Cryptocurrency Promoters Will Save The Climate By Burning Natural Gas; Big Oil A Big Fan
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Their creation is part of a niche wave of tech startups that are now eyeing the oil and gas industry to help power the cryptocurrency boom. Lochmiller and Cavness, who started a bitcoin mining company called Crusoe Energy, see their fix as a marriage between two problems capable of “solving” one another: the wasting of gas flaring that contributes to the climate crisis, and the need for cheaper energy as crypto increases in popularity.
Climate experts, however, warn it’s a “false solution” so long as oil and gas production is allowed to continue. The world’s leading authority on climate science concludes that only a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will help avert a climate calamity; merely finding alternate uses for “waste gas” doesn’t confront the dire need to curb fossil fuel consumption. If anything, researchers warn, oil companies may feel incentivized to drill even more. “At the end of the day, they’re still burning natural gas,” said Arvind Ravikumar, a methane researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, who deemed flare mitigation and companies proposing similar technologies a “scam”.
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Crusoe has trademarked its solution as “digital flare mitigation”. They install fleets of data centers that hum in shipping container-like structures next to remote oil rigs. Oil producers are then paid for the waste gas they otherwise wouldn’t use because it’s cheaper to burn than to pay to transport to market. In return, Crusoe can use the byproduct to power energy-intensive computing operations on-site. The data centers burn through enormous amounts of energy because there’s no centralized “bank” that holds cryptocurrency. Instead, new coins are created by solving complex equations that require heavy computing power to authenticate. The currency is then tracked on a decentralized ledger, known as the blockchain, which is also resource-intensive to maintain.
The new technology comes amid a “great mining migration” that’s currently underway in the United States after China banned crypto mining in September. And with renewed global focus on cutting the highly-potent greenhouse gas, methane, which is the primary “waste gas” in flaring, the model is particularly in vogue. Oil-friendly regulators, elected officials, industry groups and financial services giants have been taking note. Commissioner Jim Wright of the Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency charged with regulating oil and gas, told the Guardian that modular mitigation setups like Crusoe’s are “most appealing”. Texas senator Ted Cruz is also a fan.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/16/crypto-mining-oil-industry-waste-climate-crisis
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