Could disused coal mines soon be utilised as a source of green energy in your home? Well its already happening for some three hundred and fifty households in former mining communities that are a part of a successful trial project. To tell us more about the scheme and its future, here's Hydrogeologist, Daniel Mallin Martin.
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00:00 Here at the Coal Authority, we're really interested in how we can repurpose our now abandoned
00:06 coal mining infrastructure across Great Britain to be used as a mine water heat resource.
00:10 So we've been collaborating with the Ordnance Survey over the last few years to better understand
00:14 the distribution of heating and cooling demand across Great Britain for coal fields, as well
00:18 as the types of buildings and people that could benefit from this.
00:22 Coal has been mined extensively across Great Britain since the early 1800s, with the last
00:27 deep pit mine closing back in 2015.
00:30 New data now reveals it's thought that a fifth of all homes in Great Britain - that's just
00:34 over 6 million and over 300,000 offices and businesses - are above old coal mine workings.
00:41 It could mean greener energy for these sites in the not so distant future.
00:45 Gateshead is now the first operational district heat network in the UK supplied by Mine Water
00:50 Heat.
00:52 It took around three years to go from concept to delivery, but they now supply over 350
00:58 homes as well as a number of local buildings across the area with heat from former mine
01:04 workings.
01:05 Now, the Coal Authority and Great Britain's National Mapping Service, Ordnance Survey,
01:09 have successfully completed a project to explore the use of geothermal heat from former mine
01:14 works as a possible low-carbon heat source for former mining communities across Great
01:19 Britain.
01:20 If you're not quite sure what that means, don't worry, you won't be alone.
01:23 Daniel Marlin-Martin works for the Coal Authority as a hydrogeologist and can explain.
01:28 Mine Water Heat, so when the mines were shut and abandoned, they were allowed to fill back
01:32 up with water.
01:33 This water is heated by geothermal energy that comes from the earth's centre and it
01:37 gets to around about a nice 12 to 20 degrees.
01:40 Rarely toasty, fairly warm.
01:41 What we can do is we can go back into these mine workings with boreholes or through shafts
01:46 to take this water out and bring it to surface.
01:48 We can pass that water to a heat pump, which then lifts the temperature up to something
01:52 usable, something like 60 or 70 degrees, and passes it over to either a heat network, a
01:57 large hospital or warehouse, so that they can then benefit from that for their sort
02:02 of domestic hot water and heating purposes.
02:05 The mine water is then returned to the grains and is allowed to then reheat.
02:08 So it's a nice, circular, sustainable resource over time.
02:11 How does extracting heat from mines contribute to those goals like achieving net zero and
02:16 also levelling up as well?
02:18 In the case of Gateshead, they've already identified that they will save something like
02:21 1,800 tonnes of CO2 per year with their mine water heat scheme.
02:26 So certainly for our net zero objectives, mine water heat will be one opportunity for
02:30 us to support that approach.
02:33 In terms of levelling up, mine water heat will certainly be able to ensure a much better
02:39 local energy security, as well as supporting initiatives for green jobs.
02:44 What's the sort of scalability of this scheme like?
02:47 Where can we see it going in the future?
02:49 We hope to sort of see this expand across the rest of Great Britain, across the Scottish
02:52 coal fields, Welsh coal fields and English coal fields as well.
02:56 And with further time and investigation, we should hopefully be able to see this realised
02:59 on a much grander scale across many different former coal mining communities.
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