From the beeb:

The UK's Coal Authority has approved a bid by a company to explore whether coal seams beneath the Humber could be used to produce "clean" energy.

Studies by the Clean Coal Company suggest there are coal reserves of 200m tonnes between Grimsby and Immingham.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/humber/8405569.stm 

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Mining subsidence could be a bit of a problem, they've enough trouble round there keeping the North Sea and the Humber where they're meant to be already! :lol:

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Same company has also been given exploration licence for upper Solway Firth (western extension of Canonbie).

They're quoted as stating "there's 100m tonnes+ at depth (1,000m+) and location where traditional mining is not feasible". While not arguing the quantity I'm at a loss to understand the rest of the quote, undersea coal and greater depths have been worked for centuries.

The basic premise is that the coal is "gassified" underground and brought to surface purely as a combustable gas.

Licences have been issued for similar exploration off Wales too.

The process is not new, a major experiment in coal gassification was undertaken in the Wyre Forest Coalfield (near Kidderminster) in the 1950s. While the technology initially works, there are problems that arise over time.

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I've been approached recently on behalf of another party interested in this process for another area. Seems to be attracting the same sort of subsidies given to those worse than useless wind generators* and probably as much good. The recent licence recipients claim that directional drilling techniques can now allow them to access the seams from shore with relative certainty. In the Solway case I'm not sure that they really understand the difficulty they will find with faulting as the adjacent Cumberland and Dumfriesshire/Ayrshire coalfields were amongst the most intensely faulted in the country and what little working/exploration has been done in Canonbie shows it to be similar there.

*After taking into account the carbon footprint from sourcing raw material, smelting, fabrication of tower etc; cement manufacture for the 1,000 ton concrete bases, transport etc., it appears that they have to be matched by 95% standby capacity in "conventional" power stations for when the wind is too light/too strong. They don't appear to be very "carbon-free" after all. And as water vapour rather than CO2 is the main "greenhouse" gas even nuclear isn't going to help much there.