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# The mines that warm the town above them
- URL: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/gateshead-mines/
- Published: 2026-08-15T20:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-21T08:05:59.000Z
- Description: Gateshead dug coal for two centuries. Now the flooded old tunnels warm the town, cleanly, from below.
- Author: Nicole McMahon
- Tags: Innovations, All stories

Beneath Gateshead in England's north east lie two hundred year old coal workings, long abandoned and slowly flooded. The town drilled three boreholes 150 metres down into them, because all that underground water sits at a steady, gentle warmth. A six megawatt heat pump lifts the temperature and sends it through five kilometres of insulated pipes, warming the Baltic arts centre, Gateshead College, offices and 350 homes. It has run since March 2023 and is the largest scheme of its kind in Britain.

The council owned energy company is now extending the network toward 1,500 homes, a conference centre and a hotel, saving around 1,800 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. There is a poetry in it that the town itself has noticed, and a recent study found the scheme has become a point of local pride: the same tunnels their grandparents dug for coal now keep the grandchildren warm. Councillor John McElroy calls it the town's old industry paying one more dividend, and at night the quayside the scheme warms glows over the dark river, which is where our photo choices now look.

Our short take: scheme details from Gateshead Council and the Mining Remediation Authority, with reporting by ThinkGeoEnergy and a 2026 study covered by The Conversation. Cover photograph: the Tyne at evening by Gareth James, [CC BY-SA 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0?ref=earthtoseanews.com), via Wikimedia Commons.