Charging Forward: AXA IM buys 50% stake in Scottish battery energy storage project

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Charging Forward: AXA IM buys 50% stake in Scottish battery energy storage project

In this week’s Charging Forward, investment firm AXA IM has acquired a 50% stake in a major Scottish battery energy storage system (BESS), while Zenobe has secured planning consent for its Carlisle Road development. Meanwhile Glen Earrach Energy has submitted a planning application for its 2GW pumped storage hydro scheme in the Highlands, and more. In […]

In this week’s Charging Forward, investment firm AXA IM has acquired a 50% stake in a major Scottish battery energy storage system (BESS), while Zenobe has secured planning consent for its Carlisle Road development.

Meanwhile Glen Earrach Energy has submitted a planning application for its 2GW pumped storage hydro scheme in the Highlands, and more.

In international energy storage news, researchers at Pennsylvania State University have developed a novel compressed air energy storage system which utilises geothermal heat from abandoned oil and gas wells.

This week’s UK energy storage headlines:

AXA IM Alts acquires 50% stake in Coalburn BESS
Scottish government approves Zenobe’s Carlisle Road BESS
Glen Earrach Energy submits 2 GW pumped storage hydro application
Apatura secures consent for two Scottish BESS projects
Spanish firm Matrix Renewables takes over two Scottish BESS projects
Highland councillors oppose Caithness BESS project
Centrica secures licence extension for Rough storage field
Statera Energy secures approval for Kintore Hydrogen
Statkraft to optimise Eku Energy’s Loudwater BESS
RheEnergise nears completion on high density hydro demonstrator
International news: Researchers investigate using abandoned oil wells for energy storage

AXA IM acquires half of Coalburn BESS

Investment firm AXA IM Alts has acquired a 50% stake in the 500 MW Coalburn 1 battery energy storage system (BESS) in Scotland.

Denmark’s Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) is developing project, located just south of Glasgow, alongside Susgen subsidiary Alcemi.

The Coalburn 1 site will become the largest BESS of its kind in Europe when it comes online in early 2026.

The deal marks AXA IM’s debut investment in the UK energy storage sector.

The site of the Coalburn 1 battery energy storage system in South Lanarkshire.

Coalburn 1 is one of three BESS projects CIP is developing in Scotland alongside Coalburn 2 and the Devilla BESS in Fife.

CIP and Alcemi confirmed the £800 million investment in January.

The three battery projects are set to deliver 1.5 GW/3 GWh of storage capacity, enough to power 4.5 million average households for up to two hours.

AXA IM Alts head of infrastructure Mark Gilligan said the investment in Coalburn 1 marks a “significant milestone” for the firm.

“Battery storage infrastructure is critical to achieving national energy security and unlocking the full potential of renewable energy,” Gilligan said.

Zenobe’s 200 MW Carlisle Road BESS approved

UK battery storage developer Zenobe has secured Scottish government approval for its 200 MW/400 MWh Carlisle Road BESS in South Lanarkshire.

According to planning documents, the site is strategically located in close proximity to the Coalburn substation an important part of the British transmission grid.

The BESS will connect to the Coalburn substation via underground cables, and will consist of approximately 150 battery storage units.

Approval for the Carlisle Road BESS comes after Zenobe started commercial operations for the first phase of its 300 MW/600 MWh BESS project in Blackhillock in March.

Zenobe said the project, currently Europe’s largest operational BESS, will significantly reduce the amount of curtailed clean energy from the wind projects.

Glen Earrach pumped hydro plans submitted

Glen Earrach Energy (GEE) has submitted a planning application to the Scottish government for a £3 billion pumped storage hydro project.

Located at Balmacaan Estate in the Highlands, the 2 GW Glen Earrach project will account for nearly three-quarters of the total PSH capacity planned for Loch Ness.

The site will be one of the largest energy storage schemes in the UK once completed in 2030, providing storage capacity for up to 17 hours.

It will also support around 1,000 jobs during the peak of construction, as well as an annual £20m community benefit fund over its 125-year lifespan.

GEE director Roderick Macleod said Glen Earrach will deliver the “most substantial community benefit fund ever in Scotland”.

“The Highlands deserves the best project, and we remain on track to deliver it, with the first power being produced in 2030,” Macleod said.

