Marathon Digital Holdings, a bitcoin miner based in Montana, aims to transfer its coal-powered Hardin mining plant to a more environmentally friendly site. This is part of its commitment to lower its carbon impact by running its operations on non-carbon-emitting energy sources.
According to Fred Thiel, the company’s CEO, the company is committed to using sustainable mining procedures as soon as possible.
He emphasised:
“With the majority of our fleet already scheduled to be deployed at renewable power facilities and deployments currently underway, we believe it is an appropriate time to transition our legacy operations away from fossil fuel generation and towards more sustainable sources of power”
Bitcoin miners switch to Green energy
Marathon Holdings stated that it will switch to a carbon-neutral energy source by the third quarter of this year. While Thiel did not disclose where the facility would be relocated or what sort of energy it would use, he did say that the company’s mining strategy is to place rigs near sustainable energy sources so they don’t have to be on the grid.
In order to accomplish 23.3 exahash per second (EH/s), the business has said that it will install 199,000 Bitcoin miners in 2023.
It also announced plans to install 100,000 miners in Texas, powered primarily by solar and wind farms. Marathon has also said that by the end of the year, all of its activities will be carbon-neutral.
Marathon’s effort to incorporate renewable energy sources at its facilities represents a trend in the Bitcoin mining sector toward environmental consciousness, which has been triggered by politicians in countries all over the world.
Lawmakers in Europe have also pushed European governments to prohibit blockchains that rely on the proof of work consensus process. The European Union, on the other hand, decided against it in its crypto regulatory framework.
Greenpeace, an independent global campaigning network, had previously launched the “Change the Code, not the Climate” campaign, which aimed to minimise Bitcoin’s energy footprint by switching to a more energy-efficient consensus process. Crypto mining was listed as a source of carbon emissions in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released on April 4.
According to the March 2021 research, electricity flexibility in mining sites can be beneficial to the environment and public energy systems. When the energy infrastructure is too stressed to manage the demand of Bitcoin miners, a flexible facility may produce its own electricity from renewable resources. Energy firms that buy Bitcoin miners may use extra or unused energy to power the mining machines, allowing them to enhance cash flow more effectively.
