A small Scottish lake holds the answer to how Britain can reach net zero

Loch nam Breac Dearga is a hidden loch perched 475 meters above Britain's largest lake, Loch Ness, in the Great Glen of Invernessshire.

It contains the answer to how the UK got to net zero.

The deep-water landscape of the Great Glens, surrounded by vertiginous hillsides, provides ideal conditions for pumped hydro, a system that uses large bodies of water to store power, and accelerates the UK's energy transition by solving the problem of renewable energy intermittency.

As the UK increasingly turns to wind power to decarbonise its electricity grid, long-term energy storage will be essential for reliable renewable power when wind does not fill the gap currently filled by fossil fuels.

Pumped hydro pumps water from lower reservoirs to higher reservoirs when electricity is abundant and cheap and releases it back through turbines to meet surging demand.

Glen Earrach Energy, founded by the owners of the Balmacaan Estate, where Loch nam Breac Dearga is located, is planning the largest scheme at Loch Ness at 2 gigawatts and is seeking to invest extensively in the home of the mythical monster. Also called water battery.

The company estimates that the plan will reduce carbon emissions from the national grid by 10% after 2030 and save the grid $2 billion in operating costs over its first 20 years of operation. It said its size and height difference would make it the most efficient in the UK, maximizing power output while minimizing the impact on Loch Ness water levels.

Roderick MacLeod, director of family-run Glen Earrach, said this was how the UK became a green energy superpower. The UK has large offshore wind resources, so the challenge is how to process them seamlessly so they can be used in the UK and overseas, he said.

Roderick MacLeod says the Highhead project will minimize water level changes. Paul Heartfield/FT

The UK is trying to catch up with other parts of the world, including China, Japan, the US and Europe, where the technology is growing rapidly as a means of stabilizing renewable energy generation.

According to the International Hydropower Association, pumped storage hydropower capacity of 179 GW, which accounts for 90% of all installed energy storage globally, is expected to increase by almost 50% to about 240 GW by the end of 2010.

The UK grid operator estimates between 7GW and 15GW of long-term power storage will be needed by 2050, in line with the government's net zero emissions target.

The UK's four existing 2.8 GW pumped storage hydro facilities in Wales and Scotland were built more than 40 years ago, when energy was state-owned.

But opposition is building to a hydraulic gold rush around Scotland's most famous lake.

The 300-megawatt Foyers power station, operated by energy group SSE, came into operation half a century ago through a connection to the 19th-century Loch Mhor dam, which supplied power to aluminum production in the Highlands. Other prospects on Loch Ness include the 600 MW Stateras on Loch Kemp and the 450 MW Statkrafts on Loch na Cathrach.

Brian Shaw, of the Ness District Salmon Fishery Board, said numerous projects around the tourist attraction were threatening the lake's fragile ecosystem, including young salmon and coastal invertebrates, due to rapid and frequent water declines.

There is enormous risk involved and it is difficult to see how it will play out. [developers] It would be possible to show that biodiversity could be maintained in a better state, but that is not possible, he said. There is a gold rush among companies trying to access these waters.

Red Trout Lake Paul Heartfield/FT

Targeting construction to begin in early 2026, MacLeod said high-head projects such as Glen Earrachs, with greater vertical distance between lower and upper reservoirs, would minimize water level changes while benefiting the local economy. He added that the flow of water through Loch Ness would also help smooth out the fluctuations.

A Scottish Government spokesperson said the impact on communities and nature was an important consideration and all applications would need to be assessed on a site-by-site basis.

As well as getting the local community on board, other challenges to these massive engineering feats include expensive upfront costs, long construction times, and uncertainty about operating returns.

Glen Earrach said it had made significant progress in developing the $2 billion project and was now seeking equity financing.

Industry executives said the government plans to unveil a cap and price floor stabilization mechanism that would guarantee minimum profits to operators while limiting excessive profits.

Developers say a mechanism similar to that used for electrical interconnectors that share power between neighboring countries could attract billions of dollars in private sector investment into UK hydro projects, mainly in Scotland and Wales, where the most favorable geographical conditions exist.

A UK government spokesperson said: “We are embracing the future of energy production and storage and will have further plans on this in due course.”

Further south, in Loch Lochy, energy group SSE is funding ground conditions investigations at its 1.5GW Coire Glas project, and is looking to open a 1.2km tunnel in underground caverns near where an underground power plant complex for generators could be located. It's breaking through and blowing up.

SSE has so far invested $100 million ahead of implementation of the cap and floor policy, which Mike Seaton, project director at Coire Glas, hopes will be in place for developers by the first or second quarter of next year.

Seaton said SSE had attracted interest from other utilities and institutional funds for joint investments. He said there is a lot of interest, but these caps and soles will be needed and without them there will be no project.

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