China FLOODED Abandoned Coal Mines — Then Covered Them With the World's LARGEST Solar Farms

Описание: China has over 12,000 abandoned coal mines scattered across its landscape. Massive black craters that once fueled the world's fastest industrial rise now sit toxic and deadly — underground fires burning for decades, acid drainage poisoning groundwater, sinkholes swallowing homes without warning. Remediating this wasteland would cost over 2 trillion dollars. The economic math simply doesn't work.
Then engineers in Anhui Province asked a question that changed everything: What if the problem itself could become the solution?
They pumped billions of gallons of water straight into these death traps, flooding mines to depths exceeding 200 meters — deeper than a 60-story building is tall. Then they floated the world's largest solar farms on top.
The concept solved multiple problems simultaneously. Water smothered underground coal fires that had burned for years. Flooding prevented toxic dust from spreading across farmland. The lake surface cooled solar panels, boosting efficiency by 10 to 20 percent compared to ground-mounted systems baking in desert heat. And most importantly, these artificial lakes competed with absolutely nothing. No crops displaced. No villages relocated. Just dead ground transformed into clean energy.
The first installation at Huainan covered 160 acres with 166,000 panels generating 150 megawatts of clean electricity. Former coal miners who thought their working lives were over now install solar panels above the tunnels where they once worked. Their knowledge of underground geography proved essential for safe flooding operations.
By 2035, China plans to transform over 500 abandoned mines into a distributed solar network generating more than 100 gigawatts — equivalent to 50 nuclear power plants, enough to power 150 million homes. The very sites that poisoned China's air for decades are being transformed to clean it.
India, Indonesia, Germany, and Poland are already studying the model for their own abandoned mines.
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