CEO interview: Highview Power’s vision for cryogenics and the grid

Today’s energy grids rely on gas turbines to keep them stable, but the promise of tomorrow is that cryogenic liquid air could deliver a similar capability. Christian Annesley met Richard Butland, CEO of Highview Power, to find out more

As the energy transition builds, and renewable energy grows in the mix, the question of how to store electricity most effectively for grid flexibility has been climbing the agenda. Gas-fired power plants are the most common fast-response option of choice today, increasingly allied to lithium-ion batteries to manage short-duration balancing challenges. 

But it is well understood that another piece in the puzzle is needed in the form of low-carbon long-duration energy storage. This means large stores of low- or zero-carbon energy that can be accessed and used from four to up to 20 hours at a time, and sometimes even longer. 

One of the leading moves in this space is a cryogenic technology that delivers precisely such long-duration storage – the use of liquid air to deliver stored energy.

On an international stage, the first mover on this opportunity today is a UK company called Highview Power that is now making serious strides. And more than a decade on from proving its technology with a small-scale pilot project near London, a first commercial-scale plant is taking shape, to be followed by four much larger plants by 2030, with two to be built in Scotland and two in England.

Here comes Carrington

Each of the four larger planned UK facilities is a 2.5GWh plant and due to come onstream by 2030, but before that Highview will deliver a smaller project at Carrington near Manchester, in north-west England. 

“Though smaller than what will follow, this one is very important because it is our first full-scale commercial plant,” says Highview Power CEO Richard Butler.

“Once connected to the grid, it can deliver 50MW of output and 300MWh of storage using our proprietary tech. That 50MW output equates to delivering up to 100MW of grid stability, which you could say is the functional purpose.”

The plant encompasses compression, liquefaction, and storage of air, ready for regasification and being put through a steam turbine to make electricity.

“It is a very flexible technology because it is modular by design. It makes it easy to adjust the output based on need, and that’s crucial” says Butland.

The Carrington plant should be ready to switch on in the first quarter of 2026 and will serve as an important test-case for Highview. 

Stable grids without natural gas

What is Highview’s technology aiming to replace? Broadly, it should play a part in cutting the need for gas-fired power plants to balance the UK’s electricity grid.

Today, gas-fired plants are a go-to technology to balance the grid because they provide flexible, fast-response electricity generation that can quickly ramp up or down to match fluctuations in electricity demand or supply. It makes them ideal for covering peak demand or sudden drops in renewable output, and they have the benefit of being able to cover longer gaps, such as when the wind doesn’t blow for an extended period – for hours or even days. 

Used in conjunction with short-term electric battery back-up, Highview’s long-duration liquid air energy storage should deliver greener grid balancing by offering zero-emission, dispatchable electricity over many hours and eventually longer. In short, it can release energy back to the grid when needed – just like gas plants – but without burning fossil fuels. 

“Grids have been in transition for some time, as renewables have come onstream, but the transition should speed up from here,” says Butland. “The thermal grid of yesterday is now largely renewables-powered, and the next step is to clean up the dispatch side with a zero-carbon technology that delivers stability without carbon – and this is where Highview comes in.”

The roadmap, he notes, is to wean the UK grid substantially off natural gas, which accounts for over 30% of its delivered power today, down to under 10% by 2030. So it is a steep decline in gas that is being targeted, at least in the UK, and one that is focused around changing the make-up of dispatchable power in a few short years.

And, even if Highview is starting in the UK, every national grid around the world will of course have its own energy mix today, in part based on grid-balancing needs, and low-carbon targets for tomorrow, and the potential for liquid air energy storage to play a role.

On tech and analytics

Butland says Highview’s capabilities lie in power generation through its cryogenic tech but also substantially in its grid analytics capabilities. 

“You could even say the analytics side is becoming even more important as a differentiator,” he muses. “Four years ago we realised we needed to invest in our analytics function in order to deliver and integrate our technologies, and that’s an investment that has really helped us to turn a corner and maximise our grid insights and control, as well as helping drive wider decisions around grid investments.”

Among its capabilities, Highview is now able to use its analytics to work with governments on identifying grid vulnerabilities and illustrating how, where and why its cryogenic tech would be best deployed, as well as other ways that grids can be reshaped for the future.

