PICTURED: EMStor partners at the launch of the project
Hydrogen is expected to play a major role over the next 20-30 years in reducing the UK’s CO₂ emissions, helping the UK and the East Midlands on its journey towards net zero by 2050. Hydrogen will also support the growth of renewable energy generation, using it to produce and store hydrogen at times when renewable output is high, but demand is low.
The carbon savings potential is enormous. By replacing natural gas with hydrogen, we will protect our power generation and manufacturing industries to stay viable in a Net Zero world, increasing highly skilled employment in the region, supporting net zero transport across our region and making the East Midlands an attractive and sustainable place to invest. Hydrogen plays a key role in ensuring a just and fair transition to net zero.
The current challenge is where and how to store the hydrogen when it is not needed. Hydrogen storage in the earth’s subsurface is recognised as the lowest cost option for storing hydrogen. Salt cavern storage is a viable option for long duration storage and is being developed along the UK’s coastal regions.
Introducing EMStor: East Midlands Storage – A Strategic Innovation Fund project led by Cadent in collaboration with BGS, University of Edinburgh and Star Energy
During the EMStor Discovery Phase, we investigated the potential of these storage options and their viability assessed and compared on cost, longevity, technology readiness etc, whilst also considering how each option may align with the hydrogen transport and storage business model.
We’ve now moved into the EMStor Alpha Phase and the team will assess the technical and commercial feasibility of repurposing a depleted onshore hydrocarbon field in the East Midlands to store hydrogen. The project will also assess how people living in the vicinity of hydrocarbon fields feel about those assets being re-purposed to storing hydrogen.
Hydrogen storage will enable accelerated deployment of Cadent's East Coast Hydrogen Pipeline, delivering low carbon hydrogen that enables industry, power and aviation to switch from fossil fuels and decarbonise.
Sally Brewis, Head of Regional Development (East and London) at Cadent said: “We’ve got 20 major industrial companies and 70 sites located in the East Midlands, emitting 75% of all the region’s CO2 emissions from industrial and power generation. Industrial fuel switching from natural gas to low carbon hydrogen could abate 1.9M tonnes of CO2 per year – equivalent to decarbonising 860,000 homes. The East Midlands also has the capacity to produce 650MW of hydrogen production by 2050.”
Will Morlidge, Acting Executive Director for Strategy and Inclusive Growth at the East Midlands Combined County Authority said:
“The East Midlands Hydrogen Pipeline is isolated from any storage options currently, such as salt cavern storage, so this project has focused upon the identification of alternative storage solutions, such as onshore depleted oil and gas fields, saline aquifers and lined rock shafts and caverns.
“The provision of a secure and resilient low carbon energy supply will ensure the East Midlands continues be at the heart of UK materials and high value manufacturing.”
The EMStor project is led by Cadent, supported by National Gas, and partners British Geological Survey, Edinburgh University, Star Energy, Centrica and Uniper.
About East Midlands Hydrogen
East Midlands Combined County Authority, Cadent, and some of the region’s leading organisations such as Uniper, Toyota, Midlands Engine, East Midlands Freeport and Leicester & Leicestershire Local Enterprise Partnership have formed an industrial partnership called East Midlands Hydrogen. Co-Chaired by Will Morlidge of EMCCA and Sally Brewis of Cadent, the East Midlands Hydrogen Consortium is set to become the UK’s largest inland hydrogen cluster and will accelerate the development of, and attract investment to, the rapidly growing hydrogen ecosystem in our region.
Unlike other major hydrogen clusters which are coastal, East Midlands Hydrogen is right in the heart of the country. It brings together an intensive cluster of hydrogen demand forecasts from around 70 industrial sites in the Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and northern Leicestershire regions, who are asking for more than 10TWh of hydrogen by 2040 in total, to enable site decarbonisation. For these sites alone, access to low carbon hydrogen would enable carbon savings of 1.9 million tonnes per year, the equivalent of gas-related carbon emissions from 860,000 homes
For media enquiries, contact:
Nicola Swaney
Head of External Affairs, East Midlands Combined County Authority