Up to a billion tonnes of untapped coal is to be targeted under the Firth of Forth in an ambitious plan to provide Scotland with a new energy source.
• The Firth of Forth has huge coal reserves under it, which Thornton New Energy wants to exploit.
Fife-based Thornton New Energy has gone into partnership with an Australian company to extract energy from coal seams lying deep under the estuary inaccessible to conventional mining techniques.
The technique – underground coal gasification (UCG) – involves pumping oxygen and steam down a borehole into the seam, where heating under controlled conditions extracts gases from the coal. The gases are then pumped ashore to be used to generate electricity.