Martyn Day – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Martyn Day on 2016-03-08.
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what steps she is taking to increase the UK’s energy storage capacity for excess energy from renewables; and what financial support she is making available to increase the capacity of pumped hydro systems.
Andrea Leadsom
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is investigating the potential barriers to deployment of energy storage and possible mitigating actions, focussing in the first instance on removing regulatory barriers but also considering whether more needs to be done to stimulate investment in energy storage. DECC plans to issue a call for evidence in spring 2016 on this area.
DECC has provided more than £18m of innovation support since 2012 to develop and demonstrate a range of energy storage technologies. This support has included a grant to a UK pumped hydro storage company to analyse the potential for wider deployment of new pumped hydro storage facilities in novel sites around Great Britain – for example, in disused quarries or other brownfield sites or using drinking water reservoirs.
