Background
SGN is a leading gas distribution company in the UK, managing the network that delivers natural and green gas to approximately six million homes and businesses across Scotland and the south of England. With key targets of net zero by 2045 in Scotland and 2050 in England, SGN is committed to ensuring the safe, reliable, and efficient delivery of gas, while actively investing in innovative solutions to support the UK’s transition to a net-zero energy system.
This SGN Innovative Green Gas Solution Challenge seeks innovative solutions that enable flexible, scalable, and customer-centric integration of green gases into the gas grid. Solutions must improve the resilience and efficiency of the network, enhance system visibility and control, strengthen supply chains, and deliver tangible customer benefits.
Innovative solutions are required to optimise grid utilisation, enable dynamic injection management, and ensure stable and efficient gas network operation. Advanced forecasting, real-time system monitoring, and digital automation, alongside innovations in compression, storage, and pressure management, could enable more flexible and dynamic injection of green gases, helping networks accommodate a diverse gas supply while maintaining reliability and cost-effectiveness.
Building smarter networks that can dynamically adjust to fluctuating production and demand, using AI-based control systems, live dashboards, and automated blending tools, will be essential to deliver a stable and efficient green gas future.
Addressing these challenges will be essential for unlocking the full potential of green gas like biomethane and Bio-SNG, supporting the UK’s net-zero ambitions, and maximising its abundant domestic green gas resources.
For further information about SGN please click HERE.
Challenge
SGN is seeking a range of cost-effective innovative ideas to enable networks to efficiently manage green gas injection while ensuring system stability and reliability. These can be from feasibility studies to higher TRL proposals from developing prototypes to pilots.
They are seeking solutions that focus on at least one of the following priority areas:
- Network integration and infrastructure readiness- Enhancing blending techniques, pressure management, and infrastructure upgrades to maintain system stability and ensure seamless integration of green gases with existing gas networks.
- System flexibility and balancing- Advancing real-time forecasting, dynamic injection control, and grid balancing solutions to manage fluctuating green gas production while maintaining operational reliability
- Storage and injection management- Advanced compression, storage, and pressure management technologies, enabling greater network flexibility and optimised green gas utilisation.
- Planning, Capacity Expansion, and Regulatory Innovation - Projects that streamline the upgrade of green gas production facilities, enhance grid connection processes, improve planning approval pathways, and develop real-time network visibility tools. Solutions that address regulatory and perception barriers around routing and that unlock underutilised capacity will be prioritised.
- Supply Chain Resilience and Operational Excellence - Innovations focused on improving the reliability and scalability of green gas feedstocks, enhancing methane emissions management, advancing biogenic CO₂ capture technologies, and creating viable economic models for by-product valorisation such as digestate and captured CO₂.
- Cross-Sector Decarbonisation and Whole-System Opportunities - Initiatives that use biogenic CO₂ for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) or industrial decarbonisation, integrate green gas production with broader community energy and low-carbon transport systems, and develop new whole-system business models that link gas, heat, power, and transport sectors.
Solutions and ideas applying to this challenge should align with and build upon existing UK and international initiatives in green gas integration and network flexibility.
What's in it for you?
SGN is seeking to collaborate with a range of applicants, including research institutions, technology providers and infrastructure specialists.
By addressing these priority areas and leveraging existing expertise, this challenge will accelerate the deployment of scalable green gas integration solutions, ensuring the UK’s gas networks can support the transition to a low carbon future.