From Copper Country to Clean Energy: How Abandoned Mines Could Power the Future
- NPLSF
- 17 hours ago
- 4 min read
For over a century, the underground tunnels of Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula told the story of a booming copper industry. Today, researchers at Michigan Tech believe those same tunnels could help write the next chapter of America's energy story, this time, as clean energy infrastructure.
On a recent episode of the Lake Superior Podcast, hosts Walt Lindala and Frida Waara sat down with Tim Scarlett, Associate Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at Michigan Tech in Houghton, to talk about a surprising intersection: archaeology, abandoned mines, and the future of energy storage.
An Archaeologist's Unlikely Path to Energy Research
Scarlett has spent more than 30 years studying mining communities and mining technology as an anthropologist and archaeologist. But his work took an unexpected turn when a colleague, an energy policy scholar and lawyer at Michigan Tech, asked him a simple question: why wasn't the Upper Peninsula using its extensive underground mine network to help solve the country's growing energy storage crisis?
The inspiration came from overseas. His colleague had seen a presentation on Electric Mountain in Wales, where a historic slate mine had been converted into a pumped hydro energy storage system inside a UNESCO heritage park. Looking at the Keweenaw's own mining landscape, the parallel was obvious.
"Why hasn't anyone tried this?" Scarlett recalled asking. That conversation, sketched out on a whiteboard nearly a decade ago, launched a research program that's still growing today.
Mapping the Unknown
Before any mine can be reused, researchers need to understand what's actually underground — and that's harder than it sounds. Scarlett's team builds maps using historic documents, drawings, photographs, and oral histories, since sending people underground is far too dangerous for routine survey work. As Scarlett put it, "my first rule of archaeological field school is no dying."
Even with that careful, document-based approach, the scale of the challenge is enormous. Michigan alone has an abandoned underground mine inventory dating to the 1990s, developed by Michigan Tech researchers working with the state's DNR and later maintained and updated by DNR and EGLE staff. But nationally, no single agency tracks abandoned mines — the largest database, from the U.S. Geological Survey, lists over 300,000 entries, ranging from mile-deep operations like the Quincy Mine to shallow 30-foot test shafts.
"There is no one database that you can go look at," Scarlett explained. Records are scattered across states, tribes, and federal agencies, with wildly varying quality and accessibility.
Why It Matters — Beyond Energy
Knowing where these mines are isn't just an academic exercise. Scarlett shared a story from his graduate school days in Nevada, when an elementary school parking lot collapsed into a mine — fortunately on a Sunday, when no one was there. Similar close calls happen regularly during road and infrastructure work, even in the Keweenaw.
Abandoned mines also serve as wildlife habitat, particularly for bats, and can raise water quality concerns when flooded sections discharge contaminated water. And in the Copper Country, mines like Quincy have become cultural landmarks in their own right, drawing tens of thousands of visitors a year and serving as sites of public memory, education, and even wedding photos.
Layered on top of all of this is a slow-building crisis: much of the country's energy infrastructure was built decades ago and hasn't kept pace with modern demand. For Scarlett and his colleagues, adaptively reusing abandoned mines offers a way to turn a community liability into an economic and environmental asset — through pumped hydropower, compressed air storage, geothermal systems, and more.
From Idea to Real-World Study
Rather than stay theoretical, Scarlett's Michigan Tech team assembled an interdisciplinary group of faculty and students and secured a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to study a real site: the former Mather Mine in Negaunee, Michigan, near Marquette. The techno-economic analysis, conducted through the disruptions of COVID, found that these energy storage conversions were financially viable, in some cases even without new incentives or regulatory changes.
That study made international news and opened the floodgates. Scarlett's team has since supported exploratory conversations with industrial partners and organizations across the Upper Midwest, South Africa, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden.
The Keweenaw Energy Transitions Lab
The work now lives under a dedicated research group: the Keweenaw Energy Transitions Lab (KETL), based at Michigan Tech. Listeners can follow ongoing projects — from robotic mapping of flooded mines to international mine-reuse case studies — at KETL.info or on LinkedIn.
As Scarlett summed it up, the goal is to help post-mining communities, energy companies, and policymakers find the "sweet spots where particular technologies will work in particular places to particular advantage" — turning the region's mining past into a foundation for its energy future.
About The Lake Superior Podcast and NPLSF
The Lake Superior Podcast is produced by the National Parks of Lake Superior Foundation (NPLSF), the official nonprofit friends group for Lake Superior’s five national parks: Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Grand Portage National Monument, Isle Royale National Park, Keweenaw National Historical Park, and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.
Funded by grants and private donations, NPLSF projects help preserve, interpret, and celebrate the parks and stories surrounding the Great Lakes’ greatest waters.
For more information or to support our work, contact us at info@nplsf.org.
