Company using renewable energy to power bitcoin operations hits major milestone: 'A critical achievement'

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By Kristen Lawrence, The Cool Down. 

Excerpt: Soluna, a leading developer of sustainable data centers that convert excess renewable energy into computing power for energy-hungry applications — such as bitcoin mining and artificial intelligence — announced that it secured 60 acres of land to build a new 187-megawatt data center in Texas, an important milestone in its expansion efforts.  According to a company news release, the data center, called Project Rosa, will be conveniently co-located next to a 240 MW wind farm, allowing it to directly harness a significant amount of renewable energy. ...While capturing wasted power from solar and wind farms and hydropower plants reduces cryptocurrency's massive pollution footprint and adds capacity to the grid, many crypto transactions consume huge amounts of energy — often derived from dirty fuel sources such as coal, oil, and gas. According to a United Nations University study, nearly 70% of the electricity used to power bitcoin mining globally in 2020 and 2021 came from dirty energy sources. During this period, the mining process produced more than 85 million metric tons (around 94 million tons) of carbon pollution — equivalent to burning 84 billion pounds of coal, according to the study.... 

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