Japanese Energy Giant Tries the Green Way to Produce Billions of Dollars in Bitcoin!

The Japanese energy giant aims to produce billions of dollars in Bitcoin (BTC) using renewable resources.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) subsidiary has turned to Bitcoin mining in order to prevent waste of renewable energy and encourage its wider use. Tokyo-based company Agile Energy X Inc. is trying to mine Bitcoin using renewable energy.

Stating that this project is rare in Japan, the company’s president Kenji Tateiwa emphasized, “The success of this framework will lead to the use of more green energy.”

Tateiwa, who worked in TEPCO’s nuclear energy department for many years, said that he was inspired to start the project in 2018 when Kyushu Electric Power Co. began implementing large-scale “exit control.”

Tateiwa stated that renewable energy producers, especially during peak photovoltaic energy production during daylight hours, need to balance energy supply with demand, otherwise imbalances that could lead to large-scale power outages could occur. He said that this situation leads to waste of renewable energy production capacity.

Bitcoin mining is a process in which participants are rewarded for verifying transactions on the network of this digital currency with no central authority. However, this mining requires fast computers and a large amount of electricity.

In 2018, as the popularity of cryptocurrencies declined, Tateiwa saw that this mining process was criticized for consuming a large amount of energy, and developed the idea of ​​combining the two. He submitted an internal project proposal to elaborate on his idea and conducted extensive tests.

Tateiwa established Agile Energy X, a wholly owned subsidiary of TEPCO Power Grid Inc., in 2022. He said the move would allow innovative know-how to be shared with other energy companies.