EnergyPathways PLC (AIM:EPP), the UK energy transition company, has been awarded a gas storage licence by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) for its MESH project in the East Irish Sea, marking a significant step toward what the company says will be Britain's largest integrated energy storage facility.
The GSL covers a substantial offshore area capable of supporting up to 60 large-scale salt caverns, with potential for multi-terawatt-hour scale storage, subject to consents and financing.
The MESH project, already designated by the UK Government as nationally significant, will combine natural gas storage, compressed air energy storage (CAES) and hydrogen production at a site spanning offshore waters and onshore facilities in Barrow-in-Furness.
The gas storage element is designed to double Britain's existing gas storage capacity and provide up to six days of national energy supply, delivering high flow rates of around 15 million cubic metres per day for rapid grid back-up.
The CAES component, planned at 300 MW and 55 GWh capacity, would be Britain's largest long-duration energy storage (LDES) facility, providing what the company describes as days rather than hours of electrical storage to capture wind power that would otherwise go to waste.
EnergyPathways also plans low-carbon dispatchable power generation and hydrogen production to support decarbonisation efforts and new industries in Barrow-in-Furness, including a proposed graphite production plant.
The company said it has already begun discussions on funding and capacity offtake agreements and will now work toward a final investment decision (FID) in 2028, with operations targeted for late 2031.
Partners in the project include Siemens Energy, Costain, Wood and Zenith Energy.
The licence award follows last week's announcement that FEED, the front-end engineering and design phase, had launched for the CAES element of the project.
Chief executive Ben Clube said the Middle East crisis had highlighted Britain's vulnerability to supply shocks and the consequences of limited domestic energy storage capacity.
"With the award of this licence EnergyPathways will now move at pace to get to FID as quickly as possible," he said, adding that the gas storage and CAES components were each commercially viable independently but offered additional cost synergies when developed together.