APPLICATION

Ark and Square release whitepaper on renewable energy mining as the future, Musk responds: "Indeed"

share
Ark and Square release whitepaper on renewable energy mining as the future, Musk responds: "Indeed"

Payment startup Square and investment firm Ark Invest jointly released a whitepaper on 4/22 today, emphasizing that Bitcoin has accelerated the global transition to renewable energy sources. The paper evaluates the positive impact of solar-powered energy storage facilities on Bitcoin mining.

《Bitcoin is Key to an Abundant, Clean Energy Future》

The white paper titled "Bitcoin is Key to an Abundant, Clean Energy Future" echoes the same argument previously made by Ark Invest; and last year, Square announced its "Bitcoin Clean Energy Investment Initiative" to promote green energy mining research and plans to fully transition to green energy mining by 2030.

Solar, Renewable Energy Mining

The report is based on four main points:

  • Bitcoin accelerates the adoption of renewable energy
  • Solar and wind energy face storage and grid congestion issues
  • Mining is highly flexible and can be easily paused, helping to address storage and grid congestion issues
  • With further development of renewable energy, power plants are more likely to approach zero marginal cost

In essence, solar and wind power are cheaper compared to fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas and should ideally be widely adopted, but are currently hindered by storage problems: "Excess capacity during low demand periods and insufficient capacity during peak demand periods."

Bitcoin miners, as unique buyers of renewable energy, have highly flexible mining operations that can be paused at any time, resolving the intermittency issue of energy supply, and Ark Invest's research director Brett Winton also proposed the use of "solar batteries" to address the storage issues of solar energy.

The curve in the image represents different combinations of energy capacity of various solar batteries, enabling the average distribution of energy between different time periods.

Source: wintonark

The report emphasizes that the coexistence of Bitcoin miners, renewable energy, and storage projects will increase returns for investors and developers, further driving the development of renewable energy. The report concludes:

Bitcoin and the energy market are merging, and we believe today's energy service providers could become tomorrow's miners.

Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk Praise

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey also retweeted the white paper and tweeted:

Bitcoin will incentivize renewable energy.

Musk also responded in agreement, and later promoted his own energy product, the "Powerwall battery for home energy storage," claiming that Tesla's solar panels combined with energy storage can enable users to live self-sufficiently without electricity bills.