Bitcoin price surges as El Salvador offers 100% clean energy from volcanoes
Clean energy powering Bitcoin mining is good news for the environment
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has announced plans to have Bitcoin miners use the country’s geothermal facilities for mining. According to him, the country’s geothermal electric company can offer access to cheap energy that is 100% clean and renewable.
“I’ve just instructed the president of LaGeoSV (our state-owned geothermal electric company) to put up a plan to offer facilities for Bitcoin mining with very cheap, 100% clean, 100% renewable, 0 emissions energy from our volcanos,” he tweeted on Wednesday.
He has added that the above plans will “evolve very fast.”
President Bukele revealed the plans shortly after the Central American nation made history as the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender.
The bullish news has seen Bitcoin’s price soar 13.8% in the past 24 hours to currently trade around $37,246.
In January 2020, El Salvador rolled out a five-year plan for its geothermal power resources, with the Economic Takeoff Plan targeted at ensuring more of the geothermal energy ends up within the country’s overall energy use.
El Salvador reportedly has an energy potential of up to 644 Megawatts of geothermal power. However, the country is yet to tap into most of that as only 31% is currently being channeled into the energy matrix.
With a new generation well under development and promising up to 95MW of clean, zero-emissions energy, Bukele’s plans for a mining hub in large industrial parks could be realised sooner than expected.
Our engineers just informed me that they dug a new well, that will provide approximately 95MW of 100% clean, 0 emissions geothermal energy from our volcanos 🌋
Starting to design a full #Bitcoin mining hub around it.
What you see coming out of the well is pure water vapor 🇸🇻 pic.twitter.com/SVph4BEW1L
— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) June 9, 2021
Bitcoin mining has evolved to become so energy-intensive that critics have pointed out its potential impact on the environment. The debate around this topic saw Bitcoin’s price crash as Tesla stopped accepting BTC payments for its cars citing the use of fossil fuels to mine BTC as going contrary to its clean energy principle.
Data from Cambridge on Bitcoin’s electricity consumption shows that the Bitcoin network power usage accounts for 0.53% of the total global consumption. Of this, nearly 90% goes into mining.
