The assurance firm said it would review a contractor’s front-end engineering design work for gas utility Cadent’s H2East pipeline, which plans to run along the Northeast coast of England between the Humber and Nottinghamshire.

Announced last month, the pipeline will connect prospective hydrogen production sites in South Humberside with industrial demand centres in Nottinghamshire. Cadent secured funding for the FEED work through the UK energy regulator.

DNV’s work will focus on material performance and safety modelling to “identify and resolve uncertainties early on.”

Hari Vamadevan, DNV’s Senior Vice-President and UK & Ireland Regional Director, said this kind of work was particularly important due to the nascent nature of hydrogen infrastructure.

“This project matters especially because hydrogen infrastructure must be engineered for a system that does not yet fully exist,” he said. “Our role is to challenge assumptions, test design decisions against real-world behaviour, and bring evidence from global hydrogen research into the earliest stages of planning.”

Cadent expects to reach a final investment decision on the project within four to five years.

It comes after the UK government confirmed over £500m ($678.5m) in funding for hydrogen storage and transportation infrastructure.