The UK’s Hydrogen Village heating trial could be facing a delay, after local government officials in one of the affected areas retracted their unconditional support for the proposal and called for it to be pushed back until the project developer can adequately answer residents’ questions.
Both the local Member of Parliament (MP), Justin Madders, and the leader of Cheshire West and Chester (CWAC) Council, Louise Gittins, had previously given broad support for the pilot project in Whitby — an area within the town of Ellesmere Port in northwest England — which is currently being developed by Cadent Gas.
But in a letter to UK energy secretary Grant Shapps, the minister responsible for the Hydrogen Village heating trial, the pair expressed misgivings about Cadent’s handling of the statutory consultation for the Whitby scheme, as well as the “efficacy of hydrogen for home energy”.
The Whitby trial is one of two in the running to be chosen to deliver the government’s 2,000-home Hydrogen Village scheme — the other being Northern Gas Networks’ plan for Redcar in northeast England — for which there is a pot of public cash available.
Submissions to energy regulator Ofgem are due at the end of March, but Madders and Gittins called on Shapps to push back the date of Cadent’s submission until all residents’ questions have been satisfactorily addressed.
Hydrogen Insight understands that of the 140 questions submitted by Whitby residents to Cadent, which include queries about what happens after the two-year trial ends, around a fifth are still unanswered.
Both projects have attracted local opposition but the rebellion amongst Whitby householders has been at a much larger scale, with residents raising the alarm about on-going energy costs and safety.
The use of green hydrogen to heat homes has become controversial because heat pumps would require five to six times less renewable energy to produce the same amount of heat. Nevertheless, gas distributors and boiler makers say electricity grids would not be able to cope with the power demand if all heating in the UK was electric.
But Madders and Gittins also demanded that residents’ views are independent verified via a poll — something that Madders had been pressing Cadent for since December, but with little success.
“In conversations with Cadent’s representatives, the fact that people have genuine concerns about the lack of information have largely been overlooked by them,” the pair said in their letter, adding that their request for more time comes as a result of “Cadent’s inability to accept and address, in a timely manner, concerns held by those affected by the trial.”
Cadent and NGN are obliged to collect local feedback about the trial as part of their submission to Ofgem, but local anger about the consultation in Whitby has led to a high level of mistrust of Cadent. The Department for Business Enterprise and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which is headed by Shapps, told Hydrogen Insight last week that the data gathered by Cadent could be validated by the local authority as a means of independently determining the level of public support for the trial — but would not be drawn on what proportion of residents in favour it would use to determine this.
Hydrogen Town
And both Madders and Gittins expressed surprise that Cadent had put forward Whitby and the wider Ellesmere Port area for BEIS’s future 10,000-home Hydrogen Town heating trial scheme, saying that neither of them had been consulted.
“[We] are deeply concerned that Cadent have made the submission without support from either of us,” the duo said, adding: “We believe this plays into wider concerns in the community that the project will be forced on to the public without their consent or permission. Given the level of worry and distress caused to residents in Whitby, the potential impact of this could have on a whole town causes us great concern.
“Lessons ought to be learned, about winning hearts and minds, from the way in which Cadent have conducted their information and consultation work in Whitby before any proposals are submitted, never mind accepted, for it to be scaled up to the entire town of Ellesmere Port.”
'Relieved'
Meanwhile, residents of Whitby expressed their relief that Madders, and especially Gittins, now appeared to be backing residents.
While Madders, who spoke in support of the trial in Parliament last spring, had been listening to residents’ concerns at public meetings for a few months, Gittins and CWAC had faced accusations of disengagement.
“I personally don't care why he [Madders] has changed his mind, I'm looking at the positive and think this letter will go a long way,” one impacted householder said in the residents’ Facebook group. “I feel relieved he in now on board.”
“We should thank them for listening to us at last and hope that eventually common sense will prevail and the trial will be stopped,” another added. “We should remind them that just when levelling up [regional development] money may attract new people and businesses to the area, the prospect of a hydrogen town may scare them off.”
