Fair Development Transition of Lignite Areas: Key Challenges and Sustainability Prospects

As Europe transitions away from fossil fuel energy, the challenges associated with closing mines, along with restructuring mine-dependent communities, continue to reduce the rate at which this transition occurs. A large volume of research has been published during the last decade on the fair development context of mine reclamation. Using lignite mines as a case study and a properly modified analytical-hierarchy-process-based roadmapping methodological framework, the current study attempted to elucidate the key challenges and the bottlenecks that researchers view as critical to a just transition. The results indicated four critical areas that researchers expected to drive policymaking: social implications, stakeholder divergence, land-use challenges and sustainability prospects. Further, the coupling of mining operations to green strategies, such as circular economy and recycling, seems to be put forward by the academics as a viable solution to enhance the sustainability of the sector.