Apatura approved for two Scottish BESS projects

Renewable energy storage developer Apatura has secured planning consent for two BESS projects in Scotland.

The projects include the firm’s 40 MW/80 MWh Glasgow Road BESS and the 50 MW/100 MWh BESS in East Kilbride.

The Glasgow Road BESS is located in the East Renfrewshire village of Eaglesham.

Apatura said consent for the two sites marks nine BESS project approval for the company in the past 16 months.

The approval brings Apatura’s total consented BESS portfolio to 1.5 GW.

Apatura chief development officer Andrew Philpott said the company received no objections from East Renfrewshire Council, reflecting “strong local and national support for sustainable infrastructure”.

“Scotland is leading the way in building the resilient systems needed for a net zero future,” he said.

“Projects like Glasgow Road are key to enabling the ambitions outlined by NESO in their 2030 Clean Power Pathway.

“Scottish communities are right at the heart of this transition.”

Alongside its Glasgow Road and East Kilbride BESS projects, Apatura also recently secured planning consent for its 150 MW Neilston BESS near Paisley

Matrix Renewables takes over Kilmarnock and Eccles BESS

Spanish firm Matrix Renewables has entered the UK market through a partnership on two major BESS projects in Scotland.

Matrix said it will partner with Green BESS Developments (UK) Limited, a subsidiary of Czech firm Creditas Group, on the Kilmarnock and Eccles II BESS projects.

The Scottish government gave consent to the 500 MW Eccles project in December last year, while the 500 Kilmarnock BESS secured approval on 7 April.

Located at “strategic sites” on along major electricity transmission corridors, Matrix said the two BESS developments will deliver a combined 1 GW/2 GWh storage capacity.

Both the Eccles and Kilmarnock projects are scheduled to connect to the grid in 2027, and Matrix said it is finalising the technical configuration, offtake strategy and financing structure.

Matrix said it plans to invest over £1bn to develop over 2 GW of additional generation and storage capacity in the UK over the next three years.

Matrix Renewables managing director for Europe and Latin America Sergio Arbeláez said the firm’s entry into the UK aligns with its investment strategy and “diversifies our technology mix”.

“The UK is the most advanced market in Europe for standalone battery storage, and these projects anchor our in-country operations and development capabilities with a meaningful presence in the flexible generation space,” he said.

“Backed by our experienced UK team, we are committed to playing a long-term role in supporting and investing behind the UK’s transition to a low-carbon energy system.”

The Madrid-headquartered Matrix is backed by American global alternative asset manager TPG.

Highland councillors oppose Caithness BESS

Members of Highland Council have raised objections to plans from Simec Atlantis Energy (SAE) to build a BESS near Castle Mey in Caithness.

The 300 MW/1200 MWh Mey BESS is set to have the largest battery storage capacity in the Highlands and would be one of the highest capacity sites in the whole of Scotland.

The project is connected to SAE’s MeyGen tidal energy project in the Pentland Firth, which secured UK government support in the sixth renewable energy auction.

Local objectors to the proposal have raised concerns over the environmental and tourism impact as well as the lack of local benefit, according to the P&J.

Regulators and industry need to decouple the tidal and wave sectors as the two technologies diverge in terms of maturity and paths to market, new research has said. — A tidal turbine being deployed in the Pentland Firth as part of the MeyGen Tidal Energy Project.

Andy Hayton, a Mey resident, said the proposal is an “industrial eyesore” that would “brutalise the tranquil and historic landscape” of the area.

Meanwhile, Councillor Matthew Reiss raised concerns about the closeness of the site to the North Coast 500, John O’Groats and the Castle of Mey which he described as “right on the doorstep” of the proposed site.

SAE have said the site would hold approximately 352 battery units in a site totalling 10.65 hectares.

The Scottish government’s Energy Consents Unit will now determine the planning application.

Centrica secures licence extension for Rough

Centrica has secured a licence extension for its Rough gas storage facility in the North Sea.

The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) regulator announced it will extend Centrica’s consent to operate Rough until 30 April 2026.

The NSTA said this will enable Rough to “continue to support the UK’s energy security”.

Centrica reopened the Rough facility in 2022 at the height of the European gas crisis, before moving to double its storage capacity in 2023.

wood centrica equinor hydrogen — Centrica is exploring hydrogen storage options at Rough gas storage field.

