North Vancouver To Heat Buildings With Bitcoin Mining

Canadian Bitcoin BTC/USD mining firm MintGreen has partnered with state-owned Lonsdale Energy Corporation (LEC) to heat 100 residential and commercial buildings in North Vancouver with recovered energy from crypto mining.

What Happened: Cleantech crypto mining firm MintGreen said it will prevent 20,000 tonnes of GHGs from entering the atmosphere per MW compared to natural gas through its “Digital Boilers,” according to a press release on Thursday. 

These Digital Boilers can reportedly recover more than 96% of the electricity used for Bitcoin mining in the form of heat energy that can be used to sustainably heat communities and service industrial processes.

MintGreen said that its cryptocurrency miners run at full capacity through the year. As such, the firm identified a  unique opportunity to provide reliable and clean heating baseload for North Vancouver's district energy system.

"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," said Lonsdale Energy Corporation CEO Karsten Veng in a statement.

The project is expected to be rolled out as early as 2022.

Why It Matters: Bitcoin has often been scrutinized for its alleged role in adversely impacting the environment.

In May, Tesla Inc TSLA stopped accepting Bitcoin as a means of payment, citing the “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels” for Bitcoin mining and transactions.

Many Bitcoin mining companies are now actively focused on using renewable energy to power crypto mining operations and repurposing the energy used in mining itself.

Last month, the nation of El Salvador said it had mined its first set of Bitcoins using the geothermal energy from volcanoes in the region.

BTC Price Action: Bitcoin is trading at $59,948, up 4.54% over 24 hours. 

Image by Florian Wehde on Unsplash.