Turning Garbage into Bitcoin with Adam Wright - WBD526

Adam 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.


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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.