Generating clean energy from the coal mines

Earlier this summer, one of England’s last remaining coal mines - Durham’s Bradley site - brought the curtain down on more than 200 hundred years of production in the region.

And with only Derbyshire’s Hartington mine remaining, a sector that fuelled the industrial revolution and shaped the UK’s urban landscape is now one step away from becoming a footnote in our industrial history.

But whilst coal extraction is all but over, the mines themselves may still have a vital role to play in the UK’s energy mix as a host of green initiatives aimed at tapping into the vast labyrinth of tunnels, shafts and roadways beneath its towns and cities gather momentum.

With many of the UK’s mines abandoned decades ago, and most signs of this historic activity lying deep underground, it’s easy to forget about the scale of the UK’s coal industry. But, astonishingly, as much as a quarter of the population of the UK (and around 14 per cent of its land area) sits above the coalfields. Indeed, it is thanks to the coal, and the industry it created, that these population centres exist at all.