EnergyPathways (AIM:EPP) has signed a collaboration agreement with Associated British Ports to jointly evaluate ABP's Port of Barrow as the location for onshore facilities for its Marram Energy Storage Hub (MESH), a UK-government-designated large-scale integrated energy storage project targeting operation in 2031.
The collaboration will see the parties jointly examine the feasibility of building a compressed air energy storage (CAES) operations base, a gas and hydrogen storage operations base, connection infrastructure to the project's offshore storage, hydrogen and graphite production units and sustainable industrial processing and export facilities, with any development contingent on a separate commercial agreement, financing and planning approvals.
Associated British Ports, the UK's leading and largest ports group, offers access to land, port facilities, export infrastructure and connection into MESH's offshore licence area in the East Irish Sea, while EnergyPathways supplies the MESH design combining CAES with natural gas and hydrogen storage and an offshore licence with potential for up to 60 sub-surface salt caverns.
EnergyPathways said MESH, which it is developing with a Tier-1 partner group including Siemens Energy, Wood, Costain and Zenith Energy, aims to convert wasted wind into multi-day dispatchable power, lower emissions and more than double UK gas storage to around six days of national supply.
"This marks another important milestone for the MESH Project as it progresses towards Final Investment Decision, building momentum across key development workstreams," said Ben Clube, CEO of EnergyPathways.
The project remains subject to securing financing and planning consents and is targeted to enter operation in 2031.
