We’re looking at repurposing existing pipelines within our network to create a hydrogen backbone for the UK. To help us achieve this, we’ve created Project Union which initially focuses on the phased repurposing of around 2,000km of our existing gas assets.

Although we aim to repurpose as much of the network as possible, certain areas of the backbone will require new pipeline builds.

There are several factors to consider when choosing new pipeline routes and this is traditionally done via a desktop exercise which is often both time and resource heavy.

In June 2022, we started a project looking at the ways that an AI based tool or platform could be used to enable rapid exploration of potential pipeline routing options.

We used AI technology to rapidly generate and examine millions of pipeline routing options and compared them to different engineering, environmental, social, and cost criteria. This enabled us to assess a wide range of options in much greater detail and much earlier.

This assessment looked at a range of factors including:

• Route length
• Ecology
• Landscape
• Historic environment
• Geodiversity
• Agricultural soils
• Water environment
• Socio-economic

The results of the assessments came in two main forms: heatmaps representing all the considered options, and indicative centre lines highlighting the most favourable corridors.

Once determined, the methodology was tested using a recent pipeline development as a case study. The AI based solution identified the preferred corridor to be similar (within 200m) to the route originally determined and did so within one working day. This demonstrates that an AI tool can effectively process the necessary information to select a suitable pipeline route and provide high quality results.