As the narrative around Bitcoin’s nuanced relationship with energy gradually shifts, the City of North Vancouver has announced a partnership with its local energy provider to achieve a world first – using bitcoin mining to heat the city.
Using Bitcoin Mining to Heat the City
The City of North Vancouver is on a self-described “decarbonisation journey”, which among other things includes the integration of new technologies designed to reduce its environmental footprint. In that vein, the Canadian municipality’s wholly owned energy company, Lonsdale Energy Corporation (LEC), has just formed a partnership with a cleantech bitcoin miner, MintGreen.
The complex issue of climate change requires innovative solutions, and LEC, with the City of North Vancouver, is showing tremendous leadership in environmental stewardship.
Colin Sullivan, CEO, MintGreen
As is well documented, mining bitcoin consumes significant amounts of energy to maintain the security of the proof-of-work protocol. In doing so, a huge amount of waste in the form of excess heat is produced. MintGreen has already been leading the way in reusing such heat by selling it on to a local brewery and a sea salt distillery. The partnership with LEC is simply an extension of what it has already been doing, albeit on an industrial scale.
Through the partnership, MintGreen will provide heat to North Vancouver’s energy system using its new “Digital Boilers” that recover more than 96 percent of the electricity used for bitcoin mining. Since MintGreen runs at full capacity all year round, its proprietary technology has the capacity to offer a reliable and clean heating baseload.
It is estimated that over the 12-year contract, MintGreen’s “Digital Boilers” will prevent 20,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere per megawatt, compared to natural gas.
Being partners with MintGreen on this project is very exciting for LEC in that it’s an innovative and cost-competitive project, and it reinforces the journey LEC is on to support the City’s ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets.
Karsten Veng, CEO, LEC
In an interview with Bitcoin Magazine, MintGreen chief executive Colin Sullivan noted that there wasn’t any way bitcoin mining could be greener given that 97 percent of its energy mix is hydroelectric. “Using that energy twice both eliminates waste and makes this project one of the greenest in the space,” Sullivan said.
Bitcoin Mining – Becoming Less Controversial
Thankfully we’re starting to see fewer ill-informed and recycled arguments along the lines of “Bitcoin consumes as much energy as country X”. The obvious response has always been, compared to what, and who gets to decide what constitutes an appropriate use of energy?
The reality appears to be slowly dawning on critics that bitcoin mining is neither inherently good nor bad for the environment. Mining is a function of incentives and will take place wherever cheap, reliable energy exists.
Most often it occurs where you have wasted or stranded energy (which is innately cheap) as seen in Texas, where natural gas flares are being used to mine bitcoin. In other instances, it can be 100 percent sustainable, such as in El Salvador’s infamous geothermal bitcoin mining project.
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