Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of using hydrogen storage to store surplus renewable energy for the electricity grid.

The Government is undertaking a range of work to assess the potential use of hydrogen as a store of renewable energy.

The Offshore Wind Sector Deal, which was published in March 2019, sets out that the offshore wind sector will establish a Systems Management and Optimisation Task Group. This Group will publish a roadmap to identify opportunities for the offshore wind sector to collaborate on pioneering technologies for system integration, such as co-located storage and wind to hydrogen.

Alongside this, BEIS supports hydrogen storage innovation through the government’s £505 million Energy Innovation Programme. Within this Programme, BEIS is running a Storage at Scale competition which will provide up to £20 million to support demonstration projects using innovative energy storage technologies, including storing hydrogen produced by electricity. The scope of the Storage at Scale competition was informed by desk-based Energy Storage Feasibility Studies and the Energy Storage Cost Reduction projects, also funded by the Energy Innovation Programme.

BEIS is also supporting hydrogen storage through the £20m Hydrogen Supply Competition, this programme supports the development of large-scale production and storage of hydrogen which could take advantage of surplus renewable electricity.