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

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what recent discussions she has had with the Scottish Government on hydro pump storage in Scotland.

My rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State met Mr. Fergus Ewing, in October last year where energy storage was discussed. This resulted in a dialogue between the two ministers discussing next steps. The dialogue has been taken forward at official-level through existing working groups such as the Low Carbon Innovation Co-ordination Group (LCICG).

We are 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 system routemap shortly.