How will Britain turn off its gas grid?

“THE GAS flame burns bright with promise over the North Sea,” declared a Pathé News film in 1966 as a huge flare burst from a steel tower mounted on a rig. “And Gas Council experts plan for…when the whole of Britain may be using natural gas.” At the time the film aired, most homes either burned coal or used town gas, which was made by heating coal and then stored in gasometers that dominated the city skyline. Both were dirty and expensive. The discovery of North Sea reservoirs—a “timely bonus from Mother Nature”—ushered in a new era. Within a decade, nearly all British homes had switched to natural gas.It was a vast undertaking. The Gas Council, a state-owned enterprise, built a 3,200km high-pressure transmission network. Street by street, engineers installed compliant cookers and boilers in 13.5m homes. Denis Rooke, the captain of industry in charge, bombastically called it “perhaps the greatest peacetime operation in this nation’s history”. British Gas, which saw itself as a beacon of modernity, ran a huge campaign selling the idea of central heating, previously a rare extravagance.