coast, was later closed by British Gas owner Centrica in 2017.
Mr Grant said the shelving of Gateway followed a failure to agree a regulatory framework with the Government to create a backup gas market, similar to the electricity “capacity market”, which would have financially rewarded companies for holding gas in reserve.
He said a similar regulatory framework would need to be revisited in future if Gateway was to be revived, whether for natural gas or the hydrogen fuel which is expected to replace it in coming decades.
The project was designed to hold 1.5bn cubic metres of natural gas, enough for about five days of supply, and would take a decade to build.
The new proposals include a plan to store natural gas initially before the site is repurposed to handle hydrogen instead.
Ministers want to use hydrogen to power heavy industry and heat homes in coming decades, with a target for 10 gigawatts of production by 2030. The gas does not generate greenhouse emissions when burned, unlike fossil fuels.
Under Mr Grant's plan, Gateway would be used to store "green" hydrogen made through the chemical process of electrolysis using excess power from wind turbines in the Irish Sea.
He said: “Whether it is natural gas or, further down the road, hydrogen, salt caverns are a very good storage medium for both of those things.
“There is also about 2.5 gigawatts of offshore wind generation in the Irish Sea, so it is a logical location to look at green hydrogen production and storage.”
Boris Johnson called hydrogen a “super fuel” earlier this month, saying it could be used to power the grid when needed, for example if solar and wind output is lower than usual.
The Government has committed itself to establishing a regulatory framework by 2025 that will encourage investment in such schemes.
Mr Johnson has also discussed the idea of building enormous floating wind farms in the Irish Sea.
A Whitehall source played down the prospect of Gateway being used to store natural gas but added: “We are absolutely looking at hydrogen storage - and we made that quite clear in the energy security strategy.”
A government spokesman said: "Home-grown hydrogen production will play a vital role in strengthening energy security by reducing our reliance on expensive fossil fuels and by offering flexibility within our electricity supply when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.
“We are currently investigating the use of hydrogen in the grid through a testing programme, which will see a neighbourhood and village trial by 2025, and continue to explore the requirements for hydrogen storage, committing to new business models to support storage infrastructure by the middle of the decade."
It comes after Centrica revealed that it had approached the Government about reopening Rough as a hydrogen storage facility in October.
The scheme would cost an estimated £1.6bn and that the site could be used to store natural gas, or a blend with hydrogen, before green hydrogen becomes more widely used.
Ministers faced criticism for allowing Rough to close five years ago, with some experts arguing it left the UK more exposed to shocks in the international gas market.
Centrica said it had become too expensive to maintain.
