Hydrogen as a storage medium in Scotland

Update: Please note that a small change has been made to Table 13, OPEX for Lined Rock Caverns, in May 2024.

As the share of renewables increases in power generation, periods when there is too little energy or more than can be accommodated, known as intermittency and curtailment respectively, are becoming a challenge to fully realising Scotland’s renewable potential.

This report investigates the options for storing energy in the form of hydrogen in Scotland and its potential for reducing curtailment of renewable energy.

It also investigates the role of hydrogen peaking power for electricity generation during times of low renewable energy generation.

Summary of findings

The study found that hydrogen storage will play an important role in balancing an energy system that has large amounts of intermittent renewable energy.

All hydrogen storage technologies are anticipated to support the flexibility of the energy system. The size of the role and use cases will vary significantly between technologies, with most of them supporting long-term, weekly, monthly and seasonal storage.

Different storage solutions have different suitability for deployment in Scotland. Much of this is driven by geology, use case and timescales.

For a full list of findings, please download the report attached.

[If you require the report in an alternative format such as a Word document, please contact info@climatexchange.org.uk or 0131 651 4783.]