Bitcoin mining firm Sangha Renewables aims to help renewable energy companies start their own bitcoin mines.
The pitch? Help the company turn otherwise wasted electrons into valuable digital currency. The hope? For every independent power producer to eventually adopt a similar business model. It’s no easy task. Giant energy companies are extremely conservative by nature, and slow to adopt new technologies. “In a lot of conversations, they'll be like, ‘Wait, so what's the catch?'” Marr said."We tell them there's no catch. This is real."One of the constraints large renewable energy companies often face is trapped energy — they produce electricity that nobody can consume.
This is where bitcoin mining, Marr realized, can provide a profitable solution. If a solar plant, or a wind farm, has the ability to convert, nearly instantly, its excess electricity into bitcoin instead of selling it at a loss, renewable energy companies could significantly boost their revenue. That, in turn, would make the financing of new green energy projects more palatable, and reduce the industry’s need for government subsidies.
“We’ve had conversations with in the past and appreciate their contributions to the growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem,” Andrew Myers, the firm’s founder, told CoinDesk. “Welcome to West Texas!” Part of the pitch is that the energy company itself doesn’t have to pay for anything. Sangha is raising $10.7 million from investors of all stripes — small funds or high net worth individuals with interests in real estate, energy, bitcoin mining or crypto in general. A bank will provide an additional $25 million loan secured against the project’s assets, like its mining equipment and electrical infrastructure.
“Picture wheat, or oil or gold. … There's a physical product, you can put it in a shipping container, and therefore it’s easy to trade it on an international scale regardless of where it is extracted,” Marr said. “Electricity hasn’t been capable of this because its production and consumption is local. There’s no such thing as generating an electron in Texas and selling it in China.”