Bitcoin mining produces energy gold. Let’s use it to save our planet
Despite concerns over Bitcoin mining’s energy consumption, Bitcoin mining has the potential to be a net positive for humanity’s relationship with energy and sustainability. This can be achieved by the mining industry using intermittent, stranded and wasteful power sources and subsidizing sustainable energy. A less explored possibility is to collect and redirect the excess heat generated by Bitcoin mining for other heating needs. This Earth Day, let’s consider how Bitcoin mining can not only help our planet and improve humanity’s relationship with energy by serving as a buyer of zero-carbon energy, but it can also serve as a producer of recyclable and reusable energy.
Bitcoin’s Energy Recovery Potential
Many of Bitcoin’s critics are understandably concerned about Bitcoin’s increasing energy consumption. The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index indicates that Bitcoin’s electricity consumption has only ever increased since the digital asset’s inception. Similarly, Bitcoin’s greenhouse gas emissions – although there have been ups and downs – have also grown over time.
But Bitcoin’s energy consumption isn’t the whole story.
Bitcoin mining produces a lot of heat, and harnessing and redirecting this excess heat is not just a theoretical possibility. In fact, there are already plans for a Canadian town to be heated by Bitcoin miners. An energy provider, Lonsdale Energy Corporation, and MintGreen, a Bitcoin mining company, are working together to provide at least some of the heat required by the residents of North Vancouver.
MintGreen will recycle around 20,000 tonnes of toxic gas per megawatt that would otherwise have entered the atmosphere and contributed to global warming. Instead, this liability for toxic emissions will be turned into an asset: Over 95% of the energy that the miners initially consume will be converted into thermal energy that will be used to heat several buildings. Since Bitcoin miners can run continuously, and because there will almost certainly always be a supply of Bitcoin miners available, the city will be able to rely on their surplus heat in any month of the year.
This endeavor is not a pie-in-the-sky dream. MintGreen had already made deals with the Vancouver Island Sea Salt plant and Shelter Point Distillery to sell them hot during freezing Canadian winters.
The versatility of Bitcoin mining also makes it possible to use the excess heat for recreational purposes. For example, it costs between USD 2,000 and USD 5,000 to heat a typical swimming pool. Bitcoin mining can make this money laundering and the associated energy consumption a zero cost. All you need to do is connect the Bitcoin miner to the pool’s water pump. You simultaneously earn the hardest resource ever created and heat the pool at no extra cost.
While heating a swimming pool is a fun application, Bitcoin miners’ excess heat has more profound uses for humanity. Companies are already working with scientists to create greenhouses that are heated by Bitcoin mining.
In the Netherlands, the heat from Bitcoin mining heats a greenhouse for tulips and reduces flower farmers’ dependence on gas, which has become more expensive since Russia’s war on Ukraine. In Sweden, heat from another mining company’s 600 kilowatt ASIC machines is aimed at heating a 300 square meter greenhouse where fruit and vegetables are grown. The miners are embedded in a data center container, which is equipped with an air duct device that draws heat from the ASICs and sends it to the greenhouse. In theory, this will keep the greenhouse at 77 degrees Fahrenheit continuously. Considering that the temperature in the area drops to minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, the potential savings on heating costs and usage are significant.
Just as Bitcoin mining can make good use of intermittent, stranded and wasted energy sources, recycling and reusing miners’ waste heat can potentially increase the profitability and sustainability of indoor farming and food production. As one researcher said, “A 1 [megawatt] data center will have the opportunity to strengthen local self-sufficiency by up to 8% with products that are competitive on the market.”
Upcoming tensions
Not everyone is excited about Bitcoin miners’ heat, especially those who suffer from its unintended consequences. For example, residents near Seneca Lake in upstate New York have complained that a nearby power plant’s collaboration with over 8,000 miners has made their lake “feel like you’re in a hot tub.”
The power plant takes in 139 million liters of water from the lake and returns 135 million liters every day. The water that is recycled back into the lake gets up to 108 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. True, in principle solutions can be found, but we still have to admit that sometimes the miners’ heat can affect the environment of a community in ways that people don’t like.
Sustainable energy sources are still important
Aside from Bitcoin mining helping to subsidize renewable energy, our ability to harness and manage excess heat is yet another way Bitcoin can help fight climate change. Less than a decade ago, Imperial College London estimated that heating residential and commercial buildings accounted for almost half of all energy consumption and 40% of all energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. If all this heat could be provided by carbon-neutral sources, it could be the most revolutionary impact on climate change in a generation.
On the face of it, replacing carbon-emitting heat sources with the surplus heat of Bitcoin miners may not make enough of a difference. After all, if Bitcoin miners themselves are powered by carbon-intensive fuel sources, heating their home with the miners’ excess heat does not necessarily reduce enough emissions for us to meet our climate goals.
But Bitcoin miners are unique in their ability to provide viable renewable energy sources that would not be profitable in the miners’ absence. Heating commercial and residential buildings with the miners’ surplus heat could really help put a dent in humanity’s carbon emissions – provided the miners themselves are powered by, say, solar energy.
We have already seen that heating buildings and running indoor farms with Bitcoin miners’ surplus heat is not a dream, but a reality. It may not be a huge leap to imagine what a difference it could make to our planet if Bitcoin miners themselves could be powered entirely by carbon-neutral sources.
