Scars of Mining Healed With Green Technology

Before Songwan village in Hubei province became a place of healing, it was defined by what fell from above.

“On sunny days it was a choking dust so thick you couldn’t keep your eyes open,” said Zuo Zijian, 57, a lifelong resident of the village. On rainy days the roads dissolved into a sea of mud.

Songwan is in Daye city, Hubei, and with its 500 active mines, grit coated every windowsill in villages like this one.

Today the air in Songwan is noticeably cleaner, and the once-barren hills are blanketed with green trees.

The drastic change has happened following the transformation of the Baosheng mining pit near the village into a state-of-the-art hydrogen factory.

Daye, one of China’s top 10 iron bases and a top-six copper producer, was once renowned as a major national coal-producing county-level area.

It holds proven reserves of 63 minerals, with an estimated 202 million short tons of ferrous metal ore and 93.3 short tons of gold, the Daye government says.

However, the intensive mining in Daye took a heavy toll on its landscape, leaving behind numerous open wounds such as the Baosheng mining pit.

Songwan’s project, a green electricity and green hydrogen base built on the remediated land of the mine, is a marriage of necessity and innovation.

“We saw that these abandoned mines had unique three-dimensional space advantages,” said Zhou Hua, general manager of Lyuye Hydrogen Energy Co., the firm behind the project.

The concept was to use the mountain slopes to lay solar panels, convert the abandoned mine shafts into natural hydrogen storage caverns, and build the factory on the leveled land, he said.

“This kind of three-dimensional use turns idle resources that were previously unusable into developmental assets.”

The project, launched three years ago with total investment of 178 million yuan ($26.1 million), began production in April last year, the company says. It generated about 266 million kilowatt-hours of solar electricity last year, which supported the production of 1,650 short tons of hydrogen at a capacity of 113,000 cubic feet an hour.

The project has not only transformed the local landscape but also reshaped the daily lives of the villagers. It has generated an estimated annual output value of 2 billion yuan.

This story of transformation is being repeated across other parts of Daye.

The same model of environmental restoration, which turns abandoned industrial land into an engine for sustainable development, is also taking root in Pingshan village.

A huge quarry near Pingshan has also been rehabilitated and redeveloped by Hubei Bohai Bio Holding Group, a fertilizer producer.

Rehabilitation of the 76-acre site began in August 2018, said He Jianjun, general manager of Pingfeng Resources Development Co., redeveloper of the quarry.

The scars of decades of mining had left the mountainside ravaged with its slopes soaring at terrifying angles, some sections plunging almost vertically, he said. The area was pitted with holes and littered with rocks.

In the process of reducing the height of the slope from 820 feet to 260 feet, 10 small polluting companies were shut down. After the project was completed at the end of 2020 and passed government inspection in June 2023, the land became flat and spacious, with rows of trees and lush lawns.

“What was once abandoned wasteland has been turned into valuable industrial land,” He said.

Daye has shut down more than 500 mines and tailings ponds, and remediated more than 70 mining sites since 2012, local authorities say. Almost 99.8% of its historical abandoned mines have been rehabilitated.