Amidst warnings about the future stability of UK gas supply, Centrica is exploring the potential for converting Rough for hydrogen storage.

The licence extension comes after Centrica kicked off a political storm earlier this year when it warned the UK gas supplies had fallen to “concerningly low levels”.

Statera Energy’s Kintore Hydrogen approved

Plans to create one of Europe’s largest hydrogen plants near Kintore have taken a step forward – despite calls for it to be thrown out.

Statera Energy wants to build the massive 3GW Kintore Hydrogen project near Leylodge.

Once constructed, it would be the largest site of its kind in the UK.

It has been earmarked for land near the Kintore substation and a recently approved battery energy storage system.

Aberdeenshire Council officials gave its approval for the plans, which still need to be signed off by the Scottish government.

An overhead visualisation of the Kintore Hydrogen project, one of the largest green hydrogen projects in development in Scotland.

Under Statera Energy’s plans, green hydrogen produced at Kintore will be blended into the UK gas network using existing pipelines.

Statera Energy hydrogen project director Don Harrold previously told Energy Voice the Kintore site is “probably one of the best sites for green hydrogen in Western Europe”.

The company estimates the development could provide a peak of around 3,500 jobs both across the site and off site in the UK supply chain during the construction phase and up to 200 operational jobs.

Targeting two phases of development, the first 500MW phase is expected to be up and running by the end of 2028 if all goes according to plan.

A key element of the project is Statera’s ambition to make use of curtailed power from excess renewable energy generation, particularly onshore and offshore wind.

Statkraft to optimise Eku’s Loudwater BESS

Norwegian firm Statkraft has signed an agreement with Eku Energy to optimise its 40 MW Loudwater BESS.

Under the deal, Statkraft will provide optimisation and trading services to maximise the value of the Loudwater site, which is Eku’s second UK BESS project.

This agreement brings Statkraft’s contracted capacity in its third-party distributed flexible generation and battery storage optimisation portfolio to approximately 2.7GW in Great Britain.

Eku Energy broke ground on the Loudwater BESS, near High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, in February 2024.

Last week, the company announced it had acquired a portfolio of seven UK BESS projects from Bluestone Energy.

RheEnergise high density hydro demonstrator

UK energy storage developer RheEnergise is nearing completion on its high density (HD) hydro demonstrator project in Devon.

The HD hydro technology RheEnergise is developing akin to a compact pumped storage hydro (PSH) scheme, converting excess renewable electricity into stored energy.

However, instead of water the company uses a proprietary high density fluid it calls HD Fluid R-19, which is 2.5 times more dense than water.

Because of this, RheEnergise claims its projects can operate on low hills rather than the high mountains used for traditional PSH schemes.

The construction site of the RheEnergise high density hydro demonstrator project in Devon.

The projects can also be 2.5 times smaller to deliver the same power as PSH schemes, RheEnergise said.

The company plans to develop projects between 10 MW and 100 MW in size, allowing them to connect with existing grid infrastructure and co-locate with other renewable energy projects.

RheEnergise said it has completed the mechanical stage of its demonstrator project, including fitting the 500 kW turbine.

The firm received £8.2m from the UK government for the demonstrator project, and it expects to commission the site later this summer/

Elsewhere, RheEnergise signed an agreement with Anglesey Mining in February this year to investigate the potential to develop a hydro-energy storage project at the Parys Mountain underground mine.

Researchers investigate using abandoned oil wells for energy storage

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have developed an energy storage system which combines abandoned oil wells with compressed air energy storage (CAES).

In a study, the researchers proposed a novel geothermal-assisted CAES (GA-CAES) that integrates abandoned oil and gas wells and deep geothermal heat into a single system.

Developers including the UK’s Crondall Energy, Dutch firm Corre Energy and Canada’s Hydrostor are advancing CAES projects globally as interest in the technology grows.

However, the researchers said the “large initial investment required” for CAES projects can “significantly impede” the development of the technology.

They found using old oil and gas wells could increase round-trip efficiency for CAES by around 9.5% by exploiting geothermal energy from the surrounding reservoir.

The GA-CAES system could also significantly decrease initial investment costs by leveraging existing infrastructure, improving economic viability.

It comes as UK firm Highview Power, which is developing a similar liquid air energy storage (LAES) technology, plans to invest £300m in its first commercial-scale plant in the UK.

