HyNet North West Plans 1,300 GWh Underground Hydrogen Store in UK Salt Caverns
Storengy UK's planned HyKeuper caverns would give the HyNet cluster a buffer capacity equal to 400 million cubic metres of working hydrogen gas.
Storengy UK is developing an underground hydrogen storage facility capable of holding 1,300 GWh in salt caverns beneath the Cheshire plain, according to a project guide for HyNet North West published on Wednesday (2026-09-09). Working gas volume would reach roughly 400 million cubic metres, with the site able to import or export up to 45 MCM per day once commissioned.2
The daily throughput figure of 45 MCM is large enough to cover meaningful swings in both production output and industrial demand. It signals that the designers intend the site to function as active operational infrastructure, not strategic reserve. No storage system of that scale has been built for hydrogen in the UK before.2
HyNet North West was selected under the UK government's Track 1 cluster programme alongside the Northern Endurance Partnership, sharing £21.7 billion in state support. The cluster spans the North West of England and North Wales and is built around a CO2 pipeline network that gathers industrial emissions for sequestration, with hydrogen production as the second anchor function alongside carbon capture.2
Production is being developed in two phases. The first, HPP1, is designed to deliver 350MW of capacity. HPP2 adds a further 1,000MW, bringing the combined output to 1,350MW. The project guide published Wednesday (2026-09-09) does not specify commissioning dates for either phase, leaving the timeline for full buildout open.2
The economics of hydrogen at that scale depend heavily on feedstock. HyNet's model is primarily blue hydrogen — natural gas with carbon captured and routed into the CO2 pipeline — which ties its cost base directly to gas markets. ICE Endex TTF front-month closed at €75.83/MWh on Tuesday (2026-09-08), up 3.4% on the session. Blue hydrogen producers with spot-linked gas contracts absorb moves of that size directly in their production cost.2
But underground salt-cavern storage provides one lever against that exposure. Hydrogen produced during periods of lower gas prices and dispatched when prices are higher changes the commercial profile of the whole cluster. The 45 MCM per day cycling capability suggests the project is designed for exactly that kind of operational flexibility, not just insurance against supply disruption.2
The UK carbon price adds a secondary signal. UKA allowances were at £60.36 per tonne of CO2 on Wednesday (2026-09-09). For industrial emitters in HyNet's catchment — ceramics, glass, chemicals — rising compliance costs build the case for hydrogen offtake, but only if long-term contracts are agreed at prices that make the cluster's capital cost recoverable. The project guide does not indicate how much offtake has been contracted.2
For scale comparison, Uniper is seeking buyers for a planned 2.6 million tonne-per-year ammonia-to-hydrogen import terminal at Wilhelmshaven in Germany, according to gasworld reporting from May 2026 (2026-05-19). That terminal would crack ammonia into around 350,000 tonnes of hydrogen annually for Germany's 9,000-kilometre core hydrogen network. Berlin's green hydrogen strategy targets imports to cover up to 70% of German hydrogen demand by 2030.1
HyKeuper and Wilhelmshaven represent different bets — domestic blue production with integrated cavern storage versus import infrastructure for overseas green hydrogen — but both reflect the same underlying logic: hydrogen infrastructure at industrial scale requires storage and transport capability alongside generation capacity, not as an afterthought.1,2
The immediate question for HyNet is sequencing. If the HyKeuper storage caverns come online after production hits full capacity, the cluster runs without a buffer through its most capital-intensive early phase. Buyers writing long-term offtake contracts carry more supply-reliability risk than an integrated hub concept implies if storage lags significantly. The project guide published Wednesday (2026-09-09) does not address that sequence, and it is the detail that matters most to potential industrial offtakers.2