Flooded and forgotten: How Europe's disused coal mines are successfully being used to heat our homes

An old coal mine has been providing an English town with green energy for the last six months.

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.

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.

“What we have in Gateshead is a legacy from the days of the coal mines, which was dirty energy,” says 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.”

Following decades of disuse, Britain’s coal mines have gradually flooded. Warmed by the earth, this liquid offers one answer to our renewable energy needs.

With an estimated 2 billion cubic metres of warm water - more than a quarter of the volume of Loch Ness - geologists believe that Britain’s mine shafts hold one of the biggest underused sources of clean energy.

“Recovering heat from mine water below the ground within abandoned coal mines provides an exciting opportunity to generate a low carbon, secure supply of heat, benefitting people living or working in buildings on the coalfields,” says Gareth Farr, head of heat and by-product innovation at the Coal Authority.

The authority owns and manages the disused coal-mining infrastructure on behalf of the UK government.

“With many millions of people living upon abandoned coalfields in Great Britain, the potential for mine water heat could be significant.”

Tapping into the heat from water in the mines has the added benefit of boosting the economies of some of the