Policy, regulatory and market barriers
These advantages are not universal. Many mine sites will not contain the reservoir capacity, water availability, elevation difference or grid access needed to support a viable pumped hydro project. Others may require major new infrastructure beyond the mine footprint or face additional complexities around land, permitting, environmental and even broader strategic issues. Mount Rawdon is a good example of this. Like Kidston, it’s a former gold mine in Queensland and plans were underway to repurpose it as a pumped hydro storage facility. But recently, the state government shelved those plans⁹, saying it would instead prioritise a pumped hydro project at Lake Borumba 10 . Regulation and ownership can also be challenging. Energy infrastructure operates under different regulatory regimes from mining and mine conversion may raise questions about the transfer of long-term liabilities, including residual contamination, tailings facilities or acid-forming waste. Financing and insurance are another hurdle. Investors and insurers tend to prefer precedent and there are still relatively few examples globally of mines successfully being converted to pumped hydro. As more such projects proceed, the sector will be better able to calibrate those risks, but for now, uncertainty remains a major challenge. Looking ahead For mine owners and operators, the takeaway is to plan for optionality. Not every site will be suitable for pumped hydro or another energy use, but such opportunities are easier to assess when the right information has been preserved. Borehole datasets, pit shell models, slip records, drone surveys, water data, pre-mine topography and geological interpretations can all help future designers and engineers understand what is possible and what is not. Cleaner regulatory pathways would also help, particularly where sites need to move from mining regimes into energy infrastructure frameworks. As more projects advance, investors, insurers, regulators and mine owners will all have more precedent to draw on. Legacy mines will not be a universal solution to the energy transition. But where the technical, environmental and commercial conditions align, they can turn former liabilities into long-term energy assets.
The bigger picture Where the conditions are right, mine conversion can reduce the amount of new infrastructure needed to support the energy transition. Tunnelling is one of the major costs in any pumped hydro project and long tunnels also create large amounts of waste rock. A former mine pit can greatly shorten that distance if it can be incorporated as a reservoir and paired with an upper or lower reservoir nearby. Existing roads, cleared land and construction access can also reduce the enabling works that would otherwise be needed on a greenfield site. The land-use case is just as important. Repurposing land that is already disturbed can reduce pressure to develop new sites, while closed-loop pumped hydro can keep water mostly contained within the project, rather than cycling it through local rivers. Mine sites may also support more than one energy use. Kidston, for example, is already home to a large solar farm⁷, while closed mines around the world are being investigated as potential sites for gravity-based storage, compressed-air systems and other forms of renewable energy infrastructure⁸. Battery storage is often faster to build and easier to site. Pumped hydro, though, offers a different proposition: greater upfront complexity balanced out by a refurbishable asset that can produce power across multiple generations.
References 1. International Energy Agency,
Each source helped answer a different question. Borehole data helped identify the transition from broken, altered rock into more competent ground, which was critical for siting the underground works. Gold-grade data helped locate faults, since abrupt shifts in grade can reveal structural breaks. Drone surveys of exposed pit walls helped connect those interpretations to visible geology. A pre-mining topographic survey, checked against a photogrammetry model built from historic aerial photographs, helped define the thickness and shape of the fill along the upper reservoir alignment. Dam and tunnel engineers then used the model to constrain and test their proposed designs, highlighting the areas with the most uncertainty. The forensic exercise transformed fragmented mining records into a blueprint for an entirely different type of infrastructure, demonstrating both the promise of mine reuse and the scale of the technical work needed to make it possible.
World Energy Investment 2026: World Energy Investment 2026 – Analysis - IEA 2. International Hydropower Association, 24 June 2026: World Hydropower Outlook launches The year of the ‘water battery’ - global pumped storage capacity surpasses 200 GW 3. Snowdonia Pumped Hydro, About Glyn Rhonwy — Snowdonia Pumped Hydro 4. Lombardi Group, 2026, Marmora Pumped Storage Project - Lombardi Canada 5. Glenmuckloch Energy Storage, 2026, Glenmuckloch Pumped Storage | Reengineered Energy Scotland 6. Science Direct, Renewable Energy, Volume 224, Timothy Weber et al, April 2024 A global atlas of pumped hydro systems that repurpose existing mining sites - ScienceDirect
7. Genex Power, Kidson Solar Project 2026, 50MW Kidston Solar Project (KS1) - Genex
8. University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Civil and Environmental Engineering, K.B. Demming et al, Screening of mine shafts for future energy technologies: a case study from the Scottish coalfields - University of Strathclyde 9. ABC News, Nikki Sorbello, 29 June 2026, Mt Rawdon pumped hydro project shelved by Qld government - ABC News 10. Queensland Hydro, Borumba Pumped Hydro Project, June 2026, https://qldhydro.com.au/projects/borumba/
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