Oh dear, here I go again, with another shot across the bows of the BBC. However, I can’t deny that I am continually irritated by a supposedly impartial and trusted news organisation continually pushing a partial narrative. BBC Verify will be rolled out unfailingly to criticise and fact-check narratives of which the BBC disapproves, but there is no danger of any critical faculties being engaged when it comes to stories that bolster the narrative. And so it proves with today’s headline that got me hot under the collar: “Liquid air energy storage plant to create 700 jobs”. What’s wrong with that, if it’s true, I hear you say?

The problem is that it’s at best only partially true. Read the article and you find this: “Mr Butland said the jobs created would include construction, supply chain and staff.” Thus, in my contention, the headline is misleading, since it carries with it the implication that the jobs are new permanent jobs, whereas the detail makes it clear this isn’t the case, since some of the jobs are temporary. What the BBC doesn’t make clear, even within the body of the article, is how many of the 700 jobs referred to in the title really are being created (i.e. are new jobs with a degree of permanence). It seems nobody at the BBC is interested in reading beyond the press release, for we receive no further enlightenment. And make no mistake – this is a story generated by a press release. In the last 24 hours slight variations of the story can be found at numerous websites online, and the original can be found at Highview Power’s own website. Interestingly, perhaps, Highview’s own article is significantly more candid and informative than the BBC’s, making it clear that the 700 jobs referred to are all in the construction phase: “Construction will begin on the site immediately, with the facility operational in early 2026, supporting over 700 jobs in construction and the supply chain.”

OK, so the BBC’s headline isn’t particularly accurate. What of it? It’s not so spectacularly misleading as to justify Crabby of Cumbria being so upset about it. Perhaps not, but as part of an ongoing series of misinformation on the part of the BBC, I believe it deserves calling out. Maybe I would have let it go if the rest of the article met high journalistic standards, but I don’t believe it does. What does it say?

Well, the meat of the article, despite stating that at least some of the jobs “created” are construction and supply jobs, goes on to repeat the false claim in the headline. Internal consistency is entirely lacking. Compare the BBC’s version (“The facility at Carrington near Manchester, designed by Highview Power, will create more than 700 jobs in the north-west of England, the firm said”) with what Highview actually said (my emphasis): “supporting over 700 jobs in construction and the supply chain”. In reality there is a big difference between those two statements. Is it a deliberate error on the part of the BBC, bigging-up the jobs-creating capacity of net zero, or is it simply sloppy work on the part of a journalist and editor? Either way, it is distinctly unimpressive.

The BBC says “The facility has been described as the UK’s first commercial scale liquid air energy storage plant, and could have the capacity to power 480,000 homes.” It doesn’t tell us who so described it, but Highview’s website claims instead “Once complete, it will have a storage capacity of 300 MWh and an output power of 50 MWs per hour for six hours.”

The unattributed claim gleefully quoted by the BBC (“the capacity to power 480,000 homes”) and Highview’s own claim (“a storage capacity of 300 MWh and an output power of 50 MWs per hour for six hours”) don’t sit together very comfortably. According to Statista mean domestic electricity consumption per household in England amounts to 3,400.4 KWh per annum (or 3.4004 MWh per annum). 480,000 homes would, on average, therefore use (480,000 x 3.4004) 1,632,000 MWh per annum or 4,471 MWh in a day. Dividing by 24, 480,000 homes would use around 186 MWh of electricity in an average hour. Obviously usage would be less overnight, more at peak times (usually winter evenings). However, what this suggests is that, assuming Highview’s facility was fully “charged”, then it might be able to supply 480,000 homes with electricity at average rates of demand for a little over an hour and a half (just over a quarter of the six hours referred to by Highview). Of course if, as a result of net zero, the average home is forced to rely much more on electricity than it currently does (e.g. by using electricity rather than gas for cooking and heating, and being forced to drive electric vehicles, which need to be charged up, often overnight) then that average consumption could increase substantially. In that scenario, this plant, assuming it meets expectations in full, would probably be able to supply 480,000 homes for well under an hour on average. Thus, the BBC’s use of that statistic, without any form of deeper analysis, is essentially meaningless, and potentially misleading. Still, it sounds good, which I assume is why they inserted it.

