In the mountains near Pikeville, Kentucky, two coal mines may soon become the state’s largest solar farm.

“In this part of the country, we’ve gone through a downturn,” says Ryan Johns, development executive for Berkley Energy Group, which owns the strip mines. “So we looked at other ways that we could use our properties to keep producing energy.”

After a conversation with former state auditor Adam Edelen, who heads a consulting practice for entrepreneurs, Johns began to consider investing in renewable energy. “He asked, ‘Would you be open to doing renewables?’ and I said, ‘If it’ll help us make money and put people back to work, we’re for that.'”

EDF Renewable Energy, a company that develops wind and solar projects, is currently leading engineering studies to plan the potential solar farm. It would be the first built on a strip mine, which could make construction more challenging than usual.

“We know we know the first couple inches are gravel, and we expect the next couple of feet are going to be small rock,” says Doug Copeland, who works on project development for EDF. “The geotechnical investigation is really the key to all of this, and preparing for a construction process that will be a little bit different from building in the California desert or on a piece of farmland.”

On one site, all of the available coal has already been extracted. On the other, the coal will likely be mined out within 12 to 18 months. As the jobs on that site disappear, other coal mining jobs are scarce. Mining employment in Kentucky has dropped from more than 14,000 jobs in 2008 to 3,833 in 2016. The solar development would provide both new construction work and ongoing jobs. (BitSource, another innovative company in Pikeville, trains former coal miners to code).

Some of those jobs could begin as soon as the current coal mining stops. “On this active mine that’s there now, there’s going to be guys who are staying employed on that reclamation work, in essence preparing for the solar project,” says Copeland.