Citizens Advice response to the consultation on Ofgem’s minded-to decision to fund detailed design studies for a Hydrogen Village Trial
We consider that consumer acceptability and technical assessments are important to enable the UK Government to make decisions in 2026 about the feasibility and role of hydrogen for heating.
However, we consider that too great a burden of costs of the trial design studies will be paid by energy consumers compared to the gas distribution networks, particularly as a result of Northern Gas Networks contributing 10% of costs compared to the 60% contributed by Cadent.
We support the new requirement to require the gas distribution networks to employ independent third party monitoring of the projects but argue Ofgem should go further by requiring both companies to be monitored by the same independent third party to provide a comparable evidence base. We also argue Ofgem should require monitoring to be conducted on an ongoing basis with interim reports to identify issues throughout the process.
Lastly, we recommend Ofgem ensures that both projects are required to have similar project deliverables, set out in the same level of detail where this currently isn’t the case.