GB’s East Coast Hydrogen project delivery plan set out

A single coordinated network plan has been set out for the delivery of Britain’s East Coast Hydrogen (ECH2) project.

ECH2, an initiative of the gas network operators Cadent and Northern Gas Networks and transmission operator National Gas, is aimed to deliver a large-scale hydrogen infrastructure in Britain’s East Coast region as a key building block of a wider national hydrogen economy.

The East Coast region, extending from Newcastle upon Tyne and Durham in the north to Northampton in the south and including the Teesside and Humber industrial clusters, is considered an obvious location to produce low carbon hydrogen with its concentrated industrial energy demand, significant gas storage and offshore wind power connections and thus has the potential to enable widespread decarbonisation benefits through fuel switching from fossil fuels, state the consortium members.

The consortium has identified up to 83TWh of annual hydrogen production and over 63TWh of annual industrial and commercial, power and transport hydrogen demand, potentially materialising over the next 15 years.

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With the intent to provide a clear plan for the transportation of hydrogen, the ECH2 delivery plan is set out comprised of new build and repurposed gas pipelines connecting hydrogen production projects with storage and demand sites in the region.

Extensions also are envisaged north into northwest England and Scotland and in the south to Wales, southern England and East Anglia.

Among the findings of the consortium are that 4.4GW of green hydrogen capacity is planned in the East Coast region by 2030, corresponding to 88% of the government’s targets, and over 10.7TWh of hydrogen storage could be deployed by 2050, which would be almost 20% of the national requirements.

With these up to 12Mt of CO2/year could be abated from the demand across the industrial, power and transport sectors by 2037.

Other benefits envisaged should include support for value chain development and providing resilience and flexibility to the grid.

The consortium members state that further work is needed to confirm locations and timing for delivering the hydrogen infrastructure, which will take place in the next phase starting in mid-2024, following an expected potential funding decision.

With go ahead the connection of repurposed pipelines and the building and connection of new pipelines would commence in 2026. The connection into further regions would occur in 2035.