Cadent chief executive says heat will be ‘localised’

Different technology mixes will be required in different parts of the country, says Chris Train

The supply of heat to homes and businesses will become ‘more localised’ in future, the boss of Cadent has predicted.

Different technology mixes will need to be deployed in different parts of the UK to reflect their particular geographic and demographic features, according to chief executive Chris Train.

Speaking to Utility Week in one of his first interviews since Cadent completed its separation from National Grid, he said there is no single technology that will provide “the magic solution” to the decarbonisation of heat. “Different parts of the country are going to end up with slightly different solutions,” he added.

Characteristics such as “geography, demographics, proximities” will have an impact on which set of technologies provide “the right economic solution” for each region.

East Anglia, for example, will be “very good for anaerobic digestion because agriculture offers a great opportunity over there”. Liverpool, with a more industrial economy, will be more suited to hydrogen. “Carbon capture and storage off Liverpool Bay is an opportunity to help to deliver that”, said Train.

He said full electrification will be inappropriate for a place such as London, where “you’d need to rebuild UK Power Networks’ network five times over in order to deliver the peak heat requirements in the city.”

However, he added that the future of heat will not be “entirely localised” due to the need for “resilience and diversity” in energy supplies. The transmission network “will still play an important role in that decarbonisation”.

Train said the decarbonisation of heat is going to be a “big challenge”, and that the “more we can do as an industry that decarbonises the gas and the less impact there is on the customer home, then the more efficient solution to decarbonisation we can find.”

He continued: “Whether it’s anaerobic digestion, whether it’s bioSNG, whether it’s hydrogen enrichment or full hydrogen networks; all of that is the portfolio of opportunities to help us achieve our environmental ambitions and cut our carbon emissions”.

Cadent and the other gas distribution networks are now “aligning” around a fresh Network Innovation Allowance submission, which will flesh out the proposals outlined in Northern Gas Networks’ H21 project to rollout hydrogen networks to a series of major cities around the UK. Train said they are looking at ways to “translate that into an overall strategy for heat”.

Cadent, which was formerly known as National Grid Gas Distribution, revealed its new name at the beginning of May. The separation from National Grid followed the sale of a 61 per cent stake in the business to an international consortium of investors known as the Quadgas Group.

Read the full interview with Chris Train here