RE: Twitter21 May 2025 18:30
UK Energy Storage (UKEn)UK Energy Storage (UKEn)
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Positive and constructive meeting with Minister Sarah Jones MP
Our sincere thanks to Energy Minister Sarah Jones MP at DESNZ and DBT for a positive and constructive meeting with UK Energy Storage’s (UKEn) Chief Executive Stephen Sanderson in her Whitehall office. Sincere thanks also to South Dorset MP, Lloyd Hatton who organised and attended in person.
UKEn was able to give the Minister a detailed brief of UKEn’s 1 bn m³ South Dorset salt cavern Hydrogen storage project and its strategic role as a key enabler of the UK’s future hydrogen network and its part in helping decarbonise southern UK.
UKEn stressed the project’s critical importance in enabling National Grid’s UK wide ‘backbone’ hydrogen pipeline system (Project Union) to expand into the South, being as yet, the only planned major salt-cavern hydrogen storage node in the southern half of the country.
UKEn also asked the Minister to consider more active government support for needed hydrogen infrastructure in the south given that NESO and National Grid FES Scenarios/Pathways show it will be the UK area of highest hydrogen demand from the late 2030s onwards. Consequently, we asked the Minister to consider increasing the government’s hydrogen storage ambition to include at least one flagship hydrogen storage project in the south allied to planned hydrogen pipelines and production.
We were also delighted to invite Garrett Morrison, Director and Co-Founder of Source Galileo, to attend the meeting with the Minister. Together we drew the Minister’s attention the new Dorset Clean Energy Super Cluster (DCESC), which plans to invest a total of c. £28 bn in vertically aligned clean energy projects centred around Portland port and which includes UKEn’s project.
DCESC has the potential to deliver £5.4 bn annually to the economy and 20,000 construction and 1300 operational jobs into an area in need of economic stimulus.
Source Galileo’s £15 bn Portwind project plans a 2GW windfarm 22 km offshore from Portland with a cable landfall very close to UKEn’s site. Consequently, significant synergies exist between our projects especially in the area of green hydrogen generation and storage, Source Galileo having been active in the latest HAR2 hydrogen generation round.
Mr Sanderson said: "It was important to gain the support of the Minister for our storage project and to show her that the DCESC presents a once in a generation opportunity to provide high level investment, much needed jobs and energy security centred on the Dorset coast. The value of the whole DCESC greatly outweighs the sum of its not inconsequential parts. We urge the government to lend its support.”