STORY: In the Baden-Württemberg town of Öhringen, the switch to a climate-friendly gas supply is being tested in a model. In the “Hydrogen Island” project, hydrogen is fed into the existing natural gas network. According to project manager Heike Grüner, 30 households are taking part. The project is intended to show that hydrogen can be used in a mix without great effort, for example in pipes, boilers or radiators. “We are showing in Öhringen that we can use the existing infrastructure both on the network side, i.e. our lines in particular, and on the user side at our customers, i.e. the gas appliances, the gas stoves, that, as of today, they already work in exactly the same way with the mixed gas as before with natural gas.” Hydrogen should play a key role in the energy transition. Hydrogen produced with renewable energy could replace fossil fuels such as coal and gas and also be transported through existing gas pipelines. The project came at a convenient time for retired teacher Andreas Frasch. “In old buildings, it is of course very difficult to get heat with heat pumps, which is the latest hit at the moment. And in this respect, this option of adding hydrogen to natural gas was actually very cheap. For the hydrogen project, it actually had to be nothing else could be done than simply reinstall this gas boiler. That would have been so necessary even without the hydrogen project.” The participants in the project in the small town near Heilbronn have been getting more and more hydrogen mixed in since last autumn. An expansion of the use of hydrogen in the direction of 100 percent is being considered in the future. A start in winter 2024/25 would be very sporty.