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NETWORK / 15 / MAY 2016 Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom sets out her vision of the future of UK gas Gas BridGe: "The whole shale gas project is quite a long way off. We are still at a point where there are no wells drilled, so if the gas can be extracted, how it will be used is still under consideration. Using the existing gas networks for transportation is an interesting idea, because if it's sourced locally and can be used locally, that's very efficient." "We've been hearing about this superb idea of taking the carbon out of the gas and converting it to hydrogen and using hydrogen in gas networks, which would then be a real win for decarb onisation. Potentially, you could be generating natural gas, converting it to hydrogen and using it for heating in the local area. It's a fabulous idea." "Gas is going to play a part in our future for a very long period to come, so if you accept that, which I think you must do, any logic would say that you must continue to have gas, then we have to ask ourselves where we want to get it from." "It just doesn't make sense to me to turn our back on what is a most enormously beneficial home grown resource with a lower carbon footprint than liquid natural gas imports, with the benefit of being home grown, so for all those reasons, for access to secure gas resources, because of the opportunity for our economy, and for the lower carbon as we move away from coal and towards a cleaner energy future through the bridge of gas it makes absolute sense for the UK." "We are looking at what our strategy will be toward CCS. We will have a new strategy for that by the end of this year. There are still projects ongoing, all the front end design work is still available and will be used for future consideration for getting the costs down for CCS. We now need to take stock and then think about what's next for CCS and that's what we are doing." "The challenge for us is to absolutely accept that there isn't just one solution and you might actually see all our key cities on hydrogen networks for example, and others on biomethane and others still using electricity." for conversion to hydrogen. Northern Gas Networks, through the Network Innova- tion Competition, has proved via a desk- top exercise that the conversion of Leeds' gas network to hydrogen, although a major infrastructure project, is perfectly feasi- ble. Chief executive Mark Horsley concedes that the technology would not be suitable for deployment everywhere in the UK, but hydrogen's future looks bright as more than just a transitional fuel as the UK decarbon- ises its energy system. But for hydrogen to be adopted in the UK, the country needs CCS, a technology the government does not seem particularly sup- portive of, given its decision to scrap the £1 billion CCS competition last year. However, Leadsom is adamant this isn't the case. She defends the decision to scrap the competi- tion as "valid and sensible" in the context of spending cuts, and insists the government does see a future for CCS, and is merely "tak- ing stock" of what is next for CCS in the UK. Hydrogen for generation One of the factors that made Leeds the perfect location to examine the concept of running a city entirely on hydrogen is its proximity to salt caverns. Salt caverns – man-made underground holes created by washing salt out of large geographical struc- tures made almost entirely of pure salt – are already used today to store natural gas, but could also be used to store hydrogen. Last month the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) launched a new project which will examine in detail the potential for stor- ing hydrogen and hydrogen gas mixtures in salt caverns for use in gas turbines when electricity demand is high. The project will identify and examine three existing salt caverns in Cheshire, Teesside and East York- shire that could be used for hydrogen stor- age, looking at their suitability and the costs associated with using them. The project follows on from a report pub- lished by the ETI highlighting the potential role hydrogen storage could play in a clean, responsive power system. The equipment needed to convert different fuel sources such as fossil fuels, biomass or waste into hydro- gen while capturing the co-produced carbon dioxide with CCS is expensive. Keeping that equipment running at peak efficiency con- tinuously and storing the excess hydrogen in salt caverns would vastly improve the econ- omies of the process. A large cavern could supply the peak power requirements of a city the size of Hull. Stored hydrogen on this scale could then be used to decarbonise other sectors such as industry and transport through the use of hydrogen fuel cells. N