Green Britain: Geologist explains how geothermal site works
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UK households are currently reeling from eye-watering energy bills, as the global fossil fuel energy crisis has led to Britons paying up to £3,000 a year by this October. Meanwhile, as Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine continues, the National Grid has warned that it may have no choice but to impose “involuntary” limits on supplies if other emergency measures don’t pay off. In order to boost the UK’s self-reliance on energy, the Government has announced major investments in wind power and nuclear energy, while also greenlighting new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.
However, a new report by Conservative backbench MPs offers another solution that will slash “energy costs, keep the lights on and help save the planet.”
In a column for the Times, Dame Andrea Leadsom, Jo Gideon and Lord Lilley, who are members of the Conservative backbench committee on business, energy and industrial strategy, offered geothermal power as a potential energy lifeline that the Government should invest in.
The report suggests that the waters inside abandoned coal mines could be used to heat homes in industrial areas, particularly in red wall towns.
The MPs noted that geothermal energy is not new, having been used across Europe and even parts of the UK like County Durham and Gateshead, which could heat thousands of homes.
However, they wrote that harnessed on a national scale, geothermal energy “could offer a superb new source of low carbon, reliable heat for homes and businesses”, particularly as a quarter of UK homes sit above former coal mine workings
They also highlighted the benefits of harnessing the energy in these former coal areas, which are among the poorest parts of the country.
They wrote: “This would bring these places full circle because this largely untapped energy is a legacy of the massive coal mining expansion which has contributed so much to global warming.
“The hundreds of thousands of disused coal mines could become a core part of our low carbon future.”
The MPs explained that since shutting down coal mines across the country, most of these mines have been filled with water, which has since naturally been heated up by the Earth’s subsurface to between 12C and 20C.
This warm water can then be extracted by drilling a well shaft into the mine, after which a heat exchanger would transfer the heat to water in a pipe network.
While this 20C water is not particularly hot, having the water already a little warm would mean that less energy is spent bringing the water up to a boil.
However, they added that the warm water in these coal mines isn’t the only resource that they can harness.
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They wrote: “Drilling even just a few kilometres further down you can unlock the deep heat of the Earth where temperatures can reach as high as 150c.
“We have two of these so-called “deep geothermal” plants about to come online in Cornwall, and our colleague Kieran Mullan will soon be publishing a list of other high potential sites.”
After Prime Minister Boris Johnson released his Energy Security Strategy, Dr Philip Ball, a senior honorary researcher at Keele University, warned that Britain is missing out on an incredible opportunity to harness geothermal energy.
Speaking to Express.co.uk, Dr Ball said: “There is no doubt in my mind geothermal should be part of the UK Government’s energy strategy.
“The fact that geothermal was missed is a big shame [as it] can really help decarbonize.
“Geothermal energy (heat and power) being a domestic resource can contribute to decarbonization, reduced need of imported gas and therefore geothermal provides localized energy security.”
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