How it works

The Need for Energy Storage

Long-duration storage serves a dual purpose: strengthening energy security during the transition and enabling green energy storage in a net-zero system.

Despite significant progress in electricity decarbonisation, Ireland’s energy system currently lacks the long-duration energy storage required to support a fully decarbonised power system. While natural gas continues to underpin a significant share of Ireland’s total energy use – including home heating and electricity generation – electricity itself accounts for only around 30% of Ireland’s Total Primary Energy Requirement (TPER), highlighting the scale of the transition still underway.

This is not a contradiction of climate ambition; it reflects a transitional system reality. Indigenous gas production from Corrib now supplies approximately 20% of national demand, with most of that supply imported via the UK through two interconnectors. In the absence of any indigenous storage, Ireland has no buffer against supply shocks, price volatility or system stress.

Long-duration storage therefore serves a dual purpose. In the near term, it strengthens energy security and system resilience during the transition. In the longer term, the same infrastructure is critical to a net-zero energy system, enabling the storage of green energy in the form of green hydrogen or biomethane, which is essential to fully decarbonise the power system.

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Strategic Storage at Scale

Ireland currently has no long-duration energy storage, leaving the country exposed to shocks, single-point failures, and volatility.

While the proposed FSRU will strengthen import diversity and short-term flexibility, it does not provide the long-duration, indigenous storage required to manage prolonged disruptions or system stress.

Complementing Existing Government Policy

Kestrel complements the Government’s FSRU strategy by providing long-term storage for energy security, while the FSRU delivers import diversity, reflecting EU best practice where both assets serve distinct but essential roles.

FSRU = import flexibility, Kestrel = indigenous reserve.

Hydrogen-Ready Infrastructure

Kestrel is being engineered from day one for green hydrogen, making it a future-proof asset that evolves with Ireland’s offshore wind ambitions and avoids the stranded-asset risks facing other legacy infrastructure:

  • Fully aligned with National Hydrogen Strategy.
  • Supports future green hydrogen from offshore wind.
  • Designed to transition directly to hydrogen use without significant retrofit, avoiding stranded assets.

Scalable, Sustainable, Invisible

Offshore and underground, Kestrel provides the only multi-TWh long-duration storage solution capable of delivering the scale required for deep decarbonisation quietly, sustainably, and without community disruption:

  • Offshore, underground, and environmentally low-impact.
  • Enables deep integration of renewables by storing surplus renewable energy.
  • Complementary to battery and interconnection, but uniquely capable of multi-TWh storage.