Billions of litres of water flooding Britain’s abandoned coal mines could be a valuable source of green energy and a pilot project is already proving a success
An old coal mine has been providing an English town with green energy for the last seven months as water in abandoned flooded mines provides free heat.
The ground-breaking project in Gateshead is using the warm water that has filled the tunnels to heat hundreds of homes and businesses in the former coalfield community in the north-east of the country.
The Coal Authority has supported the council-owned Gateshead Energy Company and contractors to deliver a mine water heating scheme that will feed into an existing district heating network.
Funded by the Heat Network Investment Project (HNIP) and Gateshead Council, the scheme took about 3 years to deliver and went live on the 29 March 2023.
It is the largest mine water heat network in Great Britain and one of the largest in Europe.
The heat from mine water contained in workings 150m beneath Gateshead town centre is used to supply the heat network.
A 6 megawatt (MW) water source heat pump recovers heat and distributes it via a network of heat network pipes more than 5km long.
This network supplies heat to a range of buildings, including Gateshead College, the Baltic Arts Centre, several offices and 350 council-owned homes.
In the future additions will include 270 privately-owned homes, a new conference centre and a hotel development.
This project has an estimated saving of 72,000 tonnes of CO2 over 40 years which equates to annual savings of about 1,800 tonnes CO2 per annum.
Hailed a success, the UK’s first large-scale network shows the huge potential to be found in the nation’s sprawling warren of old mining tunnels, which sit beneath roughly a quarter of homes, according a report on Euronews.com
“What we have in Gateshead is a legacy from the days of the coal mines, which was dirty energy,” said John McElroy, cabinet member for the environment and transport at Gateshead Council. “Now we are leading the way in generating clean, green energy from those mines.”
Coal mining was vital part of Britain’s growth and powered the industrial revolution but since the 1970s, the country has moved away from coal for the loss of thousands of jobs and a realignment of the UK energy mix. But Britain’s coal mines have gradually flooded and that water, warmed by the Earth offers a new possibility for heat extraction.
An estimated 2 billion cubic metres of warm water is underground and geologists believe that Britain’s mine shafts hold one of the biggest underused sources of clean energy.
Read more about the Gateshead project from the Government website HERE
Read the six-month review of the Gateshead project at Euronews HERE
Return to Decarbonisation News Index HERE
