Hydrogen and the journey towards a lower carbon future

Hydrogen and its potential role in decarbonising home heating are being explored by the government and are cited in many documents including the Hydrogen Strategy, Energy White Paper, and Heat and Buildings Strategy.

Here at Northern Gas Networks, we are extremely proud to be at the forefront of understanding how hydrogen can best be used to reduce our reliance on natural gas and, in parallel, what we need to do to create an efficient and resilient distribution infrastructure capable of meeting our needs long into the future.

The launchpad for our work was the H21 Leeds City Gate report, which first established that conversion to hydrogen was technically possible and economically viable. Since that point, we, along with our partners from the gas distribution and transmission networks, have been focusing on the other elements that would be required to make a successful switch from natural gas.

Chief among these is safety, and our teams have been engaged in a wide variety of trials and tests under the H21 banner to prove that hydrogen can be delivered and used as safely as natural gas. A good example of this is the work we carried out at the Health and Safety Executive’s Science Division in Buxton and DNV Group’s research facility at Spadeadam in Cumbria, which has included testing the relative leakage rates of 100 percent hydrogen compared to natural gas and understanding the consequences of leakage on a range of typical distribution network assets.

Assets were retrieved from the existing natural gas network and tested under hydrogen conditions, with the work demonstrating that assets that did not leak with methane, also did not leak with hydrogen. Also, for those assets that did leak, the rate at which hydrogen leaked was within the expected and calculated limits.

This programme was supplemented by further rigorous testing, involving more than 380 experiments at Spadeadam, to understand how hydrogen behaves if it does leak. The results enabled risk assessments currently used for natural gas to be updated for using hydrogen in gas networks.

"These are extremely exciting times for the gas distribution sector, as we work collectively to make the case for the different innovations and new ways of working that will be required if we are to meet the government’s challenging 2050 net-zero targets"

We also set up an H21 test site at an unused, converted section of the natural gas network in the South Bank area of Middlesbrough. The network formerly supplied around 70 terraced homes and allowed us to prove the suitability of older generation metallic gas mains to transport hydrogen and to demonstrate that hydrogen can be odourised in the same way that natural gas is today.

To help generate a wider understanding of the potential of hydrogen, we worked with a fellow gas distributor, Cadent, and the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) to build the first Hydrogen Demonstration Homes at our Low Thornley site. The houses showcase the use of 100 percent hydrogen for domestic heating and cooking and are giving members of the public a glimpse into a hydrogen-fuelled future, enabling them to interact with a range of hydrogen-fed appliances including boilers, hobs, cookers, fires, and even a barbecue.

In Winlaton, near Gateshead, we delivered a project under the ‘HyDeploy’ banner aimed at demonstrating that blends of up to 20 percent hydrogen can be added to the natural gas supply in an existing gas network, without any impact on the end user. Over 650 homes, a local school, and a parish church successfully used the blend for 10 months, without even having to change any of their gas appliances.

But perhaps the most exciting element of our current work programme is the proposal for the UK’s first hydrogen village – an ambitious scheme that involves switching the gas supply from natural gas to hydrogen for around 2,000 homes and businesses in an area of Redcar from 2025.

Since the spring of 2022, we’ve been working with the local community to draw up detailed proposals that will be submitted to the new Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), ahead of a decision on whether the scheme goes ahead, expected later this year.

Looking further ahead, we have recently submitted plans to host the UK’s first hydrogen town pilots in our area. A hydrogen town would go ahead if the government decides hydrogen is suitable for home heating, a decision it is expecting to make in 2026 – however, due to the scale and complexity of connecting around 10,000 properties by 2030, early high-level planning has already started.

These are extremely exciting times for the gas distribution sector, as we work collectively to make the case for the different innovations and new ways of working that will be required if we are to meet the government’s challenging 2050 net-zero targets.