News story

Webinars to shine a light on low-carbon heating from mine water

A series of webinars have been launched to provide greater insight into accessing low-carbon heat from mine water.

Aerial view of Gateshead Energy Company, which utilises mine water heat.

As part of its work to enable mine water heat opportunities across Great Britain, the Mining Remediation Authority will be hosting a series of webinars to inspire and educate on mine water heat and to explain more about the process of developing a scheme.

Three different webinars are set to be held in February 2025, which will provide an opportunity for interested academics, industry professionals and local authorities to find out more and ask questions about the process.

Attendees are given the option to book the sessions that are most appropriate to their needs, with no requirement to attend the full webinar series.

The events are:

Mine water heat opportunities

Tuesday 4 February 2025 at 11am

Hear from Gareth Farr, our head of heat and by-product innovation, about the opportunities mine water heat offers coalfield communities, our current progress on mine water heat schemes across Great Britain and an overview of innovative projects we’ve been supporting.

Facilitating mine water heat schemes through access agreements

Wednesday 5 February 2025 at 11am

Our second webinar will focus on how the Mining Remediation Authority helps to facilitate mine water heat schemes through our access agreements.

Joanne Eynon, our principal manager for mine heat licensing, will provide an overview of our new application forms and best practice documentation, giving developers and local authorities confidence in how to proceed with an application.

The talk will outline the steps involved to secure the necessary permissions and set out our framework for reviewing applications. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions following the webinar.

Research and development in mine water heat

Thursday 6 February 2025 at 11am

Dr Fiona Todd, our principal research and development manager, will provide an overview of our mine heat research to date, including details of our flagship mine water heat monitoring network in Gateshead, England, and how this will further improve our understanding of thermal behaviour between operational schemes.

We will also touch on some of the technical challenges facing mine water heat development, as well as our future plans to work with researchers to fill any knowledge gaps and maximise the potential of mine water heating and cooling.

For media enquiries contact the community response team

Email communityresponse@miningremediation.gov.uk

Telephone 0800 288 4211

For emergency media enquiries (out of hours) call: 0800 288 4242.
Only urgent media calls will be attended to.

Updates to this page

Published 10 January 2025