SSE Thermal and Equinor have unveiled plans to upgrade their Aldbrough gas storage site in Yorkshire to a hydrogen storage facility.

The plant on the East Yorkshire coast could start operations as early as 2028, the partners said.

The facility consists of nine underground salt caverns, each roughly the size of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The upgrade work will mean that existing caverns will be transformed into new purpose-built caverns to store hydrogen with an initial expected capacity of at least 320GWh.

Stephen Wheeler, Managing Director of SSE Thermal, said: “By delivering large-scale hydrogen storage capacity, we can utilise hydrogen to decarbonise vital power generation, as well as heavy industry, heat, transport and other hard-to-reach sectors, safeguarding and creating crucial jobs and investment across the region.”

Grete Tveit, Senior Vice President for Low Carbon Solutions at Equinor, said: “Hydrogen will be crucial for the UK to reach its net zero ambition.

“That’s why we are pleased to be working together with SSE Thermal on developing plans to store low carbon hydrogen at the Aldbrough site, bringing us and our partners in Zero Carbon Humber closer to our joint ambition to support the Humber region to become the UK’s first net zero carbon cluster.”