emissions

Report: Gas Giant Exxon Is Running a Gas-to-Bitcoin Mining Pilot Program in North Dakota

25/03/2022 by Idelto Editor

Exxon Mobil Corporation is reportedly participating in a pilot program that leverages excess natural gas to power crypto mining machines, according to a recent report quoting people familiar with the matter. The report states that the oil giant is partnered with the firm Crusoe Energy Systems, and the pilot is purportedly taking place in North Dakota at the Bakken shale basin.

Unnamed Sources Say Exxon Is Piloting a Bitcoin Mining Operation in North Dakota Using Flare Gas

On March 24, Bloomberg author Naureen S Malik reported that the largest American oil and gas corporation Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) is participating in piloting a bitcoin mining project with excess gas. Malik wrote that “people familiar with the matter” told Bloomberg that they could not be named because the information is not public. However, the people who asked to not be named said that currently, Exxon Mobil is working with Crusoe Energy Solutions in the state of North Dakota.

Crusoe Energy is a firm that provides oil and gas companies with a digital solution to natural gas flaring. Natural gas flaring takes place when an oil or gas firm processes oil from shale and the oil extraction process releases excess gas that is typically burned. Some oil firms have found ways to convert the flare gas into useful energy and Crusoe Energy helps gas companies use the flare gas to mine digital currencies like bitcoin (BTC).

Malik’s report says that Exxon Mobil’s pilot is taking place at an oil pad located near the Bakken shale basin. The people familiar with the matter further said the “bitcoin mining servers” used in the pilot program are operating on site. Moreover, the anonymous individuals told the Bloomberg reporter that Exxon Mobil is considering adding pilot programs that leverage flare gas to mine crypto in four different countries.

“Exxon, the largest U.S. oil producer, is considering similar pilots in Alaska, the Qua Iboe Terminal in Nigeria, Argentina’s Vaca Muerta shale field, Guyana and Germany, one of the people said,” Malik’s report notes. Although, Malik contacted Crusoe Energy about the story and the reporter said the company “declined to comment.” Crusoe Energy Solutions is based in Denver Colorado, and the company system is called “digital flare mitigation technology” or DFM.

Equinor Reportedly Operated in North Dakota With Crusoe Energy, Report Further Shows Conocophillips Sold Excess Flare Gas to Mining Operations by the Bakken Shale Basin

There have been other times where there’s speculation abound concerning large gas companies mining bitcoin and reports shining a light on specific companies. In August 2020, Arcane Research leaked a number of screenshots from the publicly traded energy firm, Equinor. According to the report, the Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor was also working with Crusoe Energy Solutions. Reportedly, Equinor’s collaboration with Crusoe in North Dakota was focused on reducing flaring from oil operations via bitcoin mining.

In addition to Equinor and Exxon, reports in mid-February indicated that Conocophillips was allegedly “selling extra flare gas to bitcoin miners in North Dakota.” The CNBC report said that Conocophillips also was working on a pilot in the Bakken shale basin region. CNBC author MacKenzie Sigalos wrote that Conocophillips did not disclose “which bitcoin miner it sells to, nor how long the pilot project has been underway.” However, Sigalos did say in the report that oftentimes a company like Crusoe Energy is used by the gas company.

Crusoe Energy is not the only company offering gas-to-bitcoin solutions as the firms Upstream Data and EZ Blockchain provide gas-to-bitcoin services as well. Greenidge Generation also uses excess gas to mine bitcoins instead of wasting or burning the energy. EZ Blockchain detailed last year in May that the company was working with an oil and gas provider from Texas, Silver Energy. At the time, EZ Blockchain said that Silver Energy set up a mining system in Alberta, Canada month earlier in February 2021.

What do you think about the individuals that claim Exxon is piloting a gas-to-bitcoin operation in North Dakota? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

China Mining Ban Worsened Bitcoin’s Carbon Footprint, Study Claims

26/02/2022 by Idelto Editor

Contrary to some expectations, Beijing’s crackdown on the crypto mining industry has increased Bitcoin’s carbon emissions, researchers have alleged. Leaving China, miners also left behind its eco-friendly hydropower and are increasingly relying on energy generated by fossil fuels, they claim.

Bitcoin Mining Allegedly Less Green Since Miners’ Exodus From China

Cryptocurrency mining has become a dirtier process after the Chinese government effectively prohibited bitcoin extraction in the People’s Republic, according to research published in the Joule journal. The share of renewable energy used to power mining operations has fallen from almost 42% to around 25% last August, the study insists.

