1339 Land-use constraints, including environmental and heritage restrictions, are shown to be material implementation risks for mine-site renewables. The relocation of the photovoltaic plant from a planned openpit mine plot to an industrial park plot illustrates the need for flexible redevelopment portfolios and reserve plots, as well as early screening of planning constraints. Sector coupling through heat recovery can strengthen the economic and environmental case for post-mining hydrogen hubs by creating an additional local ‘off-take’ for otherwise wasted thermal energy. Project calculations indicate total annual savings of approximately 3.9 GWh/year when integrating electrolyser cooling with district heating operations under specified conditions. However, business viability and replicability remain sensitive to market and policy conditions. The preliminary financial analysis reports a negative net present value and a negative internal rate of return under the assumed parameters, concluding that replication projects would likely require at least 30% of CAPEX to be covered by public funding to become viable. This points to the importance of aligning mine redevelopment programmes with regional and national just transition instruments, as well as of designing off-take agreements and regulatory pathways (e.g., for grid blending) that lower investment risk. Finally, the project’s emphasis on training, re-skilling and stakeholder engagement is particularly relevant for post-mining revitalisation. The project framework includes explicit targets for training former miners and coal-mine managers, and for advising other coal mining companies on feasibility, embedding human-capital transition within the technical demonstrator. 7. CONCLUSIONS This paper presented the design logic and early implementation progress of a post-mining hydrogen demonstrator that combines: mine-water-based electrolysis; 500 bar storage and tube-trailer distribution; a 350 bar refuelling station for intercity buses; blending into the natural gas grid; and waste-heat recovery to hybridise geothermal district heating. The concept illustrates a practical pathway for turning mine-closure legacies into assets for renewable energy services. The MINE-TO-H2 approach is technically grounded in detailed engineering and process simulation, and it is complemented by governance and supporting measures (risk assessment, business cases, benchmarking and training) that are essential for wider adoption in coal regions in transition. It provides a transparent performance framework for evaluating circular-economy impacts, climate-mitigation outcomes, and just-transition benefits. Future work within the project will provide operational performance data from commissioning and hot testing, allowing refinement of the business case and the replication ‘mould’ for other mine contexts. For practitioners, the findings suggest that early integration of land-use planning, mine-water management, and local heat networks can improve the feasibility of post-mining energy redevelopment projects. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work is based on the MINE-TO-H2 project funded by the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) of the European Commission, with Grant Agreement nº 101140154. The authors acknowledge the contributions of the project consortium and the host-site stakeholders.
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