• Japan’s Tepco, which is the world’s fourth-largest electric utility company globally, is venturing into Bitcoin mining with green energy.
• Tepco intends to use thousands of gigawatts of electricity that would have otherwise been potentially wasted as Japan’s capacity to produce green power exceeds supply at peak times.

Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) is diving into Bitcoin mining, and it’s using renewable energy.

Tepco is Japan’s largest electric utility company and the fourth-largest in the world after Germany’s RWE and E.ON, as well as France’s  Électricité de France. A report by local newspaper Asahi Shimbun revealed that the company is venturing into Bitcoin mining through Agile Energy X, a wholly-owned subsidiary established in 2018.

The initiative is led by longtime Tepco executive Kenji Tateiwa. In an interview with the paper, Tateiwa revealed that the idea came to him as a viable solution for Japan’s “output control,” where utility companies encourage power generators to limit production so as not to overload the grid. Unlike with non-renewable energy, green energy can be unpredictable and seasonal; for instance, solar panels produce the highest amount of energy around noon and are inactive at night, while wind turbines are only active when there are strong winds.

To combat overproduction, most grid operators in Japan limit the producers’ output during these peak production times. This leads to plenty of infrastructure lying idle, waiting to be called upon.

Tateiwa wants to capitalize on this potentially wasted energy to mine Bitcoin, and he believes the ripple effect could be more investment in green energy.

“What we are doing has few parallels in Japan. The success of our framework would prompt more green energy to be introduced,” he told the paper.

Green Energy Mining Bitcoin

Tateiwa is not the first to target Bitcoin mining with ‘wasted’ energy. Miners across the US have been utilizing this unused or underproduced energy to mine digital currency. In some places like Texas, the miners submit to the grid operator to stop mining whenever called upon so that the energy can be channeled to more urgent needs, such as heating homes during the winter (although this has proven controversial in places like Texas as the grid operator ends up paying them for the downtime).

In Japan, Tateiwa believes that the potential is in billions of dollars. According to an Asahi Shimbun newspaper survey, Japan suppressed the production of 1,920 gigawatt-hours of electricity last year alone.

This is just the tip of the iceberg: the Japanese government targets carbon neutrality by 2050 and wants green energy to supply 60% of the country’s needs. Under this setup, the amount of potentially wasted energy is close to 240,000 gigawatt-hours annually.

Under such conditions, even tapping a tenth of this electricity could allow Tepco to mine BTC worth $2.5 billion, Tateiwa estimates.

Meanwhile, BTC trades at $57,170, gaining 3.3% as it led a wider recovery that pushed the overall industry market cap above $2 trillion.

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