Methane Is a Big Climate Problem That Bitcoin Can Help Solve

Some quotes from the article:

> “People have tried to solve flaring for a long time,” Crusoe CEO Chase Lochmiller tells me. “But the standard chemical engineering approaches like compression or liquefaction don’t make sense economically.”

> Bitcoin miners receive rewards for solving these puzzles. It is this incentive that provides the economics for Crusoe to deploy a technology able to divert gas from flaring.

> ... if the 14 billion cubic feet of gas that gets flared every day could be harnessed for computing, you could power the whole Bitcoin network eight times over.

> The International Energy Agency notes that Bitcoin consumes about 100 terawatt hours of electricity (0.3% of total global consumption).

> Data center and data transmission networks — which power everything from Snap DMs to Netflix shows to medical research — consume a total of 460-590 terawatt hours (1.4%-1.8%).

> ... it’s worth considering that renewable energy sources make up 39% of Bitcoin’s total energy consumption (vs. 17% for U.S. electricity production).

> If you accept the premise that Bitcoin has real-world value, consider also that it has two key attributes that can help transition the world to cleaner energy: ... Interruptible workload: Mining operations can turn on and off at a moment’s notice, which helps to stabilize energy grids. When demand is low, Bitcoin mining can consume the otherwise unused electricity. When demand is high — say, household consumption in the evening — miners shut down without a hitch.

> “Bitcoin mining is the best buyer of last resort,” Lochmiller explains. “Few industrial use cases can use lots of energy like Bitcoin and shut down in 5 minutes. You can’t do that for an aluminum smelting plant.”