Material Insights · Understanding the Material World

Liquid air storage: Impact and additionality

Mineral-free long storage that also steadies the grid

What this tab covers The impact and additionality lens: what it displaces on the grid, who gains and who bears the burden along the supply chain, and what happens at end of life.

Liquid air can store renewable output for 6 to 12 hours or more without critical minerals, but it is at first-commercial stage and its low efficiency raises the renewable energy needed per MWh delivered.

Grid decarbonisation versus fossil displacement

Mixed

At 6 to 12.5 hours with synchronous turbines, plants can replace both evening gas generation and the grid-stability services that gas units now give. Great Britain needs about 58 GWh of non-battery storage by 2030 under Clean Power 2030 planning, against 2.8 GW of existing long-duration storage at four pumped hydro plants. Low efficiency means roughly two units of surplus power per unit delivered at 50 percent (calculated).46

GB non-battery storage need (2030, NESO / Clean Power 2030) about 58 GWh6 Charge per unit delivered at 50% RTE about 2 (calculated)4

Just transition and local community impact

Favourable

Projected construction jobs are substantial (developer estimates): more than 700 for Carrington, and about 1,000 on site plus 650 in the supply chain for Hunterston. Equipment draws on the existing industrial gas and turbine supply chain in Europe, Japan and China. Deployment so far is in the UK and China.17

Carrington jobs over 7001 Hunterston jobs about 1,000 on site, 650 supply chain7

Circular economy and end of life

Favourable

Plants are mostly steel and conventional machinery, which are recyclable, and there is no hazardous electrolyte. The main question is longevity of cryogenic equipment, not disposal.1

Sources

  1. Energy stored as liquefied air: GBP 300m investment triggers construction of UK's first commercial-scale plant The Chemical Engineer (IChemE), 2024
  2. Liquid air energy storage: a critical review (She et al., Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 208, 114986); abstract checked via University of Birmingham repository Elsevier (Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews), 2025
  3. Highview Power's two UK LAES projects advance in Ofgem's cap-and-floor scheme POWER Magazine, 2025
  4. Highview surpasses half a billion pounds of funding with latest GBP 130M capital raise for phase one at Hunterston Highview Power via Business Wire, 2025