An analysis of the technology and its feasibility would have been welcome, but none is provided. All we get is this:

Energy compressed into air, liquified and then cryogenically frozen can be held at the plant for several weeks, which is longer than battery storage.

Also a claim that at large-scale it is cost-effective. An exploration of the costs might have been helpful, given that claim. None is forthcoming. However, two minutes on the internet turned up a 2023 study which offers a techno-economic analysis of a liquid air energy storage system combined with calcium carbide production and waste heat recovery. How that compares to the proposed energy storage plant at Carrington I don’t know. I do know that I would like some idea of how its costs compare to those cited in the study, namely a “levelized cost of storage [that] ranges from 382 USD/MWh to 888 USD/MWh”.

Thus, by the end of the BBC article, we don’t learn how many permanent jobs will be created, nor do we know how much it costs to store the surplus energy generated by renewables and released at times of energy shortfalls created by the intermittency of those renewables. We do know that the current funding “to get the project off the ground” (in the words of the BBC report) is £300M, of which some was provided by the UK Infrastructure Bank. The BBC doesn’t tell us how much the taxpayer has forked out in this way, but in fact it’s £165M. By the way, £300M divided between 480,000 homes equates to £625 per household as an initial investment to enable them to keep the lights on for an hour and a half. Or, if it’s 120,000 households keeping the lights on for six hours, then its £2,500 per household. Multiply that over 27 million or so households, and you’re looking at £67.5 Billion (which may not be too unrealistic an estimate given what follows).

The Highview website tells us quite a lot that the BBC omits. The large-scale (four larger scale 2.5 GWh facilities) that apparently will make this technology cost-effective will cost an anticipated £3 billion. But that’s not all:

Highview Power’s infrastructure programme will make a major contribution to the UK economy, requiring in excess of £9 billion investment in energy storage infrastructure over the next 10 years…

Your investment is my cost, especially when combined with this rather alarming (and very telling) sentence:

By capturing and storing excess renewable energy, which is now the cheapest form of electricity [sic], storage can help keep energy costs from spiralling…[my emphasis].

And this:

This storage will help reduce curtailment costs – which is significant as Britain spent £800m in 2023 to turn off wind farms.

We also learn that “several departments of the British Government… have tirelessly supported us since 2011…”. I wonder at what cost to the taxpayer, whether in direct funding or simply in the costs of civil servants who might have been usefully employed doing something else?

Perhaps the most telling quote in the Highview piece is from Chris O’Shea, Group Chief Executive of Centrica (one of the investors):

…with a changing energy mix, and more intermittency from renewables, we have to explore new, innovative ways to store energy so our customers have electricity available when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Low carbon storage is an essential part of the solution when looking at how we manage peaks in demand...through partnerships like this we can manage the challenges net zero might present while providing cleaner, greener power to customers.…

Intermittency, challenges, costs (always described as investments). Apparently it’s all to be celebrated.

None of this detail makes it into the BBC report, though it does manage to end with a cheery send-off from Andy Burnham:

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham welcomed the plans and said the storage facility would be a “huge boost for the region” in terms of jobs, investment and renewable energy.

Perhaps I’m being harsh. I wouldn’t like to be a BBC journalist or a BBC editor – they’re too much in the firing line from grumpy curmudgeons like me. I don’t have any problems at all with them selecting this topic to form the basis of a website article – on the contrary, it’s an interesting part of the vitally important topic of UK energy. That topic, however, is one where information about costs, energy security, possible alternative ways of proceeding, and so on, are all of vital importance. I do feel they should have been explored. Instead I fear they have been ignored with a view to providing a positive spin around, and cheer-leading for, yet another expensive part of the Net Zero project.

Footnote – the picture I used is another one generated by AI.