A project in Durham, initially supported with £3.8 million from the Heat Networks Investment Project (HNIP), has reached a major milestone as it begins providing low carbon heating to the Seaham Garden Village development.
We are delighted to see another HNIP funded project reach heat on, as families moving into new affordable homes begin to benefit from excess heat extracted from a nearby abandoned coal mine.
Around 750 homes will initially be connected to the heat supply. Mine water is now being pumped from the mine to a new energy centre, comprised of a water source heat pump, which will provide clean, secure, and cost-effective heating to the nearby development along Durham’s heritage coastline.
Today’s milestone is yet another example of how the Green Heat Network Fund (GHNF), and its predecessor, is laying the groundwork for a thriving, self-sustaining market, getting innovative heat network projects like Durham’s off the ground.
The energy centre powering the project is now live, and has successfully completed its commissioning phase, confirming the network is fully operational. The project will save 2,600 tonnes of carbon emissions annually, and nearly 65,000 tonnes across the next 25 years. For context, from just this project alone, we’re reducing heating emissions by the equivalent of grounding 563 flights between London and New York over the next two and a half decades.
The Seaham Garden Village team, in collaboration with the Mining Remediation Authority, Karbon Homes, Esh Group, Vital Energi and Durham County Council, has worked together to unlock clean, affordable heating for new communities, all the while strengthening energy security by utilising our own, abundant heat sources.
Dawdon is just one of around 80 mine water treatment schemes across the UK operated by the Coal Authority, and we’re delighted to see projects utilising infrastructure from the old industrial revolution to power the new green industrial revolution.
Ken Hunnisett, Programme Director for GHNF and HNIP, said:
“The water at Dawdon has to be pumped to the surface and treated for the foreseeable future to protect local groundwater. That’s a cost the public bears regardless. What this exciting project has done is turn that obligation into a heat source for hundreds of new homes, without drilling a single borehole.
“The HNIP’s gap funding was designed to ensure – and in time, prove – that schemes like this can work commercially. With a quarter of UK homes sitting above former coalfields, Seaham should be the vanguard, not the exception.”
