Lloyd Hatton – Labour South Dorset
“South Dorset is ready to play its part in making Britain a clean energy superpower, but after 14 years of Conservative failure, there are many untapped opportunities on our doorstep. Green investment opportunities such as Portwind, Morwind and a hydrogen storage hub are all coming down the track, so can the Prime Minister reassure my constituents that the Government will work with the Crown court on these projects, invest in key infrastructure and ensure that South Dorset’s green energy potential is hardwired into our plan for change? “
The Prime Minister
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right about making Britain a clean energy superpower. We are committing £2.3 billion to support hydrogen projects, and I recognise the huge potential of South Dorset to become home to a storage hub. We are ensuring that public and private investment work together, which is exactly what the Crown Estate Act 2025 does, unlocking significant investment, boosting offshore wind and kickstarting economic growth.”
UKEn will build the UK's largest Hydrogen storage sites, with up to 2 billion cubic metres capacity providing up to 20% of the UK’s predicted hydrogen storage needs in 2035, doubling the UK’s existing underground storage. It will also include a system level hydrogen battery to store excess renewable power for later peak power demand use.
UK Energy Storage (UKEn) is a pioneering energy developer with a bold vision to deliver nationally significant salt cavern hydrogen storage projects in South Dorset and East Yorkshire.
We’re set to be in the vanguard of this vital sector, projected by National Grid and The Royal Society to grow substantively from nearly zero today to 50-100 TWh demand by 2050.
Harnessing excess clean renewable power, converting it into green hydrogen and storing for future use to generate electricity when the wind doesn’t blow, or the sun doesn’t shine, or demand outstrips supply, is crucial for the UK’s Clean Power system, addressing the inherent intermittency of wind and solar.
It will remove the current necessity of using natural gas to fill the intermittency gap. This will also help slash the UK’s current £1billion annual spend on wind turbine curtailment.
Our Mission: Deliver our first UK hydrogen storage site by 2030, supporting the transition to net zero by 2050.
UKEn has been diligently working on a £1 billion underground hydrogen storage project in South Dorset for the past four years. This will be the UK’s largest, with an envisioned maximum annual capacity of 10 TWh, meeting up to 17% of the UK’s forecast hydrogen storage needs by 2050. A second major site in East Yorkshire aims for an initial 7 TWh annual capacity, with potential expansion to match Dorset’s capacity.
Technology: New-build salt caverns, a proven, safe, and cost-effective technology, will be used for storage. These caverns are viable at large scale in only three UK areas: Dorset, East Yorkshire, and Cheshire. Both sites will connect to the UK-wide Project Union hydrogen pipeline, integrating into the national Clean Power system.
Strategic Locations: Our sites are strategically placed within the UK’s two largest forecast hydrogen demand clusters: the South (including South Wales) and the East Coast/Teesside, which together account for 70% of National Grid’s projected 2040 hydrogen demand. Our Yorkshire site will also help decarbonize the East Coast Cluster, the UK’s largest CO2 emitting region, by enabling the adoption and optimisation of reliable renewable and hydrogen power.
Benefits: Our hydrogen storage will provide resilience, flexibility, and security of supply to primary hydrogen clusters, buffering demand spikes and ensuring pipeline stability. This will keep the lights on and support the decarbonisation of the South and East Coast’s gas-to-power plants, Drax Power (the UK’s and North’s largest CO2 emitter) and Fawley Refinery, the South’s largest CO2 emitter.
We’re also exploring green hydrogen generation add-ons to our storage projects, leveraging coastal locations for electrolysis and proximity to new windfarm power landfalls.
Commitment: UKEn is dedicated to a sustainable future by delivering exclusively on energy storage and hydrogen solutions. We are committed to achieving clean power by 2030 and reaching net zero emissions by 2050, ensuring a clean, green, brighter future for all.
UKEn will build the UK's largest Hydrogen storage site, with up to 2 billion cubic metres capacity providing up to 20% of the UK’s predicted hydrogen storage needs in 2035, doubling the UK’s existing underground storage. It will also include a system level hydrogen battery to store excess renewable power for later peak power demand use.
UKEn has created an advanced project to provide up to 20% of UK 2035 strategic hydrogen storage needs plus a material scale hydrogen battery (see life cycle of a hydrogen battery).
A gas storage facility on the Isle of Portland has been considered for many years. In 2008, a project to build salt caverns for natural gas storage received planning approval. UKEn has revived and upgraded this project for the 21st century hydrogen economy, signing a lease with Portland Port and acquiring the Intellectual Property (IP) for the previous project.
The facility’s design has been improved and enhanced to minimise its carbon footprint, make it pure hydrogen ready and capable of full integration with green hydrogen production from offshore and onshore renewables from inception. Its cavern design includes the most modern safety considerations learned primarily from European salt cavern design and operation.
