There may be enough space on former open-pit mines to build all the solar facilities we need, but building there won’t be easy
By James Dinneen
14 July 2025
A solar facility on an old industrial coal mine site in Saarland, Germany
Thierry GRUN-Aero/Alamy
Open-pit mines have scarred an estimated 100,000 square kilometres of land on this planet. Those areas, including deep within terraced pits, could provide more than enough space to build all the solar energy we need for decades without encroaching on farmland or intact ecosystems — but getting solar facilities built on former mines is no simple task.
“There is quite a lot of potential [on abandoned mines], but to realise it is going to require many, many more steps,” says Grace Wu at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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Using satellite data and public information on open-pit mines, Wu Xiao at Zhejiang University in China and his colleagues identified 47,900 square kilometres of land cleared by mining activities that had large solid surfaces suitable for solar development. They looked at both active and abandoned mines of all types, including ones that supply the metals and minerals needed to build solar facilities themselves.
They estimated covering this entire area with solar panels would generate just under 5000 terawatt hours of electricity per year — an amount that could supply the entire projected demand for solar power in 2050.
They also found similarly large amounts of electricity could be generated by 2050, even if development only occurred on abandoned mines at first before moving to active mines slated to close in the future. The solar potential was particularly significant in countries with long histories of mining, including China, Chile, the US, Australia and Russia.