“Our modelling is able to show what is needed in a particular location,” says Butland. “With today’s changing and more distributed electricity grids, the requirements to manage grids are more complex than ever and we can deliver a level of insight that is crucial when it comes to planning for tomorrow.”

Regulation and certainty

The notion of Highview working with governments on grid planning brings into focus the point that electricity grid infrastructure is naturally a space that’s highly regulated and defined by public policy and government support in every country around the world. 

In other words, the investments that Highview is making and the work it is doing is enabled by governments and policy. How does Butland characterise this?

“We are making large, long-term investments in infrastructure that are critical to governments looking for energy security and stable, renewable grids. Our initial plan to deliver the four large plants plus Carrington requires more than £3bn of capital spend. Beyond that, we have a plan to build out another 16 plants by 2040 – just in the UK. So these are large investments backed by government, and the UK government is a part-owner of Highview, too, through the UK Infrastructure Bank.”

What Highview needs to make these investments and to access capital at the best price, says Butland, is certainty. That mostly comes through policy frameworks and long-term government commitments, so as a private company it can make plans and raise funds.

“Policy is critical. The right frameworks unlock everything as it gives us access to the cheapest capital on the best terms,” he says.

“In the UK, there are layers of frameworks at work now that give us the certainty we need to move on these opportunities. And remember that providing certainty, as the UK government has and as we hope others will, is not the same as providing a subsidy. There have been some research and development grants we have secured down the years, but we don’t expect government handouts. These are 50-year investments we are making – and the right policy framework means we can secure capital at 6%, say, rather than 12% or more. That is critical.”

Highview’s model is to fund and own the assets it builds, in the knowledge that the power its technology supplies has long-term payment guarantees that attach which make the whole opportunity stack up financially. 

Projects and partners

Highview Power is not a large business today, even if it has large ambitions and large projects to manage. 

It has about 60 staff on its payroll working on the analytics side and on strategy, and about another 60 working on engineering development and on projects. That number may increase over time, but not much beyond 200, says Butland.

“You can guess by me saying this that our business is built around partnership – and working with best-in-class operators to deliver our projects. 

“We have lots of protected intellectual property ourselves, but where others have the best technologies and expertise we work with them. Ultimately, we need to deliver the best possible outcomes but we do not need to deliver everything ourselves.”

Highview Power LAES storage facility ©Highview Power

Butland says this is particularly true as Highview starts to explore wider opportunities beyond its place in national power grids, whether working to support data centre power set-ups or to co-locate with industry in various contexts. 

“At every step, we are seeking partners. Today we are already working closely with the likes of the electricity network business SSE, with battery developers, with Siemens on power and compression, with Man Group, with Air Products on cryogenic vessels, with Sumitomo Heavy Industries, and so on. Everyone involved understands how the power sector and grids need to be totally rebuilt in the next two decades, and we will only get there through collaboration and partnership.”

Scaling up from 2030

As Butland and Highview Power grapple with the delivery of key projects this side of 2030, the opportunity for the decade beyond that is already coming into focus. 

“I mentioned already how the plan is to build out another 16 UK plants between 2030 and 2040. It’s a big ambition but one we are laser-focused on. To deliver it will need about £16bn of further investment, but if we can pull it off it would give the UK grid the backbone it needs for the next 50 years.”

Then, of course, there are opportunities in other markets. The company is already looking at the potential application of liquid air energy storage for Ireland and Australia and starting to have discussions – and, in the case of Australia, not just for the grid but also for adjacent opportunities.

“And there really are lots of adjacencies,” adds Butland. “We can see the opportunity to work with hard-to-abate industries like mining, and with remote-location opportunities and much more. This is a truly global play.”

And what about the world’s largest single economy, the US?

“Without doubt US markets present a big opportunity. For a spell we had teams out there sizing things up, but we have decided for now that we need to pause that push to focus on getting the first raft of UK plants built and delivering.

“Everything else will flow from that, even if you always need to spend time strategising about the long-term opportunity funnel.”

Butland mentions how Germany is another big market that Highview wants spend time on, but for now it is a question of priorities: namely, to deliver the first phase of work in the UK. 

“We know what we have. The core intellectual property around liquid air being stored and delivering energy is robust and unique to us, backed up by 220 patents and counting. No-one is close to that, and the analytics and projects capabilities are layering on further expertise equally as valuable as the hardware side.

“Our ability to integrate and execute on these projects is what will truly set us apart and unlock everything.”