In England’s North Yorkshire, locals opposed a fracking project vigorously enough to get the whole thing canceled, but the almost 2-mile deep borehole had already been made.
Rather than simply letting it lie as an ugly testament to the picket line, Third Energy converted it into a geothermal heating station prototype that could heat 300 homes in the village of Kirby Misperton if commercially developed.
Every 3,000 feet or so one drills down into the Earth, the rock warms by 54°F or thereabouts. At 2 miles, the rock is very hot, and Third Energy can pump water to those depths to heat it up naturally before drawing it back up to the surface and using it to power home radiators and water heaters.
In volcanically active regions, supercritical water or steam can power turbines to generate electricity. Britain has power stations like this, but in the case of Kirby Misperton, it’s just heating homes and water taps.
However, it’s doing so in a more environmentally friendly way than channeling gas or using electric ventilation and heating oil.
When water is used in homes and loses its heat, it’s pumped back down to the bowels of the Earth to reheat where that force then brings the already-heated water to the surface in a cycle that requires almost no electricity.
“When we were campaigning, we had to say what the solution was,” said Steve Mason, then-head of anti-fracking group Frack Free United, and now director of Third Energy. “You can’t just say ‘No, no, no’ all the time. We need to be telling people this can be done and this is a solution.”
Years of European governments hounding fossil fuel companies with regulations and promises that they will be replaced by renewable energy has driven the price of home heating on the continent and in Britain incredibly high. The War in Ukraine and the destruction of the Nord Stream II pipeline didn’t help either.
Yet despite this, Third Energy’s managing director Russell Howe doesn’t see his firm going back to natural gas or the prices they’re no commanding.
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“I think once you’ve seen what the potential is and you see people in the community come and feel the radiator and see the excitement, there’s no interest in the company going back to fossil fuels,” Howe told Sky News.
Per Sky News, there are 680 wells drilled for fossil fuels in Britain that could be converted into these geothermal heating stations.
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It has recently been discovered that deep in Britain’s network of abandoned coal mines, water has been heated to useable temperatures by the Earth’s core, and it too can be utilized in home heat pumps.
One such project is already heating a host of commercial real estate and 350 apartments in the town of Gateshead.
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