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Short abstract:

This paper examines the geological technologies and discourses surrounding the remediation of abandoned coal mines underneath Glasgow. These flooded mines are identified by the British Geological Survey as potential sites for geothermal energy and a "step change" for institutional geology.

Long abstract:

Glasgow, like many places in the UK, sits on top of abandoned, flooded coal mines from the late 19th and early 20th century. The British Geological Survey is currently investigating whether the water in these mines could be used to heat homes in the city through geothermal energy as a form of low-carbon energy. This paper discusses the slippage between the Geological Survey's institutional and material history and its entrenched epistemological and extractive practices and its more recent desires to use geoscience for low-carbon energy futures.

The science of geology, in its utilitarian and imperial form that developed in Scotland and England in the late 18th and early 19th century, has been (and remains) a major epistemological force that helped map subsurface resources, not only in the UK but across the British Empire and adjacent to it. Geological research and its inhuman territorializations aided in colonization, Indigenous erasure and dispossession, and the creation of global mining industries (Chakrabarti 2022; Zeller 1987; Zaslow 1970; Yusoff 2018).

Yet, the British Geological Survey argues that their work in Glasgow signals a “step change in our understanding of geology and our relationship with the underground environment” (www.bgs.ac.uk, “UK Geoenergy Observatories”). In this paper, which follows from my work as 2024 SGSAH EARTH scholar at the University of Glasgow, I aim to take seriously what this “step change” really means and if it signals a shift in the forms and formats of geology and the political power it enacts.