Incredible new 80-mile gas pipeline to unlock £30bn for UK | UK | News

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Incredible new 80-mile gas pipeline to unlock £30bn for UK | UK | News

An “enormous” new gas pipeline in Wales will help unlock a huge £30billion in investment opportunities for the region, industry leaders have argued. 

Gas distribution firm Wales & West Utilities plans to build a hydrogen pipeline across South Wales to accelerate decarbonisation for industry in a major energy lifeline for the region.

HyLine Cymru will distribute hydrogen to industrial customers across the Swansea and Neath, Port Talbot areas.

The pipeline will be 130 kilometres (80 miles) long and could unlock a further 2,700 kilometres (1,677 miles) of the existing network for repurposing with hydrogen, the firm says.

READ MORE: Incredible 177,000-mile secret network of underground tunnels could save UK £28billion

Matthew Hindle, Head of Net Zero and Sustainability at Wales & West Utilities, told Express.co.uk: “Hydrogen will play a central role in decarbonising heavy industry and building the economy and jobs of the future. 

“HyLine Cymru will help make sure Welsh businesses can make the most of the opportunities offered by hydrogen. 

“The 2020s must be a decade of delivery, where we put the research and development work that has been done on hydrogen into practice.

“If we are to support businesses and heavy industry across Wales then we need to get moving on the infrastructure now.”

HyLine Cymru will play a key role in supporting the South Wales Industrial Cluster (SWIC), the second-largest industrial cluster in the UK, to meet decarbonisation goals, Wales & West Utilities says. 

The company argues the pipeline will pave the way for commercial-scale hydrogen production in Pembrokeshire, Port Talbot and the Celtic Sea, while also providing infrastructure for energy-intensive industrial customers to begin fuel-switching their processes to hydrogen in the 2030s or earlier.

Part of the aims of the SWIC, which spans the M4 Corridor from Milford Haven in the west to Newport in the east – 110 miles wide, is to unlock £30billion in investment opportunities for the region.

Among its other goals are reducing 40% of Welsh CO2 emissions and retaining 113,000 jobs, with a net positive increase in jobs overall.

Sarah Williams, Director of Regulation, Asset Strategy & HS&E at Wales & West Utilities, is calling for the UK’s gas grid, which comprises a 177,000-mile (285,000-kilometre) network hidden beneath Britain, to be repurposed so it can transport hydrogen. 

The industry expert argued this endeavour would facilitate the UK’s transition towards a cleaner, greener future. 

She told Express.co.uk: “The pipe network goes everywhere and feeds our businesses, which obviously we want to stay in the UK, and we need them to decarbonise, therefore they’re going to need something like hydrogen.” 

Ms Williams went on to argue blending hydrogen with natural gas could help to reduce harmful emissions. 

She said: “We’re looking at potentially putting a 20% blend of hydrogen into natural gas. And what that will do is that will reduce the emissions by six million tonnes. 

“So that’s equivalent to taking two and a half million cars off the road just by blending some hydrogen in with the existing gas network.”

Speaking about the HyLine Cymru project, she said: “It’s an enormous project. It would be a huge infrastructure project for the whole of Wales. 

“It is a feasibility study stage at the moment. We need to build a new pipeline initially but then we could start to connect that up to the existing network and use the regular to repurpose existing network today.”

If built, the pipeline could help unlock at least 4.5GW of offshore wind in the Celtic Sea by providing a route to market for clean energy producers. 

It has the opportunity to save up to 3.2 million tonnes of CO2 per year at the point of use by replacing natural gas with low-carbon hydrogen.

The construction and operational phases could directly create hundreds of jobs in rural Wales through planned projects including a manufacturing and assembly facility for offshore wind at Port Talbot. 

Wales & West Utilities is collaborating with key organisations to explore the feasibility of transporting hydrogen to maximise the decarbonisation opportunity in South Wales, including local councils and companies such as Tata Steel, Dolphyn Hydrogen and LanzaTech.

The next phase will include public consultation on the route and coordination with local and national decision-makers, with the full planning and front-end engineering design phase set to begin in 2025, and construction carried out between 2028 and 2032.

Cet article est apparu en premier en ANGLAIS sur https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1875282/UK-gas-pipeline-hydrogen-Wales-hyline


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