The report, written by the ETI's Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) strategy manager Den Gammer, looks at the role hydrogen storage could play in a clean, responsive power system.
It concluded that using salt caverns to store hydrogen for power generation when the demand for electricity peaks would reduce the investment needed in new clean power station capacity.
Grammer said: "The UK's energy landscape is changing very rapidly. More renewable power supplies are being installed and, although clean, these new supplies are intermittent, which increases the need for a low cost, clean, on-demand power supply that currently only fossil fuel plants can provide."
Salt caverns are already used for storing oil and natural gas and there are around 30 very large caverns in the UK. Grammer added: "Large amounts of energy can be stored, with one cavern providing enough storage capacity to satisfy the peak demands of a single UK city."
Building a 10GW scale CCS sector by 2030 in the UK is feasible and affordable. The ETI claim that, apart from providing low carbon electricity, CCS can capture emissions from industry, help deliver low carbon gas and deliver 'negative emissions' when combined with bio-energy.
The ETI believes that fossil fuels will still have a role to play in the UK's energy system beyond 2030 but those plants should be equipped with CCS technology.
