Athabasca basin in northern Saskatchewan is the home to high-grade uranium ores – known as the Saudi Arabia of the uranium world. McArthur River and Cigar Lake mines are two underground mines located in the Athabasca basin in northern Saskatchewan. Due to high uranium content and weak ground structure, the uranium ore is extracted using special mining techniques, namely raise boring in McArthur River and jet boring in Cigar Lake mine, in which the ground/orebodies need to be frozen before it is excavated. The artificial ground freezing (AGF) system employs a refrigeration plant to produce brine (calcium chloride) at -30?C to freeze the ground by pumping it to the coaxial/bayonet tube heat exchangers installed in the drill holes. As the mine progresses, orebody in the old zones depletes, and new zones need to be developed. The depleted zone typically had been frozen for several years, for which ground temperature reaches close to brine temperature. This paper explores a novel idea of extracting “coolth” energy from the depleted zones to pre-freeze new zones. This could potentially shorten the overall freezing time in the new zone and reduce overall energy consumption and its associated carbon footprint. The concept is tested using a laboratory-scale AGF facility at McGill University. A mathematical model is also developed and validated against experimental data. The model is then used to simulate mine field conditions. The results suggest that the pre-freezing technique can shorten the total freezing time from 9 to 7 months with potential energy savings of up to 37%. Future work will focus on design improvement, techno-economic analysis, and possible implementation.