Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment she has made of the viability of hydro pump storage energy solutions; and what support her Department makes available to that industry.

Energy storage is one way to provide flexibility to the energy system, alongside demand side response, interconnection and smarter networks. We continue to assess the potential for all forms of energy storage, including pumped hydro, to benefit the UK energy system.

More than £80m public sector controlled support has been committed to energy storage research, development and demonstration activities since 2012. This innovation funding has included DECC grant support for a UK pumped hydro storage developer to assess the potential location of new pumped hydro sites around Great Britain. The developer concluded that up to 15GW of novel pumped storage could be possible, using various criteria such as the presence of existing or potential reservoirs, grid connection distance and whether the site is in an environmentally sensitive area. Other pumped storage developers have independently identified over 1 GW of additional potential pumped storage.

We are also investigating the potential barriers to deployment of energy storage and possible mitigating actions. We are focussing in the first instance on removing policy and regulatory barriers. DECC plans to issue a call for evidence on a smart systems route map in due course.