Energy Water Scheme is the largest in the UK. Last year, it began supplying heat to 350 council properties, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and a local music college through a district heating scheme. Water is pumped from deep within the mine to heat exchangers on the surface. These boost the water’s temperature from 15° to 80° and transfer the heat into the network of pumps that make up the district heating system while the mine water itself is returned into the void below. The heat exchangers are powered in part by adjacent solar parks, keeping the system’s carbon footprint to a minimum. Although district heating schemes


are relatively rare in the UK, there is real potential to scale this up. It works well for larger buildings and could be built into new developments. The Coal Authority estimates that a quarter of the UK population lives above abandoned coal mines – in Wales alone, a fifth of households are near potential mine water heat sites. Former mining towns generally have high unemployment, and their inhabitants are in poorer health than other places, which means that those most in need of cheaper electricity would benefit. Gateshead Council, which implemented the scheme, guarantee that the price of their heating is lower than that of commercial energy providers. The end of coal-fired power will also


leave a considerable amount of power station infrastructure that could be ripe for repurposing. Some argue that they already are. Almost 80 coal-fired power stations have been converted to biomass, but while they appear to offer a lower-carbon alternative to coal, there are questions over whether this is truly renewable energy and whether it should be used at all (see box). Recently decommissioned sites could play a more active role in a low- carbon energy system because they are


already set up to supply energy to the grid. Ratcliffe-on-Soar is already being primed for redevelopment thanks to a fast-track planning order. This means that it might follow Ferrybridge C in West Yorkshire, which will become a Battery Energy Storage Site (BESS), an approach that has already been proven in the USA. BESS are a key part of managing a renewables-based energy system. A site like Ferrybridge C will store enough power to power 250,000 homes. But another future for these plants may already be taking shape just over 50 miles from Ratcliffe-on-Soar, where another former coal-fired power station, West Burton, has been selected to host a prototype nuclear fusion power plant. If successful, this ‘sun in a box’ technology will replicate the way in which the Sun and other stars generate energy by fusing atoms and producing helium – a far more efficient process than nuclear fission, which splits atoms and produces radioactive waste. It’s taken just twelve years for


our energy system to wean itself off coal, which accounted for 40% of our electricity back then. Most experts think it is unlikely to reverse. Renewables are cheaper than ever, and the cost of producing batteries has dropped substantially too. Even if nuclear fusion proves impossible to harness, the decarbonisation of our energy system is well underway, and former coal mining infrastructure offers a much greener legacy than could have been hoped for.


Biomass: can burning wood ever be good? It’s argued that switching coal- fired power stations to burn wood pellets is a more environmentally sound option because trees emit the same amount of carbon dioxide when burnt as they absorb during their lifetimes. On average biomass generates 80% fewer emissions than coal, but that doesn’t include sourcing, processing and transportation – imported biomass has a much bigger carbon footprint. One recent report suggests that a former coal power plant that was converted to biomass emitted four times as much CO2 in a year as Ratcliffe-on-Soar. For biomass to be truly carbon neutral, trees need to be replanted, and most trees take decades to grow enough to recapture to carbon released by burning them. In a letter to the EU Commission in 2021, 500 climate scientists pointed out that ‘regrowth takes time the world does not have to solve climate change’ and have voiced concerns that clearing so much forest would have an impact on biodiversity.


It’s not just former coal mines that have the potential to shape a low-carbon future. Discover more examples in the new Eden Project book 102 Things to Do with a Hole in the Ground.


£14.99 before Members’ Discount. edenproject.com/102things


17


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32