In her monthly Expert Take column, Selva Ozelli, an international tax attorney and CPA, covers the intersection between emerging technologies and sustainability, and provides the latest developments around taxes, AML/CFT regulations and legal issues affecting crypto and blockchain. The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), where I exhibited my art, took place in Glasgow, Scotland and ended with the adoption of the Glasgow Climate Pact, bringing nearly 200 countries closer to keeping global temperature rise by 2100 under 1.5 degrees Celsius. The conference remained more focused on emission reductions than on developed countries’ provisions of support to developing countries, …

Major players in the Bitcoin (BTC) mining industry have their sights set on nuclear energy as pressure mounts to go green. Nuclear energy could present a “tremendous opportunity” to introduce “enormous amounts of clean, carbon-free” energy to the base load, said GRIID vice president Harry Sudok at the ‘Bitcoin & Beyond Virtual Summit’ on Nov. 10. GRIDD is an American company that procures low-cost, renewable energy to build vertically-integrated Bitcoin mining facilities. According to Sudock, past subsidy programs and discourse about renewable energy have largely focused on solar and wind power and neglected to consider the potential benefits of nuclear …

Now responsible for the second biggest contribution to the Bitcoin hashrate, Kazakhstan’s energy grid may be unprepared to handle the addition of many cryptocurrency miners from China and others looking to capitalize on low cost electricity. In a Nov. 10 report from Reuters, government officials in Kazakhstan estimate that unregistered crypto miners in the country could be consuming twice as much power as those registered to avoid paying taxes and other fees. Together, all crypto miners in the country could be using as much as 1.2 gigawatts, or roughly 8% of Kazakhstan's total power generation capacity. According to Murat Zhurebekov, …

In an announcement to Reuters News on Thursday morning, Brazillian cryptocurrency exchange Mercado Bitcoin said it has signed an agreement with Comerc, one of the main retail energy providers in Brazil, to develop renewable energy tokens. Mercado Bitcoin and Comerc seek to implement two types of tokens. The first, set to launch in 2022, will be tied to a cashback scheme for solar energy generation. Currently, Comerc customers receive up to 15% to 20% of their electricity bills' value in cashbacks should they choose to switch to solar energy. The second token will be linked to certificates that document energy …

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul has been asked by a group of local businesses to deny permits for converting the city’s old fossil-fuel power plants into crypto mining centers. The request comes in the form of a letter co-signed by a number of organizations, businesses and labor groups. The letter calls for an environmental assessment for proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrency mining in the state of New York while urging Governor Hochul to deny permits to convert the Greenidge Generating Station and the Fortistar North Tonawanda power plants into crypto mining facilities: “Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency mining use enormous amounts of energy to …

The age of digital transformation has arrived, leading traditional industries to adopt new technologies to accommodate a fully digital future. As such, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the trillion dollar oil and gas industry has quietly started to leverage blockchain technology for business success. Douglas Heintzman, chief catalyst at the Blockchain Research Institute, told Cointelegraph that the oil and gas sector is particularly ripe for blockchain development due to its uniquely positioned supply chain: “There are many participants in downstream and upstream operations within the oil and gas industry.” He added further: “The industry must now look at …

MintGreen, a Canada-based cleantech cryptocurrency miner, will be partnering with the Lonsdale Energy Corporation to supply heat to residents of North Vancouver in British Columbia starting in 2022. In a Thursday announcement, MintGreen said its “digital boilers” — which it claims can recover more than 96% of the electricity used for Bitcoin (BTC) mining — will prevent 20,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases per megawatt from entering the atmosphere during its arrangement with North Vancouver. The recovered energy will be used to heat 100 residential and commercial buildings in the Canadian city with a population of roughly 155,000. Colin Sullivan, …

Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that it’s “still premature” to use cryptocurrencies for settling trades of energy resources such as oil. The Russian president discussed potential use cases of cryptocurrencies in a Thursday CNBC interview following a plenary session of the Russian Energy Week forum. According to a full interview text published on the Kremlin’s official website, Putin said that private cryptocurrencies “can act as a unit of account,” but they are “very unstable.” “Cryptocurrency oil contracts? It’s too early to talk about it. It works for transferring funds from one place to another, but in terms of trading, especially …

Link Global Technologies, a Bitcoin (BTC) mining company listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange, is facing major potential penalties for operating unauthorized power plants in the province of Alberta. The Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC), the province’s power utility regulator, issued on Sept. 24 another enforcement submission against Link Global, with enforcement staff recommending several penalties for violations of Alberta’s legislative requirements. According to a document shared with Cointelegraph, the AUC’s enforcement staff recommended that Link Global should pay an economic disgorgement of about 2 million Canadian dollars ($1.6 million) for financial gains from unlawful electricity generation. The regulator is seeking …

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele shared a video showing the apparent progress of the country’s Bitcoin (BTC) mining plant powered by volcanic geothermal energy. The video shows an overview of a power generation facility, with technicians enabling crypto mining rigs. First steps... #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/duhHvmEnym — Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) September 28, 2021 Bukele did not elaborate much on the process shown on the video, only writing “first steps” with a Bitcoin tag alongside emojis depicting a volcano and El Salvador’s national flag. The president’s office did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment. The post comes months after Bukele announced plans …

As the crypto landscape continues to evolve, one clear theme has emerged as a constant – the need to shift towards a world with renewable energy. Green Life Energy Global (GNL) is a project that envisions a future where crypto can be part of the solution. “GNL is about bringing the blockchain a bit further not just only creating the next big crypto asset, but also changing the whole financial sector on energy and recycling payments,” said the project. To execute this vision, GNL wants to start with the proceeds from its initial coin offering (ICO). The project claims that …

Bitcoin (BTC) may be the last thing one might consider when thinking about ways to ensure a clean-energy future. This has especially become the case following a tweet sent by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk back in May, in which he stated that Tesla would stop accepting BTC payments due to the increasing usage of fossil fuels for mining. Yet raising awareness around the high energy costs typically associated with Bitcoin mining didn’t negatively impact the crypto ecosystem — in fact, it did just the opposite. Following Musk’s tweet, a number of cryptocurrency mining companies came out of the woodwork to …