dCarbonX is considering building an undersea gas storage facility to provide a backup energy supply for periods where renewables are not generating sufficient power (dunkelflaute).

Together with Italian energy giant Snam, dCarbonX aims to bring low-carbon "security of supply" and system resilience to the UK and Ireland utilising offshore underground energy storage solutions.

Calling it “Clean. green and unseen”, the solution assumes that gas will remain the backbone of the wider UK and Irish energy systems for some time, and that traditional models of keeping a ‘just-in-time’ supply, supported by North Sea gas production, European gas interconnectors, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and wider imports, cannot be relied on in future.

The UK and Ireland’s minimal storage of just 12 and zero days respectively, compared to an average of around 90 days or more in other European G7 countries such as Germany, France and Italy, leaves the countries exposed to supply squeezes, price spikes, and reduced flexibility at exactly the moment it is needed most.

dCarbonX holds and is the operator of GS007, a gas storage licence in the UK's East Irish Sea, located around 30km off the coast of Barrow-in-Furness and estimates this could create a storage capacity of 1.4 billion cubic metres of natural gas., increasing the UK’s gas storage capacity by around 50 per cent. The facility could also be used to store hydrogen.

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