Creating place-based community heating schemes

Beginning in March 2024, this early phase exploratory project has been designed to show us how we could produce community-centred energy systems in the future.

Through a research test phase, our expert team has been investigating how to leverage the capabilities of power-to-hydrogen (PtH2) technology within three typical community settings – urban, rural and commercial/industrial - while exploring whole energy scenarios for the future gas system.

The concept revolves around harnessing excess, local renewable energy to produce hydrogen through electrolysis, to bring down energy costs, contribute to sustainable development, and move towards low-carbon, place-based community heating schemes. We want to ensure there’s fairness in the transition to net zero, and that there’s cost effective options for everyone. We have a responsibility to make sure everyone’s covered.

We selected three representative communities in our regions and delved deep into the differences of their gas infrastructures: a national park in Northumberland to represent a rural community, the city of Leeds as an urban setting, and an industrial park in Hull as our commercial test ground.

Within each, we’ve been able to detail out their population densities and customer vulnerability levels, and look at what the contrasting energy demands are for each. The findings should allow us to create an archetype of gas infrastructure for each typical community, and see what alternative energy sources and methods we can implement within them.

This phase of the project, funded by the NIA, will be complete by summer 2024. The data will help us to make solid recommendations on how hydrogen can integrate with community energy systems in line with the UK’s vision of a just transition to net zero. We will then submit into competition funding to get funding for the next stage, which will involve live network trials.