In the remote hills of Cumbria, a few miles north of Hadrian’s wall, three nondescript terrace houses stand side by side, quietly offering a glimpse of a low-carbon future.

The houses are intentionally unremarkable in every way but one: they are the first in the UK to run on a blend of clean-burning hydrogen as part of the most sophisticated hydrogen testing facility in the world. Welcome to Hystreet.

Engineers at the five-hectare site are testing whether hydrogen can safely replace the fossil-fuel gas pumped through transmission pipes and local grid networks into British homes as part of the government’s efforts to meet climate targets.

“Ninety-nine percent of people don’t think about where their gas comes from, or how it gets there,” says Antony Green, National Grid’s hydrogen tsar and head of the FutureGrid project. His task is to create a realistic replica of the UK’s gas system to test whether the same pipelines that have carried gas from the North Sea into homes since the 1970s could transport low-carbon hydrogen in the future.

Heating British homes accounts for 15% of the country’s total emissions, meaning a low-carbon alternative will be crucial to cut emissions to net zero by 2050. But the testing site is also key to understanding how hydrogen can be transported to major factories and industrial clusters to help tackle emissions from polluting factories and power plants.

“The evidence we have built over the last few years shows that we can do this,” Green says, walking along the length of a giant gas pipe. “It’s all very well and good doing the paperwork. But you still need to prove it.”

Green is interrupted briefly by a short alarm followed by a deep boom as a controlled explosion takes place just a mile or two away.

Keep reading on TheGuardian.com