Bitcoin Mining Added To Iceland’s List of Industries That Are Running Out Of Energy

Iceland is cutting off power to the Bitcoin mining industry because there is a lot of demand for renewable energy.

Some industries in Iceland have been cut off because they aren’t needed, Bloomberg reports. This is because Iceland’s power grid isn’t enough.

Landsvirkjun, the country’s main electricity provider, is reportedly cutting back on supplies to aluminum smelters, data centers, fish meal factories and Bitcoin miners.

Sales & customer service VP for Landsvirkjun, Tinna Traustadottir, says that record supply played a big part in the determination.

They’re having trouble getting renewable energy to power their Bitcoin mining machines in the Nordic region, which also hasn’t always been willing to let them use electricity from other renewable sources, like wind and solar power.

Iceland, Scandinavia and Bitcoin

A lot of Bitcoin miners have recently moved to Iceland as well as to other Nordic countries because they can get cheap electricity there.

Companies such as Hive Blockchain, Genesis Mining and Bitfury have currently all set up shop in Iceland due to this benefit.

Even though the country is beautiful, the country’s energy officials aren’t very excited about Bitcoin mining. The CEO of Landsvirkjun warned this year that there can be very little extra energy in 2021 & 2022. In other parts of the Nordic region, officials have gone so far as to ban crypto mining that uses a lot of energy.

Finansinspektionen, the financial watchdog in Sweden, undertook just that in November this year, and they did it.

‘Sweden needs the renewables that crypto-asset producers are looking for to help with the climate transformation of our most important services, but more mining could make it more difficult for us to meet this same Paris Agreement,’, the country’s regulator said at the time.

‘Mining crypto assets that use a lot of energy should be banned.’

The Swedish regulator isn’t the only one who wants to crack down on crypto extraction, even if the mining is done with green power.

Digiconomist founding member Alex de Vries has said for a long time that you can’t sustainably waste resources. Using renewable energy for crypto mining isn’t the answer.