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NETWORK / 18 / NOVEMBER 2017 T he announcement by Centrica in the summer that it is intend- ing to shut down the Rough gas storage eld in the North Sea marked the end of an era for one of the UK's most important pieces of gas infrastructure. Licenses for the Rough Field were given in 1964 and a decade later the rst gas was brought ashore to the Easington gas processing terminal. Latterly, the eld has served as Britain's only economically viable depleted o… shore gas storage and retrieval facility, with a capacity of more than 3.3 billion cubic metres – approximately 70 per cent of the UK's total storage capacity, or enough for nine days' gas supply. Economically viable, until now. In June, Centrica Storage (CSL) said it was intending to end Rough's status as a storage facility, and to produce all recoverable gas from the eld. "As a result of the high operating pressures involved, and the fact that the wells and facilities are at the end of their design life and have su… ered a number of"di… erent"failure modes while testing, CSL cannot safely return the assets and facilities to injection and storage operations," the company said. As in power, major transitions in the gas industry are taking place. The role that gas will play in the smart grid of the future is also under scrutiny. Commentators in recent issues of Network, such as the Energy Networks Association, have said that the decarbonisation of heat is perhaps one of the most di— cult issues to solve as the move to a low carbon energy system takes place. Still others have suggested that RIIO-2 must not focus unduly on power at the expense of leaving as many options on the table as possible when it comes to gas and heat. "I've been a big advocate for decarbonising the heat system for more than a decade," explains Dr Tim Fox, an independent energy consultant, and the former head of energy and environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. "Electricity has been, and will be, a relatively easy low carbon challenge compared to heat. The challenge lies in the fact that most of the consumption of heat is seasonal. In winter, demand is about three times what it is in the summer. Our solution in the UK has been, since our discoveries in the North Sea, to rely almost exclusively on natural gas." There is a number of ways in which heat could be decarbonised in the future as part of the UK's obligations under the Climate Change Act, but it is widely acknowledged that decarbonisation of heat, which accounts for around 45 per cent of our energy usage and 80 per cent in UK homes, is lagging decarbonisation of power and transport. Scenarios developed by KPMG show four potential ways that energy demand, particularly heat demand, could be met in 2050. These include evolution of the gas networks; an all-electric future for heat; a future in which diversi ed energy sources dominate, and gas networks are used in just half of the country; and a 'self- generating' heating and energy solutions future, with a majority of all-electric heating. In this nal scenario, the majority of transport is completely decarbonised – and existing gas distribution networks are not used at all. Changing philosophy Moving from a philosophy in which individual gas boilers heat individual buildings supplied by an individual supply from a network, to a situation in which GAS NET WORKS AND DECARBONISATION OF HEAT Providing energy solutions Will the decarbonisation of heat and the use of low-carbon gases change the face of gas networks and infrastructure? Network explores the issues.