Powering The Revolution

Eden GeoPower is a clean energy company developing innovative solutions to power blockchain technology with geothermal resources. Renewal energy is and will continue to be crucial to our ever-evolving society especially as carbon emissions continue to affect climate change. At Eden GeoPower, we aim to not only offset these problems but also to power the technology of the future. Our method allows us to consume electricity on-site by targeting off-grid power consumers such as cryptocurrency miners and large data centers. Geothermal energy is one of the only renewable energy resources capable of providing a 24/7 (baseload) energy supply. Eden’s ultimate goal is to use blockchain’s “Proof-of-Work” power demands as an opportunity to build renewable energy infrastructure. This is important for cryptocurrency mining due to the 24/7 energy demands of miners.

Cryptocurrency Mining

In recent years, blockchain technologies have received traction in the financial sector as an alternative for the exchange of goods and services on a decentralized platform. However, this technological breakthrough comes at a high cost to the environment and energy sector. With headlines such as “Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge — we can’t afford to ignore it” and “One Bitcoin Transaction Consumes As Much Energy As Your House Uses in a Week”, the fear for the future of Bitcoin is at an all-time high. In a study by Dutch researcher Alex de Vries, it is estimated that the Bitcoin network consumes at least 2.55 gigawatts of electricity currently, and will consume 7.67 gigawatts in the future. This is more energy than both the country of Ireland and the country of Algeria consume in a year. If you think those numbers are outrageous, according to the Digicomist.com, the energy used to mine Bitcoin could power over 4,353,494 homes. It requires over 300 kilowatts an hour for one transaction. Compare this with Visa, which uses under 150 Kilowatts an hour which would result in over 100,000 transactions. Scaling this demand for all cryptocurrencies could create massive problems, to say the least. Therefore, we will initially build our infrastructure for developed off-grid cryptocurrency mining operations. These facilities will last for 20+ years and can be used for any emerging off-grid technologies that will benefit from baseload supplies of cheap renewable energy.

Eden GeoPower CEO Paris Smalls speaking at Boston New Technologies Night (BNT99)

Hydrogen Fuel

Not only is Eden focusing on providing power for blockchain technology, we are also committed to finding future use cases for off-grid power plants. The global hydrogen market is projected to grow from 146.4 billion USD in 2019 to 199.1 billion USD by end of 2023, growing at a CAGR of around 8%. In our opinion, widespread hydrogen fuel adoption will accelerate the clean energy transition. One of the major drawbacks of the hydrogen industry is the high energy costs related to hydrogen generation. Currently, the most effective process for generating hydrogen is Proton Exchange Membrane Electrolysis which has an 80% efficiency. Scientists believe the efficiency could improve to 86% around 2030. It is important to mention that hydrogen production today is not ideal due to the high energy demand and high emissions involved in using power from the grid. Currently, the DOE is working on generating hydrogen from renewable sources at distributed or centralized production centers as well as improving the capital costs and efficiency of electrolyzers.

The Eden team with our new “Pulsed Waveform Device” from an engineering firm in India

At Eden GeoPower, we plan to improve the efficiency of the electrolysis process by making use of supercritical water steam partially replacing energy in the form of heat that otherwise would be required in electricity for the electrolysis process. In consequence, the electrolysis process becomes more efficient in generating more Hydrogen per unit of power input.

Fight Carbon, Mine Bitcoin

There are many innovative renewable technologies. Of these, geothermal energy seems to be the most sustainable. If crypto mining explodes from the use of cheap, clean geothermal energy, we may be talking about a new monetary system for the future. This is a future Eden GeoPower would love to be the vanguard of for years to come.

Powering The Revolution was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.