Transforming Britain’s Old Coalfields Into Clean Energy Sources

Transforming Britain’s Old Coalfields Into Clean Energy Sources

In the town of Gateshead in North East England, coal mining runs thick in the blood. Up to the final coup de grâce delivered by Margaret Thatcher’s coal purge in the 1980s, Gateshead had been tapping its dark subterranean seams as far back as 1344, when packhorses conveyed “sea coal” from pits pockmarking County Durham’s rolling countryside to gull-swarmed keels on the south bank of the River Tyne. But although Gateshead’s coal industry no longe…