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Artificial intelligence has, without question, crossed the threshold—from a speculative academic pursuit into the defining infrastructure of 21st-century commerce, governance, and innovation. What began in the realm of research labs and open-source models is now embedded in the capital stack of every major hyperscaler, semiconductor roadmap, and national industrial strategy. But as AI scales, so does its energy footprint. From Nvidia-powered GPU clusters to exascale training farms, the conversation across boardrooms and site selection teams has fundamentally shifted. It’s no longer just about compute density, thermal loads, or software frameworks. It’s about power—how to find it, finance it, future-proof it, and increasingly, how to generate it onsite. That refrain—“It’s all about power now”—has moved from a whisper to a full-throated consensus across the data center industry. The latest report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) gives this refrain global context and hard numbers, affirming what developers, utilities, and infrastructure operators have already sensed on the ground: the AI revolution will be throttled or propelled by the availability of scalable, sustainable, and dispatchable electricity. Why Energy Is the Real Bottleneck to Intelligence at Scale The major new IEA report puts it plainly: The transformative promise of AI will be throttled—or unleashed—by the world’s ability to deliver scalable, reliable, and sustainable electricity. The stakes are enormous. Countries that can supply the power AI craves will shape the future. Those that can’t may find themselves sidelined. Importantly, while AI poses clear challenges, the report emphasizes how it also offers solutions: from optimizing energy grids and reducing emissions in industrial sectors to enhancing energy security by supporting infrastructure defenses against cyberattacks. The report calls for immediate investments in both energy generation and grid capabilities, as well as stronger collaboration between the tech and energy sectors to avoid critical bottlenecks. The IEA advises that, for countries

Colorado Eyes the AI Data Center Boom with Bold Incentive Push

Even as states work on legislation to limit data center development, it is clear that some locations are looking to get a bigger piece of the huge data center spending that the AI wave has created. It appears that politicians in Colorado took a look around and thought to themselves “Why is all that data center building going to Texas and Arizona? What’s wrong with the Rocky Mountain State?” Taking a page from the proven playbook that has gotten data centers built all over the country, Colorado is trying to jump on the financial incentives for data center development bandwagon. SB 24-085: A Statewide Strategy to Attract Data Center Investment Looking to significantly boost its appeal as a data center hub, Colorado is now considering Senate Bill 24-085, currently making its way through the state legislature. Sponsored by Senators Priola and Buckner and Representatives Parenti and Weinberg, this legislation promises substantial economic incentives in the form of state sales and use tax rebates for new data centers established within the state from fiscal year 2026 through 2033. Colorado hopes to position itself strategically to compete with neighboring states in attracting lucrative tech investments and high-skilled jobs. According to DataCenterMap.com, there are currently 53 data centers in the state, almost all located in the Denver area, but they are predominantly smaller facilities. In today’s era of massive AI-driven hyperscale expansion, Colorado is rarely mentioned in the same breath as major AI data center markets. Some local communities have passed their own incentive packages, but SB 24-085 aims to offer a unified, statewide framework that can also help mitigate growing NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) sentiment around new developments. The Details: How SB 24-085 Works The bill, titled “Concerning a rebate of the state sales and use tax paid on new digital infrastructure

Microsoft will invest $80B in AI data centers in fiscal 2025

And Microsoft isn’t the only one that is ramping up its investments into AI-enabled data centers. Rival cloud service providers are all investing in either upgrading or opening new data centers to capture a larger chunk of business from developers and users of large language models (LLMs). In a report published in October 2024, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that demand for generative AI would push Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, Meta, and Apple would between them devote $200 billion to capex in 2025, up from $110 billion in 2023. Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders, followed closely by Google and AWS, Bloomberg Intelligence said. Its estimate of Microsoft’s capital spending on AI, at $62.4 billion for calendar 2025, is lower than Smith’s claim that the company will invest $80 billion in the fiscal year to June 30, 2025. Both figures, though, are way higher than Microsoft’s 2020 capital expenditure of “just” $17.6 billion. The majority of the increased spending is tied to cloud services and the expansion of AI infrastructure needed to provide compute capacity for OpenAI workloads. Separately, last October Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said his company planned total capex spend of $75 billion in 2024 and even more in 2025, with much of it going to AWS, its cloud computing division.

John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle