Legacy BGS geothermal models: theoretical potential 'recoverable heat' for the early Carboniferous limestone (hot sedimentary aquifer resources) in northern and southern England
Simple
- Date (Publication)
- 2023
0115 936 3276
0115 936 3276
- Maintenance and update frequency
- notPlanned Not planned
- GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
- BGS Thesaurus of Geosciences
-
- Limestone
- Geothermal energy
- Heat recovery
- UK Location (INSPIRE)
- Geothermal maps
- Aquifers
- Carboniferous
- dataCentre
- Keywords
-
- NERC_DDC
- Access constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- no limitations
- Other constraints
- The dataset is made freely available for access, e.g. via the Internet. Either no third party data / information is contained in the dataset or BGS has secured written permission from the owner(s) of any third party data / information contained in the dataset to make the dataset freely accessible.
- Use constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- The copyright of materials derived from the British Geological Survey's work is vested in the Natural Environment Research Council [NERC]. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the prior permission of the copyright holder, via the BGS Intellectual Property Rights Manager. Use by customers of information provided by the BGS, is at the customer's own risk. In view of the disparate sources of information at BGS's disposal, including such material donated to BGS, that BGS accepts in good faith as being accurate, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the quality or accuracy of the information supplied, or to the information's suitability for any use. NERC/BGS accepts no liability whatever in respect of loss, damage, injury or other occurence however caused.
- Other constraints
- Available under the Open Government Licence subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying the reproduced NERC materials "Contains NERC materials ©NERC [year]"
- Other constraints
- The dataset is made available to external clients under BGS Digital Data Licence terms and conditions. Revert to the IPR Section (iprdigital@bgs.ac.uk ) if further advice is required with regard to permitted usage.
- Spatial representation type
- grid Grid
- Distance
- 2500 urn:ogc:def:uom:EPSG::9001
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Topic category
-
- Geoscientific information
- Geographic identifier
-
NORTHERN ENGLAND [id=151000]
- Date (Creation)
- 1979
- Geographic identifier
-
SOUTHERN ENGLAND [id=158800]
- Date (Creation)
- 1979
- Begin date
- 2022
- End date
- 2025
- Unique resource identifier
- OSGB 1936 / British National Grid (EPSG::27700)
- Distribution format
-
0115 936 3276
- OnLine resource
-
UK Geothermal Platform Web Map
(
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link
)
An interactive Web map for exploring geothermal energy potential, assessing constraints, and making informed exploration decisions.
- OnLine resource
-
UK Geothermal Platform
(
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link
)
An online platform for exploring geothermal energy potential, assessing constraints, and making informed exploration decisions.
- Hierarchy level
- dataset Dataset
- Other
- dataset
Conformance result
- Date (Publication)
- 2011
- Explanation
- See the referenced specification
- Pass
- No
Conformance result
- Date (Publication)
- 2010-12-08
- Explanation
- See http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2010:323:0011:0102:EN:PDF
- Pass
- No
- Statement
- The study was conducted to assess the theoretical potential of geothermal energy from the early Carboniferous limestone (ECL) in Great Britain. The theoretical potential 'recoverable heat' (Hrec) provides an estimate of the fraction of geothermal 'heat-in-place' (HIP) that can be produced as thermal power (in kilowatts). It was calculated using the 3DHIP tool (Piris et al., 2021), which is based on the USGS volumetric HIP method developed by Muffler and Cataldi (1978). The values are theoretical due to lack of operational data for the UK. The method uses a Monte Carlo simulation to calculate the P50 probability distribution function for Hrec based on the P50 distribution of the HIP derived from the 3D geological model, gridded at an XYZ spatial resolution of 2500 x 2500 x 50 m. Hrec was calculated assuming a recovery factor (R) of 0.1, a plant factor (Pf) of 0.95 (proportion of time a plant is likely to be operating), a geothermal project lifetime (Tlive) of 30 years, and a heat exchanger conversion factor of 0.85. The original Hrec map (kW/m2) was converted into MW/km2 to homogenise the outputs as part of the 2025 UK Geothermal Platform project. The recoverable heat highly depends on the thickness of the limestone aquifer, which is poorly constrained in some areas. Recovering the heat from the whole thickness of the aquifer is not likely to be technically possible, so these values are high, theoretical estimates.
- File identifier
- 2f98f2ff-2ee1-37b7-e063-0937940a4ed0 XML
- Metadata language
- EnglishEnglish
- Hierarchy level
- dataset Dataset
- Date stamp
- 2025-11-13
- Metadata standard name
- UK GEMINI
- Metadata standard version
- 2.3
- Dataset URI
- http://data.bgs.ac.uk/id/dataHolding/13608362
Overviews
Spatial extent
Provided by
NERC Data Catalogue Service