A word from our CEO

As we head towards the transition to net zero in 2050, innovation continues to play a central role in everything we do at NGN.

Innovative solutions and technologies will enable us to keep pushing boundaries, explore and develop new energy sources, and improve how we better support our vulnerable customers. The Network Innovation Allowance (NIA) funding stream and Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) that we receive from our regulator, Ofgem, are vital tools in helping us to achieve these objectives.

Over the past year, we have looked towards the future and explored the ways we can drive down the costs of alternative energy solutions and most effectively repurpose our network.

Our SIF-funded Hydrogen Cost Reduction (HyCoRe) project has enabled us to understand how we can reduce the costs of green hydrogen production, and our Network Resilience & Diversification programme has explored how we can ensure the future of our network by reusing and repurposing it to transport other services.

We have also examined how we could use vortex tubes in our pressure regulating stations (PRS), to provide a lower cost, more environmentally-friendly cooling and heating platform for our customers, and tested how we could produce community-centred energy systems in the future.

Helping the most vulnerable on our network is something we are absolutely committed to, now and moving forward, and we have continued to explore ways we can best do this.

We partnered with National Energy Action to undertake an in-depth research project to determine how we can create a comprehensive and consistent approach to building community resilience and safeguarding vulnerable customer groups in the lead up to 2050, which has resulted in six guiding principles that set out how to best serve vulnerable customers.

Further developing our Vulnerability Visualisation Tool, which allows us to get to grips with different communities’ needs like never before, has been a key focus over the past 12 months too, and we’ve now made it more widely available to partners and charities, so they too can use the data for doing good.

As the RIIO-GD2 regulatory period continues, innovation remains more important than ever in supporting delivery of our overarching objectives: provide a safe, reliable gas service; support the transition to net zero; continue to modernise our operations and provide help to our vulnerable customers.

I hope you enjoy reading about some of the innovative projects we’ve delivered this year. If you’d like to find out more or have a suggestion for how we can work together, please get in touch with our innovation team.