Flow rate of the 50 C water wasn’t high enough to exploit as an energy source
Academics had planned to use the 2km deep Newcastle borehole, which is the first ever built in a UK city center, to heat buildings at the landmark development.
Fiona Standfield, director of Newcastle Science City, said: “At the particular location where the borehole was drilled – an eight inch hole on a site the size of 18 football pitches – the flow rate of the water wasn’t high enough to exploit as an energy source.”
She said they couldn’t have anticipated how much water would have been available before drilling began but it is only by ‘daring to embrace’ green technology that advances be made.
The Newcastle borehole will remain an important research site nationally and has at least shown the possibility to explore geothermal heat in Tyne and Wear.
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