We’re looking at ways to reduce emissions across our network to help us meet net zero by 2050. Transitioning our network to carry hydrogen provides an opportunity to significantly reduce emissions across our sites.

Several of our above-ground assets utilise methane as a fuel gas for their operation, an activity which currently produces carbon emissions. We’re running a project investigating the use of hydrogen production technologies to create hydrogen from methane and use this as a cleaner fuel gas on site.

Alongside identifying suitable options for hydrogen production from methane, we’ll be developing a use case for the National Transmission System (NTS), to find appropriate sites and assets for a pilot demonstration.

Following the initial analysis and market engagement undertaken, we’ve identified two promising hydrogen production technologies and two NTS sites that could be suitable for a pilot.

As part of this preliminary work, the project has used PremZero point cloud drone technology for the first time on complex Gas Transmission sites, to map the selected pilot areas. The point cloud technique is far quicker to capture than traditional terrestrial laser scanning systems and, when combined with high resolution aerial photographs, can be processed into photorealistic 3D digital providing highly accurate, fully measurable models of existing assets.

Using the technology in this way helps to strengthen the data we have available for our sites and could be used in future to generate similar 3D models of other sites.