It has been estimated that Bitcoin produces more than 65 megatons of carbon dioxide annually. The amount exceeds the total carbon emissions of a country like Greece, for example, which in 2019 registered less than 57 megatons of CO2. One of the authors, Alex de Vries, told the BBC:

We see the network becoming less green than ever before.

Speaking to Bloomberg, he elaborated that the relocation of mining companies to other countries such as the United States and Kazakhstan has led to a reduction in the use of renewable energy sources. This made bitcoin production less friendly to the environment as it resulted in the increase of its carbon intensity by about 17%.

De Vries is the founder of Digiconomist.net, a platform presenting itself as “dedicated to exposing the unintended consequences of digital trends” and publishing the Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. He is a researcher at the School of Business and Economics at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, and also an employee of the Dutch central bank. His estimates about Bitcoin’s energy usage have been challenged by crypto media and members of the community but quoted by mainstream publications.

Migration to the U.S. has expanded the use of fossil fuels, especially natural gas, as a relatively small portion of the nation’s electrical energy is sourced from renewables, the latest report co-authored by De Vries claims. And moving to Kazakhstan often leads to utilizing electricity from power stations burning what’s known as “hard coal,” polluting more than the Chinese plants that miners worked with outside the wet season.

China banned crypto-related activities such as trading back in 2017 but the government did not interfere with mining until last spring. In May 2021, the State Council decided to clamp down on the industry following President Xi Jinping’s pledge to achieve carbon neutrality in the next four decades. The crackdown has since spread to provinces like Sichuan where miners had access to hydropower.

Industry groups had been more optimistic about the use of renewables in the minting of digital currencies, BBC noted in its article. It quotes an older estimate made by the Bitcoin Mining Council, according to which the “global mining industry’s sustainable electricity mix had grown to approximately 58.5%.”

Meanwhile, in Europe, nations such as Sweden and regulators like the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) have more recently voiced concerns over the growing use of renewable energy for bitcoin mining. They have issued calls for an EU-wide ban on energy-intensive mining methods.

On Friday, news came out that the European Parliament canceled a scheduled vote on the bloc’s new crypto regulations after a proposal to prohibit proof-of-work mining found its way to the draft Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) framework and sparked negative reactions from the industry.

What are your thoughts on the findings of the bitcoin mining study? Let us know in the comments section below.

Bitcoin Mining Report Shows Network’s Emissions Account for 0.08% of the World’s CO2

02/02/2022 by Idelto Editor

During the last year, Bitcoin — the cryptocurrency network that leverages proof-of-work (PoW) to process transactions and secure the protocol — has received a lot of criticism about its environmental impact. This week, the cryptocurrency firm Coinshares published a report that shows talking points condemning the network’s electrical consumption have been greatly exaggerated. According to Coinshares’ data, Bitcoin’s mining infrastructure accounts for 0.08% of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO2) production today.

Despite ESG Critics, Studies Show ‘Bitcoin Mining Acts as an Energy Sink’ and Consumes Less Energy Than the Banking Industry

There’s been a lot of disapproval by people who wholeheartedly believe the Bitcoin network is bad for the environment. Many have condemned Bitcoin’s PoW because they believe it requires too much energy to keep the network running strong. Although, the critics never discuss the U.S. dollar’s energy consumption and how it is also enforced by state violence. Detractors also leverage data with extreme bias and inaccuracies stemming from the Digiconomist website. For example, the web portal is operated by Alex de Vries, an employee of De Nederlandsche Bank NV (DNB).

Despite the fault-finding critics, numerous reports have shown that Bitcoin’s energy consumption is far less than alternative financial systems. In May 2021, Galaxy Digital published a study on the energy consumption of bitcoin mining, and it found it was far less than the energy the gold or banking industry consumes. Galaxy Digital also described how methane emissions are leveraged by companies like Great American Mining, Upstream Data, and Crusoe Energy Systems by turning wasted flare gas into consumable energy. Galaxy Digital’s study notes:

Bitcoin mining is the ideal energy sink: anyone, anywhere, can monetize excess energy by plugging in equipment and switching it off at their convenience. One example of where Bitcoin mining acts as an energy sink is in oil fields, resulting in a direct reduction in methane emissions.

