The companies that run the UK’s gas grid have set out a blueprint to establish the country’s first hydrogen town by 2030.
Britain’s Hydrogen Network Plan, which is part of the Energy Networks Association’s Gas Goes Green programme, will see coordinated activity from all five of Britain’s gas network companies – Cadent, National Grid, Northern Gas Networks, SGN & Wales & West Utilities.
Acting as a roadmap towards the UK’s first hydrogen town, it lays out several objectives along the way, including being ready by 2023 to blend up to 20 per cent hydrogen into local gas grids and a hydrogen production target of 1GW by 2025.
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“Building the UK’s first hydrogen town is not just about replacing the natural gas that most of our homes rely upon today; it’s about reducing our carbon emissions in a safe and secure way,” said Chris Train, the Energy Networks Association’s Gas Goes Green champion.
“It’s about delivering meaningful choice for households, businesses and communities. And it’s about ensuring that the economic benefits of hydrogen are spread around the country, to take advantage of the breadth and scale of that transformation. Britain’s Hydrogen Network Plan sets out how our gas network companies will do all of that in the years ahead.”
The five companies – which together own and operate around £24bn of energy infrastructure – will also help deliver a network of hydrogen refuelling facilities for zero emissions heavy good vehicles. In addition, Britain’s Hydrogen Network Plan lays out proposals to connect renewables production, carbon capture and storage and hydrogen use for industrial SuperPlaces, helping deliver two clusters by the mid-2020s and two more by 2030.
Specific R&D will include work being undertaken by the BEIS-led Hy4Heat programme, to test different household appliances such as boilers, heaters and cookers in variety of different settings and with a range of hydrogen blends.
Endeavours such as Project Cavendish on the Isle of Grain will take the first steps in connecting hydrogen production facilities to Britain’s gas networks, while the Future Billing Methodology and Real Time Networks projects will help ensure consumers continue to receive accurate gas bills, as more hydrogen is introduced to the gas grid.
Do we know the town (defined as population > 7,500)? Winlaton is a village – and happening this year, so the 2023 date may refer to a more populous location. Any hints? https://www.edie.net/news/6/North-of-England-homes-to-pilot-hydrogen-heating/
The madness of converting to hydrogen will hopefully become clear soon, as the government have been ordered to post the cost of the planned zero-carbon economy. They have generally refused to publish this although bits and pieces exist in the CCC documents and other locations. The lowest estimate of the costs is £ 1 trillion (not much if you say it fast), although £ 2 t looks more likely to me. The parliamentary Green Book requires all large projects to have cost / benefit assessments, which will be very interesting given that the benefits are purely a nebulous global reduction of CO2 estimated at 0.01% impact if the UK completely ceases its emissions.
However, the wise (and often underestimated) Bozzer has now set-out to alter the rules in the Green Book to enable the “climate emergency” to be fought irrespective of costs. I would prefer new hospitals, schools etc to be built than to invest in something whose benefits are not even measurable.
This is what you get when non-engineers are in politics.
Not very good on history – the whole country was on hydrogen before natural gas came along so it is in no way the first!
Will the local economy boom?
How and where will the hydrogen be generated? How much will it cost relative to normal natural gas ?
This looks like another bout of grandstanding. Hydrogen, ammonia, fuel cells and batteries al seem to be jockeying for position. Has anyone actually done the sums on how much all of this transformative technology will cost and what the identified benefits really are.
I’m hanging onto my woodburner.
Best to make it a seaside town with a connection to offshore wind. Even better would be to generate the H2 offshore and tanker it, saving undersea cabling, which is very expensive to install and ultimately fragile either to natural disaster or hostile action, particularly for windfarms 100km offshore. H2 generation and storage is the answer to getting rid of fossil fuel not only for gas but also for the explosion in EVs that are necessary but have battery weight, manufacture and end-of-life disposal issues.
Yes! Not before time. We just need to ramp it up across UK as a whole.
Please explain what the economic benefits of hydrogen are? Nothing by way of real info and numbers in this PR exercise. And if hydrogen costs more will I have the choice of sticking where I am?
When I was working on liquid hydrogen refuelling and also hydrogen gas refueling stations for transport 1995–2007 it was recognised that gas mains and local distribution was such a mixture of materials and standards that leakage would be a major risk please rember that many materials wil allow slow passage of hydrogen through their structure . will it be safe ?
It’s a no-brainer for me. We need to ease off a bit on the battery hype to allow other technologies like hydrogen to be properly considered. Heat pumps have a lot of press at the moment but hydrogen appears to me at least to be a much better option for heating in particular. One issue that concerns me but is doubtless being addressed is the fact that hydrogen is much more searching on joints. Connections which won’t have a meaningful leak with natural gas can with hydrogen. There will be a requirement to upgrade parts of our aging gas infrastructure but it it is a solvable problem.
Hi Trevor, Winlaton is being used for the hydrogen blending (up to 20%) whereas a small village (circa 300 homes) is being put on 100% hydrogen in Fife next year with the intent they start to build up thereafter.
I’m waiting for the arrival of dylithium crystals, that’s how I treat this announcement.
I am very concerned about the risk hydrogen production increase creates in the ozone layer. For all fuel burned or stored some leakage occurs. However, unlike the hydrocarbon fuels, hydrogen can pass through the atmosphere very rapidly and even escape the earth’s gravitational field. However, on the way through the atmosphere it will meet the ozone layer and ozone reacts very rapidly with hydrogen to form water. This will rapidly remove the ozone layer.
Possibly, a serious case of the Law of Unintended Consequences?
One question not answered is: where is a this hydrogen to come from? Most hydrogen currently comes from the hydrolyses of methane. Mixing super heated steam with methane. the steam being produced by burning more methane. Unfortunately the reaction is endothermic, so more methane is burned to drive the reaction. Yes, hydrogen can be produced by electrolysis, but where is the ‘leky to come from: by burning methane!
The electricity could come mostly from wind and solar farms- most of which have their turbines switched off due to no requirement for power at certain times of the day.