Authors: S.A. Zhironkin, O.V. Zhironkina, M.E. Konovalova, Tintin Hu

Title of the article: On the prospects of mining 6.0 – nature-centered geotechnology of the second half of the 21st century

Year: 2025, Issue: 2, Pages: 144-154

Branch of knowledge: 2.8.8 Geotechnology, mining machines

Index UDK: 622.235

DOI: 10.26730/1999-4125-2025-2-144-154

Abstract: The article considers the concept of Mining 6.0 as a future technological platform for the development of mining industries in the context of increasing calls and actions by different countries – coal producers and consumers – to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero and combat climate change, along with efforts to ensure developing countries' access to cheap energy (UN Sustainable Development Goals). The technological differences of Mining 6.0 from Mining 5.0 (with characteristic human-centric development) and Mining 4.0 (focused on maximum productivity growth) platforms associated with the nature-centric vector of digital transformation are highlighted. The combination of digital Mining 6.0 technologies with traditional geotechnology (surface, underground) is considered in the article as an opportunity to achieve the largely mutually exclusive UN Sustainable Development Goals – climate action and affordable energy to the developed and developing countries. The authors substantiate the inevitability of the transition to a human-centric and then to a nature-centric technological development of coal mining in the future using the results of the analysis of coal mining dynamics in Russia and in the world, as well as labor productivity and environmental impact. The authors associate the prospects for maintaining the role of coal as an affordable energy source in the future with the growth of productivity of mining enterprises and the environmental vector of development of its mining technologies on a new digital basis.

Key words: Industry 60 Mining 60 coal mining geotechnology post-mining nature-centricity

Receiving date: 20.12.2025

Approval date: 22.04.2025

Publication date: 11.06.2025

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