Tesla, Block and Blockstream team up to build clean Bitcoin mining center in Texas, USA

Jack Dorsey's company Block (formerly Square) and blockchain technology company Blockstream are breaking ground on a solar and battery-powered Bitcoin mine in Texas, USA. The mine uses Tesla's solar and storage technology. Tesla's 3.8 megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic array and 12 megawatt-hours (MWh) Megapack will power the facility.

Blockstream CEO Adam Back made the announcement Friday at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami. Square and Blockstream announced their partnership last year as part of their commitment to carbon neutrality, with the two companies each committing $6 million to fund the pilot project, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2022.

Bitcoin mining has been under fire for its alleged carbon footprint. As BitTorrent reported earlier, last week, Greenpeace, the Environmental Working Group and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen launched a "greening" campaign to change the Bitcoin proof-of-work mining model.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has long said he would like to see more bitcoin mining rely on renewable energy.

West Texas is the mecca of renewable energy in the United States, with much of the wind and solar power concentrated in remote areas of the state. The Tesla photovoltaic and Megapack battery facility runs entirely on renewable energy, with a 3.8 MW Tesla solar array and 12 MWh battery generating 30 petahashes of mining power per second. According to Cryptocompare, at the current price of $43,676.41 per Bitcoin, the facility can mine approximately 4.11 BTC per month.

To put that in perspective, the Blockstream facility is tiny compared to the 300-megawatt mining center that RIOT Blockchain is building in Texas. When all RIOT equipment is deployed, the 100-acre mining farm will generate 750 megawatts of electricity.

But Blockstreams and its partners aren’t looking to build the largest Bitcoin mining facility in North America. Rather, they want to prove that Bitcoin mining can be done with all renewable energy sources, and to strengthen the Bitcoin network by diversifying the cryptocurrency’s energy sources.

Adam Back said: “This is a step towards proving our thesis that Bitcoin mining can finance zero-emission electricity infrastructure and build economic growth for the future.”

Real-time operational and financial information about the mine, including its energy consumption and hash rate, will be publicly available in a dashboard accessible 24/7 from any browser, providing the industry with a real, live case study of a zero-emissions energy Bitcoin mine.

Back mentioned that if its mining project with Block is successful after the pilot phase, the participating companies will add wind energy to the solar project and expand the project.

Neil Jorgensen, global head of ESG at Block and project lead for Block’s Bitcoin Clean Energy Initiative, said: “By working with Blockstream to develop this full-stack, 100% solar-powered Bitcoin mining project, using Tesla’s solar and storage technology, we aim to further accelerate the synergy of Bitcoin with renewable energy.”