Geothermal: Clean Energy for Bitcoin Mining

Mining cryptocurrency, or bitcoin, is an energy-intensive process, and entrepreneurs are looking at a variety of technologies to power their operations, including unique geothermal energy approaches.

One of the most recent is a service from RenewaBit, a California-based renewable energy firm that has partnered with CeraPhi Energy, a Houston, Texas-based company, to create geothermal energy with integrated crypto mining offtake. GreenFlash is a service provided by organizations that retrofit oil and gas wells, offering sustainable energy and an incentive for well owners to make wells more lucrative at any stage of operation.

The concept is consistent with RenewaBit’s aim of assisting renewable energy assets in commercializing merchant or limited energy through bitcoin mining facilities. Their technology, in addition to powering bitcoin mining, may be used to bring energy to remote places and towns, as well as extend the life—and profitability—of oil and gas wells, which is especially appealing to well operators as commodity prices rise.

According to RenewaBit executives, by connecting utility-scale crypto mining to green energy generation assets, the company will not only bring clean energy to the cryptocurrency network, but it will also make renewable energy more profitable—and thus reduce the environmental issues associated with global cryptocurrency use.

GreenFlash makes use of CeraPhiWell’s patented closed-loop geothermal technology, which allows working wells to continue producing oil and natural gas while also generating geothermal electricity. RenewaBit executives told POWER that the company’s crypto mining data centers “represent a fully scalable offtake solution that commercializes produced geothermal energy at high variable yields and requires small land and electrical infrastructure requirements,” noting that the system takes up about 400 square feet per MW produced.

“We are directly focused on assisting green energy growth,” stated Ian Hartley, CEO of RenewaBit, in an interview with POWER.

There are many bitcoin miners on the market that wish to install projects and enhance their processing power independent of their energy source. RenewaBit is primarily concerned with renewable energy. It would have been simpler for them to just create hyperscale bitcoin mining data centers, but according to Hartley, they recognize that bitcoin must account for its energy use and environmental imprint.

“You might think of us as a green bitcoin network enhancer and a market facilitator for green energy growth.”