The storage facility has been licensed by the North Sea Transition Authority, as part of the Marram Energy Storage Hub (MESH) project, offshore in the East Irish Sea and onshore in Barrow-in-Furness
The facility will store natural gas, and later hydrogen, in up to 60 large scale salt storage caverns. It aims to tackle energy availability, with days worth of storage at multi-terawatt scale, and has been designated as nationally significant by the UK government.
Facilities included in the plans include a natural gas storage facility that will double Britain's gas storage capacity and provide up to six days of national energy supply. It will provide high deliverability rates of around 15 million cubic metres per day for rapid grid back up supply.
Compressed air energy storage of 300 MW / 55 GWh capacity at the site is expected to be Britain's largest long duration energy storage facility. This will provide days of electrical storage, essential to harness the billions of pounds of wind power currently being wasted and passed on to consumer bills.
Low-cost hydrogen production capability will be used to further decarbonise MESH dispatchable power and new sustainable industries planned in Barrow-in-Furness, including EnergyPathways' proposed graphite production plant.
EnergyPathways, along with its Tier One partnership group, including Siemens Energy, Costain plc, Wood plc and Zenith Energy will now progress the MESH project to a final investment decision in 2028 and start up by late 2031. The company has already initiated several funding and capacity offtake discussions.