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

Company using renewable energy to power bitcoin operations hits major milestone: ‘A critic

April 3, 2025

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.

“Securing these land agreements is a critical achievement for Soluna,” John Belizaire, CEO of Soluna, said in a statement. “Project Rosa not only enhances our operational capacity but also reinforces our commitment to delivering sustainable, cutting-edge solutions in high performance computing.”

As Soluna moves closer to bringing the data center online, it will focus on completing the project’s first phase, which includes securing definitive power purchase and land agreements. The next step will be hashing out plans for Project Rosa with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, an independent system operator for 90% of the state’s electric grid.

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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Considering crypto mining uses more electricity than entire countries — including Poland and Egypt — per a University of Cambridge analysis, and demand is only increasing, it’s crucial for professional mining companies to lower the environmental impact of crypto and reduce strain on the energy grid.

Soluna says its green data centers are 18% cleaner than traditional ones, signaling a step in the right direction. A new blockchain technology platform, Gigatons, that launched in 2024 could also help decarbonize the digital currency sector. When the cryptocurrency network Ethereum transitioned its platform from a “proof-of-work” consensus mechanism to a “proof-of-stake” system, it reduced its energy use by a staggering 99.95%.

If more and more cryptocurrency platforms turn out to be less energy intensive, the industry may have an easier path to a more sustainable future even within those that still take a lot of energy, as there will be more time for scaling up renewable energy.

For instance, Mara Holdings’ recent acquisition of a Texas wind farm for bitcoin mining helps to put a bigger dent in the wider crypto world’s energy needs if several other significant platforms do not require as much energy at the same time; there are only so many wind farms in existence or able to be built at one time.

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“We are excited to launch Project Rosa and continue our momentum in developing the future with Renewable Computing,” Belizaire said in a 2024 Soluna news release. “This project represents a significant increase in our shovel-ready momentum as we grow our HPC and Bitcoin data center business.”