You can email eastcoasthydrogen@northern gas.co.uk or complete our contact form.

You can find information at gov.uk – including the Government’s hydrogen strategy

The East Coast Hydrogen partners are closely engaged in other hydrogen projects and trials, including Project Union and HyNet, either as direct partners or through bilateral engagements. Information is shared at a strategic level to ensure projects are aligned and can contribute as a whole to the UK’s hydrogen targets. Through our consortium, we engage directly with hydrogen producers, users and transport and storage providers to ensure vital industry insights are shared.

Project Union is a National Gas initiative to develop a hydrogen ‘backbone’ to link industrial clusters around the UK, potentially creating a 2000km hydrogen network. Initially, the project is exploring how to repurpose 25% of the current transmission pipelines connecting the Grangemouth, Teesside and Humberside clusters, as well as linking up with Southampton, the North West and South Wales clusters. East Coast Hydrogen will provide the local infrastructure required to connect to the National Gas transmission network in the East Coast region.

There is a critical role for blue and green hydrogen in a whole system energy mix if we are to meet Net Zero. The current crisis has provided more focus on the timing of the move to hydrogen and the need for early action on the business/regulatory model for hydrogen.

Government policy is aimed at stimulating both supply and demand in parallel. Hydrogen business model contracts are due to be awarded and these will provide additional certainty and encourage more businesses to invest in switching to hydrogen.

The East Coast has the greatest concentration of expected hydrogen production sites, storage sites, and demand centres, given the large industrial clusters situated in Humber and Teesside.

In 2019, the UK emitted 450 million tonnes equivalent of carbon dioxide. Our analysis, carried out as part of the East Coast Hydrogen Feasibility Study suggests that the conversion of 4.4 million homes and 39,000 commercial and industrial sites to hydrogen in the East Coast region could avoid 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – almost 5% of total UK emissions.

The UK Government has set a target for 2030 of 10GW hydrogen production, which it is anticipated will unlock £4 billion of investment and create around 9,000 jobs.

Our initial analysis suggests that East Coast Hydrogen will invest almost £1 billion in the re-purposing and development of new hydrogen infrastructure, supporting 1000 jobs, and enabling over 5GW of hydrogen production to be transported across the region. That means that East Coast Hydrogen could deliver 25% of the target investment, 10% of the target jobs and 50% of the 10GW target. Our plans for East Coast Hydrogen relate to hydrogen infrastructure, but once the resulting activity, including hydrogen production, is taken into account, the total investment and jobs created will be even greater.

Our project focuses on infrastructure to support the transportation of hydrogen from producers to users. We are agnostic to the type of hydrogen and aim for East Coast Hydrogen to play an important role to support the effective scaling of hydrogen production.

Our consortium partners for East Coast Hydrogen include a range of stakeholders across the value chain including hydrogen producers, hydrogen users and transport and storage providers.

Many large industrial users require natural gas for industrial processes and cannot decarbonise without an alternative to gas. We will support the transportation of hydrogen to these large users, who are clustered around the East coast and East Midlands. East Coast Hydrogen can also support connection to local infrastructure if there is a positive decision about the use of hydrogen for home heating, which the government is expected to make in 2026.

If you’re interested in working with us as a hydrogen producer, storage provider or offtaker, get in touch with us at eastcoasthydrogen@northerngas.co.uk or complete our contact form.