Amid all the important discussion of decarbonising the UK’s power system, we can often lose sight of the huge role gas networks play in delivering energy to people’s homes, public buildings, businesses and industry.
Cadent is the largest gas network business in the UK, supplying almost as much energy as the entire electricity system, including the three largest cities in the UK – London, Birmingham and Manchester. We also work with big brands such as Rolls Royce, British Sugar and Liberty Steel. We manage a world-class network that spans 135,000 kilometres, operates at a reliability rate of 99.99 per cent, and that is modern, with over 75 per cent of the network having been installed in the last 22 years.
Our daily focus is to keep people warm while also protecting the planet, and we know that our network needs to change as we transition away from fossil fuels and towards sustainable alternatives.
The important task of delivering net zero in the energy sector is, however, often conflated with a discussion about getting rid of the gas network. This largely rests on the idea that electrification is the singular answer to net zero.
The past year has seen discussions bubbling up around whether the gas network should be decommissioned entirely. Both the Public Accounts Committee and the National Infrastructure Commission have called for decommissioning plans to be produced.
The idea often presented – that it is easier to deliver net zero without a gas network – is frustrating and unfounded. No credible plan for replacing the electricity distribution system, which would give us a sense of how to even start this process, has been forthcoming. So, it is time to stand back and consider the role the gas network already plays and will need to continue to play.
The reality is that the pathway to deliver net zero remains uncertain; we need to keep open a range of options to help us get there. Regardless of the pathway we follow, our network will play a key role in decarbonising the power sector by storing gas in pipes and providing it to generate electricity when renewables are intermittent. Even picking one of the official scenarios where most energy is electrified (which may be very unlikely viewed from today), an estimated five million customers on our networks will still be using gas/methane at the start of the 2040s.
We need to be clear that, if we have that many customers still relying on gas, decommissioning is going to be very tricky, especially considering the reluctance from politicians to force people off their gas boilers, as recently confirmed by the new Prime Minister. Even with a small number of customers, the network will need to remain. And let’s not forget how highly interconnected the gas network is – with a single pipe simultaneously supplying homes, local businesses, public buildings and industrial sites.
We must recognise that a gas network is going to be required for some time yet, and look to ways in which the gas networks can play a key role in assisting decarbonisation. To do this, there are three key areas we should consider.
First, there is a compelling case for the adoption of hybrid heating systems, where a small heat pump is installed alongside a traditional gas boiler. Much of the rest of Europe has adopted this approach as a means of accelerating the uptake of low-carbon electrified solutions. The Netherlands has been a pioneer in this space, and has the most similar gas system to the UK, heating a similarly large proportion of homes with gas. The benefits of hybrids are that they are lower cost than conventional heat pumps, are less disruptive and can drive down the demand for gas by around 80 per cent (the gas boiler is only used for very colds days and to provide hot water), thereby significantly reducing emissions – and crucially, they can significantly reduce the scale and cost of upgrading the electricity distribution network. Perhaps the quickest and easiest way of decarbonising the electricity distribution system is for it not to have to tackle (peak) heating – instead give consumers electricity and gas.
Second, as gas networks we can drive down our emissions through proactively detecting leaks in our network with the latest technology, and then replace old iron pipes with newer plastic ones in the places, which make the biggest difference to our already very low levels of methane leakage. This is something that is being done today in northern Italy and we have been working closely with our Italian colleagues to implement this in the UK.
Third, we can reduce the emissions of the gas we use by substituting methane for greener gases like biomethane – and in turn, hydrogen. Biomethane is derived from organic matter and offers a renewable alternative that can be seamlessly fed into the gas network. We already have enough biomethane connected to our network to heat 250,000 homes and believe this could increase to supply around two million homes (around 20 per cent of today’s domestic demand). Again, there is more ambition in this space elsewhere in Europe.
Finally, in the background, we need to convert and develop the network to distribute hydrogen, providing low-carbon energy where electrification is either unfeasible or uneconomic. As we continue to replace old iron mans with plastic, the network will be 95 per cent ready by 2032 with limited retrofitting.
The gas network is one of the few pieces of UK infrastructure we can be truly proud of. It delivers an essential service keeping people warm and powering businesses and industry, with a world- class safety record. So why the seeming rush to get rid of it?
Instead of debating how soon we should start decommissioning our gas network, we should invest sensibly in it – and keep it at the forefront of driving innovation to simultaneously deliver gas at an affordable cost to consumers and help decarbonise our energy. We need to stop reducing something so intricate to a binary debate and move forward pragmatically.
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