About Deep Energy

Deep Energy

Overview

Deep Energy is an international English-language journal jointly sponsored by China University of Mining and Technology-Beijing (CUMTB) and the China Nonferrous Metals Society, based in Beijing, China, and scheduled to launch in 2026. It was selected in 2025 as a High-Starting-Point New Journal under Phase II (2024–2028) of the China Science and Technology Journals Excellence Action Plan, in a round of 70 selected projects — 65 English-language and 5 Chinese-language — announced after review by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST). Its Editors-in-Chief are Ge Shirong, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Derek Elsworth, member of the US National Academy of Engineering and foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Closely aligned with China's 'dual-carbon' goals, the journal focuses on the interdisciplinary integration of deep energy development, deep clean energy and intelligent systems, aiming to advance scientific and technological innovation in deep energy and to provide intellectual support and policy insights for China's energy transition and green, sustainable development.

Selection Under the Excellence Action Plan

Deep Energy's selection was announced by the Office of the China Science and Technology Journals Excellence Action Plan under Phase II of the plan (2024–2028), following review and evaluation by CAST and relevant experts. Of the 70 projects selected in the 2025 high-starting-point round, 65 were English-language and 5 Chinese-language new journals. CUMTB described the selection as strong recognition of the university's efforts in developing English-language scientific journals and as a step expected to significantly promote the journal's high-quality development. The journal subsequently added a second honour: it was selected into the new journal incubation category of Beijing's 2026 High-Level International Sci-Tech Journal Development Support Program, publicised by the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission and the Zhongguancun Science Park Administration — a programme intended to elevate the academic influence and global competitiveness of Beijing's international journals and to support the construction of the Beijing International Science and Technology Innovation Center. The university noted that this later selection, following the 2025 national recognition, marked a further milestone in the journal's development; the journal is hosted by CUMTB and published by Youke Publishing.

Sponsors: A Mining University and a Metals Society

The joint sponsorship pairs two complementary institutions. China University of Mining and Technology-Beijing is the Beijing campus of China's principal university for mining science and technology, with deep research establishments in areas its own faculties describe as deep mining, geomechanics and deep underground engineering, rock mechanics, and the multi-field coupling problems of extracting resources at depth. The China Nonferrous Metals Society brings the nonferrous metals industry — its mining, processing and materials research community — into the sponsorship. The pairing matches the journal's subject: deep energy is produced substantially from deep mines and deep wells, in coal, metals, oil, gas and geothermal systems, and its research community spans the geoscience, mining-engineering and energy-engineering professions that the two sponsors represent. A society co-sponsor also gives a new journal direct access to an organised professional community of authors, reviewers and readers from its first issue.

Editors-in-Chief: Ge Shirong and Derek Elsworth

The journal's dual editorship is deliberately international and deliberately senior. Ge Shirong is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering associated with the sponsoring university and with China's mining-equipment and intelligent-mining research establishment. Derek Elsworth is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, known internationally for work in geomechanics and the coupled processes governing fluid flow, deformation and failure in rock — the physics that decides whether deep geothermal reservoirs, deep gas reservoirs, carbon-storage formations and deep excavations behave as designed. Between them, the two editors represent the journal's two poles: China's deep-resource engineering enterprise, which faces the world's most demanding deep-mining conditions at scale, and the international geomechanics community that studies the underlying coupled processes. For a launch journal seeking international authors, a co-editor of Elsworth's standing in the American and international academies is a substantive credibility signal, matched on the Chinese side by an editor from the academy's engineering ranks at the sponsoring university itself.

Scope: Deep Energy Development

The journal's first scope pillar, deep energy development, covers the science and engineering of obtaining energy from deep underground: deep coal, deep oil and gas, deep metal-mine energy co-production, and the rock mechanics that governs all of them. As shallow resources deplete, extraction moves deeper worldwide, and depth changes the physics: rock that behaves predictably near the surface deforms, bursts and heats at depth, groundwater and gas pressures rise, and conventional theories of rock failure become inadequate — a problem CUMTB's own researchers describe in the multi-field coupling literature of deep coal mining, where stress, temperature, seepage and damage interact. Deep Energy exists to publish the theories, technologies, intelligent methods and major engineering practices that answer those conditions, with the editorial expectation — set by its sponsors and editors — that work be relevant to real deep operations, not only to simplified models.

Scope: Deep Clean Energy and the Dual-Carbon Frame

The second pillar, deep clean energy, places the journal inside China's 'dual-carbon' goals — peaking carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality — which the journal's founding statements cite as its strategic frame. Deep clean energy includes deep geothermal energy, where hot dry rock and deep hydrothermal systems offer firm, weather-independent renewable power; the clean use of deep fossil resources during transition, including carbon capture, utilisation and storage in deep formations; and the underground storage of energy and hydrogen in deep caverns and reservoirs. The university's announcement of the Beijing incubation selection restated the positioning: responding to China's dual-carbon goals and major national strategic demands for green and sustainable development, the journal explores interdisciplinary integration among deep energy development, advanced clean energy and intelligent energy systems. That framing makes Deep Energy unusual among geoscience journals: it is chartered not only as a technical venue but as a source of, in its sponsors' words, intellectual support and decision-making references for China's energy strategic transformation — a policy-facing role alongside its scientific one.

Scope: Intelligent Systems for Deep Energy

The third pillar, intelligent systems, reflects how deep operations are actually being transformed: sensing and monitoring in environments humans cannot enter, autonomous and remote-controlled mining and drilling equipment, digital models of reservoirs and mine workings, and data-driven prediction of hazards such as rockbursts, water inrush and gas outbursts. Intelligent systems are not an accessory to deep energy but a condition of it — the deeper the working, the more the operation depends on instruments, models and machines rather than direct human presence. By integrating intelligent systems into its core scope rather than treating them as an applications afterthought, the journal claims the interdisciplinary territory where geoscience, mining engineering, control and data science meet, and where its sponsoring university's intelligent-mining research is concentrated.

Position Among Energy Journals

Energy publishing is crowded at the surface — solar, wind, batteries and grids have many established titles — but the deep subsurface has comparatively few dedicated international venues, and those that exist tend to sit inside single disciplines: petroleum engineering, mining engineering, geomechanics or geothermal science separately. Deep Energy's founding design crosses those boundaries under one definition, 'deep energy', that unites its subject by depth and by coupled-process physics rather than by commodity. Its differentiators are verifiable: national high-starting-point selection, academy-level editors on two continents, a specialist university plus a national society as sponsors, a second selection into Beijing's 2026 international-journal incubation programme, and an explicit mandate connecting technical research to energy-transition policy. Whether it becomes the venue of record for deep-energy research will depend on its first volumes, but its founding architecture is built for exactly that claim.

Status, Readership and Outlook

Deep Energy is scheduled to launch in 2026 from Beijing. Its intended readership spans mining and petroleum engineers, geomechanicists, geothermal and carbon-storage researchers, energy-systems scholars and the policy community concerned with China's energy transition. Its public record at the time of writing — two competitive selections before its first issue, named academy-level editors-in-chief, identified sponsors and publisher, and a precisely stated three-part scope — is the record of a journal launched the high-starting-point way: compete first, publish second. For researchers working anywhere the energy system goes deep underground, it is a title to watch from its first issue.