Marathon Digital Holdings launched a project on May 31, 2024, to recycle heat from its 2-megawatt data center in Satakunta, Finland, heating a town of 11,000 residents.
Leading Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: MARA) today unveiled a creative pilot project to recycle heat produced by Bitcoin mining and heat a neighborhood in Finland.
Energized at the end of May, the 2-megawatt data center is situated in the Satakunta region, which is inhabited by 11,000 people.
“This pilot project in Finland is a critical step forward in our strategy to expand globally and innovate sustainably,” said Fred Thiel, Marathon’s chairman and CEO.
“We are not just producing digital assets; we are heating homes and integrating sustainable practices into our business model. We believe that this kind of innovation can drive the advancement of the digital asset compute industry and further strengthen Marathon’s leading position in the field.”
With this project, Marathon is launching its district heating system for the first time in Europe. To heat nearby buildings, district heating entails heating water in the center and spreading it via subterranean pipes. Finland, which prides itself on having a clean energy mix, uses a lot of biomass for district heating. Through the utilization of heat from digital asset data centers, the project seeks to lower operating costs and carbon emissions.
Marathon said in its latest Heating with Hashes study (pdf below) that “Europe’s colder climate has given rise to an extensive network of district heating systems that provide warmth to millions of residents.”
“This same climate has attracted a different industry – data centers – which benefit from reduced energy consumption and infrastructure costs associated with the cooler temperatures. The share of electricity consumed by data centers in the EU is at least double the global average, with data centers accounting for around 3% of the EU’s electricity consumption compared, to 1.0-1.5% globally. These energy-intensive facilities generate 3 significant amounts of heat, creating a unique opportunity for strategic partnerships with district heating systems.”
“One industry needs heat, while the other generates plenty of it,” Marathon continued in the report.
“Instead of wasting the abundant heat produced by data centers, it could be recycled to meet heating demand. This innovation transforms an unwanted byproduct of data centers into a valuable resource for district heating systems, reducing costs and waste for everyone involved while reducing the need for inefficient, carbon-emitting heat sources.”
The project is a component of Marathon’s larger sustainability initiative, which has seen the company expand to twelve locations on four continents. The district heating market is expected to expand from $198 billion to $340 billion by 2033, providing substantial development prospects, according to Future Market Insights Inc. In line with its objective of obtaining zero-cost power for digital asset computing, Marathon hopes to expand its portfolio of sustainability initiatives and investigate new income opportunities through heat recycling.
“Following the success of our pilot project in Utah, where we demonstrated that it is both economically viable and environmentally beneficial to use landfill gas for digital asset compute, we have continued to experiment with innovative ways that our operations can add value beyond securing distributed ledgers, like Bitcoin’s,” stated Adam Swick, Marathon’s chief growth officer.Â
“This pilot project in Finland is our first attempt to convert the heat that we produce as a byproduct of our operations into a valuable resource for a local community. We look forward to gathering more data from this project as we look for additional ways to leverage digital asset compute to build a more sustainable future.”
Recently, GreatGameIndia reported that according to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine, El Salvador is unleashing “volcano energy” with a planned 241-megawatt Bitcoin mining operation.
You can read the report below:
Heating-with-Hashes