How abandoned coal mines could heat our homes - BBC News

We really need to get on with this and companies like ours have an important role to play. Creating clean energy from

coal

mines

is quite significant. There is a lot of industrial space in the north east of England, particularly over a flooded area. I think people are really excited at the prospect of something coming out of the story that they helped create Coal is the largest source of CO2 emissions in the world and wealth internationally Coal is still king here in the United Kingdom, that panorama is changing

coal

production here. has decreased by 94 in the last 10 years, so what will happen when the coal

mines

that used to power our cities are no longer used?

We are in the industrial North, we are as far from the Northeast as possible and coal mining was absolutely essential. It was an important part of the industry here, this is around the site of the Dawden colliery which closed in 1991. In its time it provided one of the main sources of employment for the area, the mines pumped to stay dry while in They were actually used as the mines were closed, those pumps were turned off and then the water resurfaced and went through the infrastructure of the mines, so one of the things about the water that is found in that coal mining infrastructure is that it has been geothermally

heat

ed by the rocks that surround it. but what we have done here is that the water that rises to the surface is about 20 degrees and what we have been doing for over a decade is using it as the main source of

heat

ing for the offices and work areas within the rhyme .

Water treatment scheme: There are some slight variations, but generally speaking this is how it works. The disused mine is flooded with groundwater and the natural heat of the rocks heats this water to around 20 degrees C. The water is then pumped to the surface and passed through a heat exchanger. where heat is extracted and transferred to a separate water circuit that can heat

homes

and buildings. One company that has put this into practice is Lanchester Wines. Adam, nice to meet you. This warehouse is actually heated using water from the flooded mine below via a heat pump. system, this is supermarket wine in large quantity, so it needs to be kept at room temperature, it will be drunk in the next few months and that is one of the biggest expenses for our business - we have about a million. square feet of warehouse and you have to keep it at room temperature and this is where it all happens there is a wonderful heat pump.

We started our journey towards carbon neutrality in 2012. We started with wind turbines, very quickly, we had to move on. to Heating, so it was really about looking at what our options were and we were very lucky with this warehouse, but a lot of the warehouses in the North East of England are flooded mines, but the flooded mines are only about 80 meters deep. here and I wanted to ask, but what is the kind of motivation for doing this? Because you obviously know that it takes a lot of effort, a lot of research and a little bit of investment to get started.

Why did you decide to continue with this heating? route, well we have made it part of the company's strategy, part of its competitive strategy, we really want to attract our customers because we are a carbon neutral step, it has really become part of what the company is about when you are being a pioneer in a new technology, there are problems, it sounds relatively simple, pumping water from the mines, removing the heat and returning it. Our biggest problem is probably Oco, which is a contaminant in the mine water, it just clogs things up all the time. and finding technologies to deal with, we're still at it.

Really the good thing about a heat pump is that all the technology already exists, you can buy most of the components on the market and this is simply putting them together in a different way. The UK is not the only place moving forward with this technology, the The Netherlands is using water from its old mine to heat and cool

homes

, offices, shops and more, and this

could

be just the beginning. How does it feel to take a historic technology that has in some ways played a role in the climate crisis and turn it around and find a new use for it, so I think it's quite surprising for everyone who is involved in this because I think not only is it reusing something and potentially providing economic regeneration and green jobs in those areas that were associated with mining from coal but actually create clean energy from coal mines in the UK, we have over 30,000 old mines.

Now not all of them can be used because there are different forms of mining, there is different geology around them, but the potential for the UK is incredible, there is a huge heat source underground and these mines are flooded in most places. They are a problem that you know needs to be addressed anyway. I have high hopes for this technology over the next few years as companies develop that technology. servicing these things and making it a little less like some kind of pioneering project and more like a normal heating system, but I think that will come because the resource is there: a quarter of homes in the UK are on old coalfields and nine in 10 of the UK's major centers are located on former mining areas and, while many of these mines will no longer produce coal, it seems we are not done with them yet.