Long-duration Energy Storage (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Baroness Neuberger Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neuberger (CB)]

My Lords, first, I echo other speakers in paying tribute to my noble friend Lady Brown of Cambridge, who will be rotating off the Science and Technology Committee shortly and has been a superb chair. Secondly, I too thank our wonderful staff, Matthew Manning, Thomas Hornigold, Cerise Burnett-Stuart and Sid Gurung, as well as our special adviser, Professor Keith Bell. I have particular reason to thank them because I knew remarkably little about this subject when we started. I am immensely grateful for their patience and willingness to educate somebody who knew nothing about this at considerable speed.

I want to cover a broad-brush subject. What do the Government intend to do to address questions of public acceptability of some of these new technologies and the public’s safety concerns about some of them? Take, for instance, the issue of large-scale storage of hydrogen, which we will probably have to go to at some point. The Government are now proposing gas as a back-up, as far as 2030 at least, but if hydrogen storage is ever to be part of the mix, presumably real planning will have to take place and storage facilities will need to be found. If gas is the short-term back-up, presumably the option of using decommissioned gas storage, raised with the committee by Centrica, is unlikely.

The previous Government responded to the prospect of repurposing Centrica’s gas storage for hydrogen by saying that they felt the technology was not ready at this point, so they would favour salt caverns for now. That being the case, the Government need to move fast to identify salt caverns and convince local residents that the storage is safe. If there are local objections to hydrogen storage, that could slow down or even prevent the development and have a huge knock-on effect on the whole hydrogen industry and energy infrastructure plans. Public acceptance might then ebb away, which would have a knock-on effect yet again on getting infrastructure plans through the planning system. This is like a pack of cards, and it all falls down if we do not get on with it.

It is not just hydrogen. Government will still need to ensure that other new technologies are brought into play. Without a careful and lengthy public information campaign, will those technologies be acceptable to the public? We have been seeing a gradual reduction in the acceptability of electric cars, as judged by sales, even though the technology is relatively simple and it is publicly acceptable—indeed, desirable—to want to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. If that is what is happening with electric cars, does it not suggest that the Government may have a problem convincing the public about long-term hydrogen storage or long-term batteries? Surely the work on convincing the public should begin right now.

The previous Government responded to our recommendation of a public education campaign by saying:

“We welcome the recommendations regarding commissioning further research into the safety and public acceptability of hydrogen storage and will consider this as our overall evidence base on hydrogen storage develops. We will also ensure that relevant information is made publicly available as the evidence base develops. We will consider how and when it is best to conduct further research into public perception of hydrogen. For example, it may be best to consider this once we have more certainty on where initial hydrogen storage infrastructure will be located”.


That does not suggest that anybody is in much of a hurry for that, even though it assumes that there will be some hydrogen storage. Unless we get on with it, any hydrogen-to-power developments, which would require infrastructure to store hydrogen and transport hydrogen to the power plant, will not be ready when we run out of energy. We have heard about yesterday. Some of us probably noticed that all the lights went out around this Chamber only a few minutes before this debate began, which I presume was a sign of some kind.

All this has to be joined up, alongside a proper public information campaign. At the moment, messages from government are somewhat confused. The present Government’s Hydrogen Strategy Update to the Market statement was published in December. It made no mention of a strategic reserve of hydrogen, although it did say that the Government will support hydrogen to power. Yet long-term concerns suggest that if you are going to do that, some hydrogen storage will be necessary, and that is not widely understood.

Our report was entitled Long-duration Energy Storage: Get On With It. I hope that the Minister, whose maiden speech we are all looking forward to, can reassure us that the Government have a sense of urgency about this whole subject, and in particular about informing and educating the public. The public will not forgive us if that does not happen.