What is natural gas, and how does it get to your home?
The rotten-egg smell of gas is not natural: it is added on purpose, because real natural gas has no smell at all.
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Natural gas is a fossil fuel found underground, made mostly of a gas called , and it reaches your home through a network of pipes. The UK's gas comes by three routes: from its own fields under the North Sea, through pipelines from abroad, and on ships carrying . At the 2021 census, around three in four households in England and Wales (74%) used mains gas as their only central heating.
Here is a surprise. Real natural gas has no smell at all. The "gas smell" you may know, like rotten eggs, comes from a chemical that is added on purpose so that people notice a leak.
The gas itself began as tiny sea creatures. Layers of marine microorganisms were buried, then cooked by heat and pressure over millions of years until they turned into gas. Before it can be used, it is processed to remove impurities such as water.
Moving gas is awkward, so it is sometimes cooled into a liquid, which takes up about one six-hundredth of the volume. Ships bring this to the UK from countries such as the US, Qatar or Algeria.
Gas does two big jobs: it heats homes, and it makes electricity. In 2024 fossil fuel power, almost all of it gas, supplied 26.9% of the UK's grid electricity. Gas also contributes to climate change, because both the gas itself and the carbon dioxide from burning it are greenhouse gases.
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Recap
The UK gets its gas from its own North Sea fields, from pipelines and from LNG ships, and burns it for heat and electricity.
💡 A trick to remember it · Three roads lead to your boiler: under our own sea, along a pipe, or on a ship that keeps its gas as a chilled liquid.
Surprising fact · The smell of gas is added on purpose, because natural gas itself has no smell.
Sources (6)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (14 claims) cites at least one of these.
- [1]Natural gas · Wikipedia
- [2]Analysis: Why clean energy will cut UK gas imports by more than North Sea drilling · Carbon Brief
- [3]Liquefied natural gas · Wikipedia
- [4]Fact check: The US is the UK’s third largest source of natural gas · LBC (PA Media fact check)
- [5]Census 2021: how homes are heated in your area · Office for National Statistics
- [6]Energy in the United Kingdom · Wikipedia