UKEn’s ultimate goal of 2 billion m³ of storage would be roughly equivalent to the storage provided by the offshore Rough gas field, which during its peak operational days provided around 70% of the UK’s underground natural gas storage capacity.
Latest news insights from UK Energy Storage about the Hydrogen sector.
National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios (FES) illustrate the growing need for hydrogen storage, predicting a middle case requirement of around 10 billion m³ of storage by 2035. UKEn’s goal of 2 billion m³ by 2035 would supply 20% of this capacity. The upper case FES scenario cites a requirement of up to 30 billion m³ of storage
These levels of storage require the UK to have 4-10 times more than its current total gas storage capacity of 2.9 billion m³, of which c. 2 billion is underground storage, one of the lowest capacities within Europe.
Given that such underground salt cavern storage projects can take 5-8 years to achieve construction and operational readiness, the UK urgently needs to fast track, prioritise and support investment into this key enabling sector.
Hydrogen storage is required for four key reasons:
The H2 Economy will require ~4-10 times current UK 2.9bcm storage by 2035
Hydrogen infrastructure is in its infancy with both demand and supply increasing from its current very low base. Consequently, future hydrogen storage infrastructure needs to be flexible, preferably modular and capable of growing with each regional market’s needs.
Salt caverns are ideally suited to this purpose as they can be added as modules over a relatively short time frame and are a proven, reliable, and safe technology that has been used worldwide and in the UK for around half a century in the natural gas sector. Other forms of geological storage, such as depleted gas fields and aquifers are by their nature non-modular. Fortunately, the UK mainland is blessed with thick rock salt deposits suitable for large scale hydrogen cavern construction in three areas, Dorset, Cheshire and northeast Yorkshire.
Salt Caverns have been used for high purity hydrogen storage by the chemical sector in the UK since the 1970’s (Teesside) and in the US since the 1980’s (US Gulf Coast and Clemens Terminal in Texas) as well as Yakshunovskoe in Russia and Kiel in Germany.
Salt caverns are made by the dissolution of rock salt using either fresh or salt water (brine). In the case of Portland, UKEn intends to use sea water to dissolve the caverns. The rock salt deposits, primarily composed of the naturally occurring mineral halite, are highly impermeable to gas and thus provide an ideal and safe storage medium for hydrogen.
Underground storage sites have, by definition, a small low-rise surface footprint and characteristically have low operational costs and a high recovery efficiency compared to other forms of geological storage, such as depleted natural gas fields. UKEn’s Portland facility will be able to reinject almost 100% of the hydrogen stored back into the hydrogen network compared to around a 70% recovery efficiency for depleted gas fields, depending on the geological complexity of the field. The c. 30% of hydrogen that cannot be recovered from storage is known as “cushion gas” and in the case of a large, depleted gas field would equate to a significant non-recoverable sunk capital cost.
Extracts from Department for Energy Security & Net Zero document:
Hydrogen transport and storage infrastructure: minded to positions
“Hydrogen can support the decarbonisation of the UK economy, particularly in ‘hard to electrify’ UK industrial sectors, and can provide greener, flexible energy across power, transport and potentially heat. Hydrogen produced in the UK could create thousands of jobs across the country, and provide greater domestic energy security, lowering our reliance on energy imports.”
Published in August 2023
PORTLAND PORT IS A STRATEGIC DEEP WATER PORT LOCATION WITH HYDROGEN IMPORT AND EXPORT CAPABILITIES TO BOTH NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL MARKETS.
The UKEn site is located on the Isle of Portland, between the South Wales and Southampton industrial hubs. Our unique salt cavern geological storage is positioned close to the Solent Cluster (UKEn are key members) and Hinkley Point nuclear and potential new offshore wind (e.g. 4GW Celtic Sea floating offshore wind). Portland is the closest large scale strategic storage facility to London and the densely populated South East.
The UKEn site is located on the Isle of Portland, between the South Wales and Southampton industrial hubs.
The unique salt cavern geological storage is positioned close to the Solent Cluster (we are key members) and Hinkley Point nuclear and potential new offshore wind.
Closest large scale strategic storage facility to London and the heavily-populated South East.
A new hydrogen hub in Portland centred on UKEn’s system level storage facility will help address the current energy crisis and act as a key enabler for the Solent Hydrogen Cluster and a future Southern Super Hydrogen Cluster.
The initial construction of 19 new salt caverns will provide around 1 billion m³ of storage increasing the current UK onshore’s underground storage capacity by around 70%. A planned second phase, both in the adjacent offshore and onshore would add a further 1 billion m³ of storage.