Heat From Mines, Detailed Desktop Studies in the West of England

With circa 100,000 homes above or near to former mines in the West of England, the potential for heat from mines needs investigation. The principle for investing £1.66m of Green Recovery Fund (part of the Mayoral Combined Authority Investment Fund) was agreed at Committee in March 2023. Heat From Mines is an investigatory project funded by the MCA in partnership with SGC to scope out potential for an operational mine water heating scheme(s) in the region.

We are looking for providers to conduct five detailed desktop studies concurrently from February to June 2025. These will be in the West of England Combined Authority Area which includes Bristol City Council, South Gloucestershire Council and Bath & North East Somerset Council. The specific locations that the detailed desktop studies will be required to focus on will be determined by the project working group in January 2025 and specified in the full procurement phase from mid/late January 2025. Decisions will have been made by consideration of the output reports from two current phases of studies commenced between September to December 2024 and from an earlier detailed desktop study of South Gloucestershire from 2023.

The detailed desktop studies will build upon knowledge and reports from previous study phases to produce output reports. The detailed desktop study output reports will need to provide us with detailed understanding of; mines studied, water quality, structural and environmental constraints, an overview of the permitting and licensing requirements, potential drilling targets, costs of potential pilot, drilling abstraction and reinjection boreholes, all associated risks and to help us determine whether and where follow-on potential drill testing stages can take place. The studies must consider both heating and cooling potential and identify whether inter seasonal storage is possible. We also require an evaluation of the economic and social impacts that further exploration and a full scheme would create.

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