“At night I could see the lights from my bedroom window,” she said. “Nobody quite knew what was going on inside.”

Now, the 17-year-old spends almost every day on the other side of the fence, working at Bacton Gas Terminal as a mechanical technician apprentice for National Gas.

Matilda Gent grew up in Bacton and now works at the gas terminal as a mechanical technician apprentice for National Gas(Image: Denise Bradley)

Most people will never get the chance to see inside the Norfolk gas plant, which is guarded by 24-hour armed security.

But Bacton's gas operators say it is the ‘hidden hero’ of UK energy, producing a third of the country’s gas and being perfectly positioned to become a carbon capture and hydrogen hub.

Bacton Gas Terminal on the north Norfolk coast(Image: Mike Page)

The plant has been producing gas for more than half a century, with gas coming in from offshore fields in the southern North Sea or through two pipelines from Belgium and the Netherlands in mainland Europe.

The government has set ambitious targets to generate exclusively clean power by 2030 and to reach net-zero in 2050.

But Jonathan White, general manager at Perenco UK, which operates one of the sites at Bacton, expects the country to continue producing gas for “decades to come”.

Jonathan White, general manager at Perenco UK, pictured at Bacton Gas Terminal(Image: Denise Bradley)

“Millions of UK homes, around 85pc, still use gas for their boilers, and about a third of the electricity grid is currently supplied by gas-fired power stations,” he said.

“That will decrease over the coming years, and carbon capture is going to be a vital part of our energy landscape moving forward.”

Operators at Bacton want to transform the site into a carbon capture and hydrogen hub.

Carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) aims to prevent carbon dioxide, primarily produced by industry, from being released into the atmosphere by capturing it and either reusing or storing it underground.

The site also has the potential to manufacture hydrogen as an alternative fuel to gas.

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