I’m feeling thoughtful this Spring. There is a lot going on in the West of England which makes me proud to live and work here.

Every day I hear of new ideas, creative solutions to tricky problems and I constantly meet people whose energy and enthusiasm makes my heart sing.

I will never tire of saying that, because it’s true. But one recent development in particular has made me go back to my roots in quite a special way.

Two weeks ago, I announced an extension of my Green Recovery Fund which I launched last year. Since then, I have been able to fund tree planting, pollinator projects, schemes to make our homes more suitable for the changing climate and a range of skills training and job development – all aimed at meeting our ambitious but vital environmental targets. This is something I have been deeply committed to for a long time so watching these ideas start to bear fruit is brilliant.

And now, I’ve made an extra £10 million available to keep up this incredibly important and exciting work. As the weather gets warmer, and the cost of heating our homes still seems scary, I am thinking of my own family history. I come from a long line of miners, as many people in the region do. Our ancestors worked underground to provide the energy to keep people warm. Those mines, some of which have lain empty and unused since the 1970s and earlier, could potentially now have a new, greener lease of life to heat our homes again.

The idea is that water is pumped into the mines so that it can be heated by the natural process of being underground (like the warm waters are in spa towns). That hot water can then be pumped back above ground and used for domestic heating. How amazing is that?

I can’t think of anything that would be more fantastic than to know what had contributed to carbon dioxide emissions over hundreds of years is now able to turn around and reduce them. There’s a kind of irony but also an important purpose there.

This could benefit homes and businesses right across the West of England and if it works, we could do it for other ex-mining communities too. 

We’re at very early exploratory stages but that’s what is making me feel good about Spring this year – we always talk about it as a time of re-birth and a new-found use for something society had written off would be a great example of just that. 

And mining areas where members of my family, and some of yours, worked could again become a source of vital energy for the communities who live in them. There’s a rich seam of innovation in the West of England. Happy Spring, everyone!