Turning Garbage into Bitcoin with Adam Wright

“You could either mine Bitcoin on one small landfill for a year, or you could plant 5 million trees and let them grow for 10 years - both of those are going to have the same environmental impact.”— Adam WrightAdam Wright is a Co-Founder and CEO of Vespene Energy. In this interview, we discuss using landfill methane to power Bitcoin mining, turning waste into an asset, reducing greenhouse emissions, building decentralised baseload energy facilities, and orange pilling local government. - - - - According to the Environmental Defense Fund, a leading environmental nonprofit organisation, methane has more than 80 times the warming power of CO2 and drives at least 25% of today’s global warming. Further, it is a short-lived greenhouse gas remaining potent for just 12 years. And yet, for many years climate change strategies focused on reducing man-made carbon emissions. This is changing: “Reducing human-caused methane emissions is one of the most cost-effective strategies to rapidly reduce the rate of warming and contribute significantly to global efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C… Focused strategies specifically targeting methane need to be implemented to achieve sufficient methane mitigation.” UN Global Methane Assessment 2021. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a third of US methane emissions are generated by landfills. The EPA recognises that methane recovery is not widespread around the world due to a lack of knowledge regarding technologies, and investment challenges. Last year the EPA issued new mandatory guidelines to reduce these emissions within the US. So, imagine you were a municipal official with responsibility for landfills, and someone told you they would: take responsibility for converting methane emissions into EPA-compliant carbon emissions, pay you for the privilege with a profit share deal, and, for isolated landfills, build out the potential for a decentralised energy facility. In short, they could turn waste from being a liability, into an asset. This is what Vespene Energy is proposing. It is hoping to orange pill state and local authorities with their vision of turning methane into Bitcoin. It is another exciting opportunity that Bitcoin opens up; another demonstrable rebuttal of the environmental FUD - enabling the rapid build-out of energy facilities across the thousands of landfill sites across the US, and then the world, whilst tackling climate change. It really is alchemy.- - - - This episode’s sponsors:Gemini - Buy Bitcoin instantlyBlockFi - The future of Bitcoin financial servicesBitcasino - The Future of Gaming is herePacific Bitcoin - Bitcoin‑only event, Nov 10 & 11, 2022Ledger - State of the art Bitcoin hardware walletCompass Mining - Bitcoin mining & hostingCake Wallet - Open-source, privacy-focused Bitcoin walletBCB Group - Global digital financial Services-----WBD526 - Show Notes-----If you enjoy The What Bitcoin Did Podcast you can help support the show by doing the following:Become a Patron and get access to shows early or help contributeMake a tip:Bitcoin: 3FiC6w7eb3dkcaNHMAnj39ANTAkv8Ufi2SQR Codes: BitcoinIf you do send a tip then please email me so that I can say thank youSubscribe on iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | Deezer | TuneIn | RSS FeedLeave a review on iTunesShare the show and episodes with your friends and familySubscribe to the newsletter on my websiteFollow me on Twitter Personal | Twitter Podcast | Instagram | Medium | YouTubeIf you are interested in sponsoring the show, you can read more about that here or please feel free to drop me an email to discuss options.