A systematic review of climate change impacts on mine water resources using the UK as a case study

Abandoned flooded coal mines offer potential low-carbon heating, cooling and thermal storage resources. It is widely understood that climate change will have an impact on global water resources. It follows that climate change could have an impact on mine water resources and therefore potentially affect the performance and longevity of mine water geothermal projects. We performed a systematic review of climate change impacts on mine water in the UK and found very limited research to date: two UK publications. We consequently broadened our review to climate change impacts on groundwater in the UK to gain insights into potential implications for mine water resources. Again, we found published research was limited, and the 30 UK publications we identified were largely focused on resource quantity (recharge and/or groundwater levels). Our review indicates that mine water recharge in the UK may decrease and water quality parameters may exhibit climatic variations. As these parameters are known to affect the available thermal resource and operational practices of mine water systems, we argue that specific work to examine climate change impacts on mine water resources is required to inform climate resilient and sustainable mine water systems.