Climate crisis: How coal mining could still help warm our homes with clean, green power

‘Garden village’ development in County Durham will use geothermal energy to warm 1,500 homes

There are tens of thousands of abandoned mines in the UK according to the Coal Authority (Getty )

Through most of the 20th Century, the small town of Seaham in County Durham was home to three working coal mines. But following the 1984 miners’ strike and the subsequent closing of the pits, the town was hit hard.

But the pits, the last of which finally closed in 1992, are set to become a source of energy once again under plans drawn up for a new “garden village”, which will be heated by the warm water pumped from the depths of the old coal seams.

South Seaham Garden Village will use the geothermally-heated water to provide “practically free” heating for the 1,500 homes that are to be built on the 230-acre site.

Jeremy Crooks, head of innovation at the Coal Authority — the body responsible for the tens of thousands of closed mines around the UK — told The Independent the project has significant potential to be replicated in many other parts of the country where disused mines are flooded with water being naturally heated by the Earth.

He said: “When the mines were being worked, they were pumped dry. As they got deeper and deeper into the ground more water was pumped out. When the mines were abandoned they switched off the pumps and that water refilled the mines.

“So these mine systems are filling up with water around the UK — there are a fantastic number of collieries out there, something like 23,000 collieries, and 25 per cent of the UK population live on the coalfields.”

Explaining how the system works he said: “We pump water out of the mine, take it through a heat pump, extract the heat from the water, and then reinject it back into the mine in a cooler state.”

Of the 1,500 homes, 750 of those will be designated as affordable housing, and 750 will be private.

“They’ll be heated [by the geothermal source] from day one,” Mr Crooks said.

The Coal Authority said Gateshead in Newcastle was also a potential area they were examining for a similar heating system.

“This is a real win for the UK,” Mr Crooks said. “It’s not imported gas, the money isn’t going to big gas companies, it’s local, and it’s using geothermal energy, which will be here forever. It’s a local solution, so the local authorities are very keen to become the operators of these energy systems.”

The Coal Authority said they are assessing plans to put a solar farm next to the old mine so the pumps used to extract the water are using renewable energy.

Mark Massey, senior partner at ID Partnership, the firm that has designed the development, told The Independent the use of the mine has historic ties to the people of Seaham.

He said: “Seaham was one of the hotspots in the miners’ strikes in the 80s, so it’s touching that at this late stage, as the wounds are healing, the good people of Seaham are seeing that the investment made by their fathers and forefathers are actually going to yield a source of free heating, or thereabouts, ad infinitum.

“It was a Victorian powerhouse, which fell away to industrial decay and so now at a much later stage there will be a different use being given to these empty galleries of warm water, and all of a sudden a new use has sprung up, and will hopefully show the way for vast amounts of coalfield to once again be providing power, only in a passive, sustainable way, and without the carbon footprint associated with it.”

Describing the project he said: “The seams are very deep — 700-1,000 feet deep — and stretch six-miles out under the North Sea and six miles back into North Durham.

“Hundreds of thousands of metres of coal were extracted — it’s the size of a town, underwater. So there’s a very considerable amount of space filled with water, and providing heat of about 3.5-4 megawatts per annum.”

Speaking about the possibility of replicating similar systems elsewhere he said: “It’s most likely to be successful in areas where there are deep seams, and larger workings, because if they’re smaller workings then eventually you take out the warm water and then it takes a long time to heat up again.”