Homepage > News >
Editorial
> Bitcoin mining is still green technology
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready…
Bitcoin mining has long been criticized as “wasteful” by those who fail to grasp its broader utility. While many rush to praise proof-of-stake (PoS) systems, proof-of-work (PoW) mining offers a crucial and often overlooked environmental benefit. Properly deployed, Bitcoin mining doesn’t just consume energy—it captures and monetizes energy that would otherwise be wasted.Flaring from oil fields, methane from landfills and agricultural operations, and stranded gas in remote locations have been unavoidable inefficiencies of the energy industry for generations. Bitcoin mining has transformed these emissions into pure opportunities to create and benefit from productive economic value while reducing their environmental impact. Before the advent of a PoW monetary network, there was no scalable way to repurpose this energy. Now, Bitcoin mining provides a financial incentive to harness it.Methane: From waste to energyMethane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases, with more than 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Yet, traditional energy infrastructure struggles to monetize small, dispersed methane sources, making mitigation financially and logistically unfeasible. Bitcoin mining changes this dynamic by allowing modular operations to be deployed directly at methane-emitting sites—landfills, farms, and oil drilling operations—where it can be burned cleanly to generate electricity for mining rather than vented or flared into the atmosphere.This is not theoretical. Companies like Crusoe Energy and Nodal Power have already demonstrated how Bitcoin mining can turn methane waste into a revenue stream while reducing emissions.According to research published in Science Direct, “This integration not only proposes a method to enhance landfill sustainability but also introduces a potential economic boost for landfill operations currently venting or flaring methane, offering them an alternative revenue source through the global bitcoin market. Such an approach is particularly pertinent in regions where legal mandates require gas flaring, suggesting that Bitcoin mining could improve the financial feasibility, potentially accelerating the development of landfill gas capture infrastructure and reducing the tax burden on local residents and businesses.”Disrupting centralized data centers: A net energy benefitBeyond its direct energy applications, Bitcoin mining has the potential to improve digital infrastructure efficiency. Today, centralized payment networks and hyperscale data centers—run by companies like Visa (NASDAQ: V), Mastercard (NASDAQ: MA), and Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL)—consume enormous amounts of energy for transaction processing, data storage,