Coinshares: ‘Bitcoin Will Be 100% Renewable as Soon as Our Electricity Generation Is 100% Renewable’

This week Coinshares published its bitcoin mining report, a study that provides the most current data concerning the state of the bitcoin mining industry alongside environmental, social, and governance (ESG) concerns. The Coinshares report estimates the Bitcoin protocol emitted 42 megatons of CO2 in 2021.

The study highlights that the earth’s total emissions in 2019 amount to 49,360 megatons of CO2. In addition to the network’s mining infrastructure accounting for 0.08% of the world’s carbon dioxide, Bitcoin’s energy draw is also 0.05% of the total energy consumed globally. The Coinshares study says:

As a point of reference, total global energy consumption (not production, which is considerably higher) in 2019 has been estimated at 162,194 TWh. At an annual energy draw of 89 TWh, the Bitcoin mining network uses approximately 0.05% of the total energy consumed globally. This strikes us as a small cost for a global monetary system, and on the global energy balance sheet, it amounts to a rounding error.

Meanwhile, ESG concerns have caused numerous companies to drop bitcoin support or consider dropping bitcoin in the future. For instance, the software community Mozilla paused the ability to donate cryptocurrencies over “environmental impact” concerns. Tesla also dropped bitcoin acceptance because of its impact on the environment. Following Mozilla, the Wikimedia Foundation considered dropping crypto donations for the same reasons and Wikimedia members leveraged the Digiconomist’s inaccurate data that has been debunked on many occasions over bias and data discrepancies.

The bitcoin mining report published by Coinshares this week shows that the ESG concerns over the last 12 months have been greatly exaggerated. Coinshares says that the current focus should be spent more on producing renewable energy resources, rather than attacking a monetary innovation that has an insignificant emission rate and energy draw.

“While it is clear that there currently are emissions created as a result of bitcoin mining, these emissions are not only insignificant on a global scale, but they are in no way necessary in and of themselves,” the Coinshares report concludes. “Bitcoin will be 100% renewable as soon as our electricity generation is 100% renewable. Our focus should be on building out renewable power generation, not on stifling the development of monetary technology.”

What do you think about the report published by Coinshares that shows the Bitcoin network’s emissions account for only around 0.08% of the world’s carbon dioxide production today? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Norway Mulls Backing Sweden’s Call for Euro Ban on Crypto Mining

18/11/2021 by Idelto Editor

The government in Norway is considering ways to limit the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining and may support Swedish proposals to that end, including a European ban on proof-of-work mining. The European Commission has revealed it is already working to promote a transition to “more sustainable” protocols.

Extensive Use of Renewable Energy for Mining Is Hard to Justify, Norway Minister Says

Authorities in Norway are mulling over potential policy measures to deal with the effects of crypto mining on the environment, the country’s minister responsible for local government and regional development has indicated. As part of the review, the Norwegian government intends to look into solutions recently put forward by Swedish regulators and work for common European rules. Speaking to Euronews Next, Minister Bjørn Arild Gram also stated:

Although crypto mining and its underlying technology might represent some possible benefits in the long run, it is difficult to justify the extensive use of renewable energy today.

Both countries, along with another Nordic nation, Iceland, have in the past few years become popular destinations for cryptocurrency miners. The region boasts abundant renewable energy resources and maintains relatively low electricity rates. According to Eurostat data for the first half of 2021, Norway offered the cheapest electricity for non-household consumers in the European Economic Area (EEA), with over 90% of its energy coming from hydroelectric power generation.

Bjørn Gram’s statement comes after the directors of Sweden’s financial services and environmental protection agencies called for imposing a ban on proof-of-work mining across the European Union, after a multifold increase of energy usage by bitcoin miners in the country this year. “Sweden needs the renewable energy targeted by crypto asset producers for the climate transition of our essential services, and increased use by miners threatens our ability to meet the Paris Agreement,” the officials warned.

“Overall, we want our renewable energy to be used in a way that creates value and that supports the transition to a climate neutral society,” Minister Gram elaborated. His comments are part of a heated discussion in Norway regarding the use of renewable energy to power digital coin minting after Oslo introduced tax breaks for data centers in 2016. The country’s new environment minister, Espen Barth Eide, has in the past expressed concerns over Norway becoming the “world’s Bitcoin mine” at the expense of its own power-intensive industries.

European Commission Urges Crypto Miners to Move Away From Proof-of-Work Concept

Regional Development Minister Bjørn Gram did not provide any specific details regarding the regulatory policies the Norwegian government is currently considering. But if Norway decides to follow in the footsteps of Sweden, it may result in a crackdown on crypto mining operations that require significant amounts of energy.

Meanwhile, the European Commission (EC), which would be responsible for enforcing crypto regulations in the EU, has admitted that it’s already encouraging the crypto mining industry to “migrate applications” from energy-intensive proof-of-work blockchains to less demanding protocols like proof-of-stake and hybrid consensus models, Euronews Next revealed. A spokesperson for the executive body told the publication that the EC is working to promote “more sustainable forms of blockchain technologies.”

The Commission, the representative added, has “ambitious emission reduction targets” and promotes the advancement of less energy-intensive blockchain technologies through funding for startups and direct development of a public sector blockchain network. Although the Paris Climate Agreement, referred to by Swedish regulators, does not ban crypto mining, Brussels is aware of developments in jurisdictions like China and will discuss the matter with EU member states, the official added.

Do you think Norway, Sweden, and the EU will impose restrictions on energy-intensive crypto mining? Share your expectations in the comments section below.

Publicly Listed Energy Firm Equinor Exploits Gas Flaring in North Dakota to Mine Bitcoin

21/09/2020 by Idelto Editor

Just recently, the firm Arcane Research recently revealed a number of screenshots from the publicly traded energy firm, Equinor. The pictures show the multinational company leveraging natural gas flaring to power bitcoin mining operations. In recent years, using the unorthodox gas flaring scheme to mine bitcoin has become more prominent worldwide.

The Norwegian state-owned multinational energy company Equinor (NYSE: EQNR) has recently announced joining the crypto economy, as the firm has partnered with Crusoe Energy Solutions to mine bitcoin. Equinor is a well known, publicly listed firm that is headquartered in Stavanger, but has operations in over 30 countries today.

According to information obtained by Arcane Research, Equinor’s collaboration with Crusoe in North Dakota is aimed at reducing flaring from oil operations via bitcoin mining.

Natural gas flaring has been an integral part of the world’s energy systems today, as it helps bolster the exploration and processing of oil from shale. To some observers, flaring is considered wasteful and undesirable to the environment, but it helps to ensure safety when using a flare during production testing after people drill a gas well or if shale oil is hydraulically fractured.

Flare gas systems are oftentimes a method of controlling wasted gas that cannot be efficiently processed or captured. However, in recent years firms like Upstream Data and Greenidge Generation are using the excess gas to mine bitcoins instead of wasting precious energy.

“Mining cryptocurrency requires a lot of electricity to power computers, while a valuable commodity is wasted, and carbon emissions are created when we flare,” Lionel Ribeiro the project’s leader said of the Equinor and Crusoe Energy Solutions partnership. Ribeiro continued by adding:

By connecting these inverse pains, we can satisfy both needs with no cost to market expense. It is a disruptive and scalable solution and shrinks the gap between the source of energy production and the final energy consumption while reducing our carbon footprint.

Crusoe Energy Solutions is based in Denver Colorado, and the company offers a system called “digital flare mitigation technology” or DFM. In December 2019, Crusoe saw $70 million funneled into the company, as Bain Capital and KCK Group led the equity funding round. The firm says that its digital flare mitigation infrastructure is a “scalable and flexible” service.

“[The] modular and portable systems are designed for the scale and throughput demands of the modern shale industry,” the company’s website details. “DFM systems are capable of processing up to millions of cubic feet of natural gas per day or as little as 50,000 cubic feet of natural gas per day. Systems operate effectively across a wide spectrum of gas compositions ranging from 750-2500 mmbtu/mcf.”

Crusoe also says the system boasts a significant amount of emissions reduction by utilizing “built-in emissions control technology and catalytic converters.” The DFM can “significantly reduce NOx, CO, VOC and methane emissions compared to flare exhaust streams,” Crusoe highlights.

The recent announcement details that flared gas being used for Equinor’s bitcoin mining is the byproduct of extracting oil from the Bakken oil field located in the U.S.

Since the year 2000, the Bakken Formation or basin has seen a massive boom in oil production. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing is a common business in the 200,000 square miles (520,000 km2) North Dakota basin.

Hans Jakob Hegge, the U.S. country manager for Equinor says the company must make bold choices in order to bolster cost-effectiveness and energy efficiency these days.

“Innovation remains a fundamental strategic pillar in achieving our climate roadmap ambition,” Hegge said. “[Equinor] must be bold in our approach to employing new technologies to improve business efficiency.”

What do you think about the Norwegian energy firm’s move to leverage gas flaring bitcoin mining solutions? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

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