Since 2019, rising costs of fossil fuels have forced mining to rethink the “cost-dependency-violation” triangle. Meanwhile, storage, grid flexibility, and interconnect lead times are still catching up. Against this background, and anxiety miners feel about all-in-power costs (Capex + Opex) – we went for a deep dive with Haipo Yang, founder and CEO of VIABTC.
How much of Bitcoin mining is using clean energy today, and where is it heading?
Hypoyan: The share of clean energy is steadily increasing. Since 2019, fossil fuel prices have risen, so more miners have moved to cleaner sources with a better cost curve. From what can be seen in the VIABTC user sample, about 40-50% of miners still rely on fossil fuels. The rest is mainly made up of clean energy. Hydroelectric power remains the dominant clean, dispatchable source. This accounts for about 30-40% on its own. Solar, wind, associated gases and other emerging sources together are still under 20%, but that percentage is clearly rising.
Miners who stick to fossil energy are usually found in resource-rich areas. Texas is a good example. Powerful grids and infrastructure, ample natural gas, and plenty of sites. Other places where fossil resources are abundant but transmissions are constrained or wheel costs are high, operators monetize surplus electricity locally through mining.
Hydroelectric power has been my favorite clean sauce for a long time. Russia, Canada, parts of South America, and Africa all have abundant hydropower. Major Russian miners tend to concentrate in Siberia, where hydropower is abundant. Paraguay, Bhutan and Ethiopia are captivating large operators such as Bitdeer and Hive Digital thanks to utility-scale dams.
Solar has been attracting a lot of attention these days, but burning solar with storage remains a constraint, so most setups run on PV-Plus-Grid models to stabilize supply. The use of related gases from oil and gas fields is also common in Canada, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Argentina. Nuclear power has not seen widespread adoption in the mining industry. Height, cycles and license cycles extend the timeline. And while waste-to-energy generally has higher generation costs, non-licors funding and policy support have made some early pilots possible.
At a high level, the industry’s energy mix is clearly shifting towards clean power, even when firepower, storage and grid buildouts continue.
What are the biggest challenges in expanding renewable-equipped mining?
Hypoyan: Electricity is the largest ongoing cost of miners, often 30% to 70% of revenue. So the core trade-off is price versus hardness. Mining is sensitive to both. Predictable rewards require long, stable runtimes and require you to push down electricity prices to protect margins.
Fossil fuels are stable and mature in ecosystems, so they remain relevant, but costs continue to rise. Since 2019, rising coal prices have driven up thermal and electricity costs. In many regions hosting thermally indexed tariffs, it’s 50% or twice as much. That’s one of the reasons that clean energy share has grown.
Of the clean sauces, hydro is the most mature. The infrastructure is proven on a large scale. However, this is constrained by geography and hydrology (seasonality). In the early years, miners even “chasing forces” moved to areas of surplus electricity in dry seasons. Fortunately, hydroelectric power is often paired with pumped storage water (PSH). This is the world’s largest form of grid-scale energy storage. Some Siberian stations allow multiple years of water to keep supply balanced.
The sun and wind are moving quickly and already working in certain scenarios, but 24/7 availability still leaps heavily towards grid access and storage. Their leveled power costs (LCOEs) are often lower than traditional power, but the storage LCOEs remain relatively high. If the PV is well developed, PV tariffs could be around 70% of the thermal or hydro rate, but storage costs ~2x PV tariffs, effectively lifting all-in prices. In Latin America, to provide some ranges, the big winds often range from around $0.018-0.035/kWh, and the PV is around $0.017-0.023/kWh. In reality, some miners can raise PVs for around $0.035-0.042/kWh, but the associated storage is around $0.085/kWh. Therefore, many operations blend PVs with industrial grid supplies or PPAs to manage the total cost.
Policy is also extremely important. Many countries invest through capital subsidies, production or investment tax credits, capacity management mechanisms, and Grid Upgrad Funds to integrate renewable energy. **Canada’s Smart Linabil Energy Initiative, Russia’s capacity and assembly subsidies, and Gulf sovereign investors – PIF of Saudi Arabia, Qatar Investment Authority, and national energy organizations in Oman – ** are accelerating the sun and wind. As policy support and capital flows deepen, renewable infrastructure is more persuasive for miners.
Do you expect more mining companies to embrace renewable energy? What do I need?
Hypoyan: I am optimistic. Power systems around the world are greening, and mining is sensitive to the high costs associated with portable loads, so our industry is adopted faster than many others.
More generator-minar partnerships are already being seen to absorb cuts and reduce recollections. Marathon Digital acquired Texas’ 114 MW wind farm to earn reduced off-peak winds. Last year, Hive Digital announced plans for a 100 MW hydroelectric data centre in Paraguay. The riot platform invested in reformed energy. This uses plasma gasification to convert urban waste into electricity.
From now on, three objective conditions will become the decisive driver. First, economics: once renewable energy is a full-cycle storage inclusive foundation, intimately debilitating the power of fossils, miners have no economic basis for relying on coal or gas, and progressive hashrates naturally migrate to clean and hard energy. Second, infrastructure and storage: only if the grid significantly reduces greater dispatchability, auxiliary services, congestion relief, and storage costs, miners run on stable year-round output, eliminating the need for fossil fuels as a “birthroad” backstop.
Policy signal is the third catalyst. If a major jurisdiction introduces clear incentives (green tax mitigation, clean power credit, accelerated depreciation, preferential wheels, or explicit clean energy requirements for calculations), these measurements become inflection points. We’ve already seen this in the Middle East, where several oil producers have announced their carbon-centric roadmap. By 2030, Saudi Arabia is targeting 50% of renewable energy. The UAE is aiming to raise renewable energy to 32% by 2030, with Kuwait, Oman and Qatar accelerating PV and wind construction. These policies and investments not only speed up the local energy transition, but also open up new seating options and contract structures for Bitcoin mining companies.
With economic, technical and policy conditions mature in tandem, more Bitcoin mining companies are retreating as they move towards renewable energy and design and to “solid” uptime designs.
Large miners can use policy and capital to ensure cheaper electricity. Is it at risk of focusing global hashrates? What does this mean for small miners?
Hypoyan: Large operators have advantages. They can invest directly in the generation and either source electricity below the grid price or sign PPAs for a long period of time to lock costs and reduce risk. Public miners like marathons can tap on the stock market to deploy the latest generation, highly efficient ASICs, and large-scale clean energy projects. This supports continuous expansion. To give a sense of scale, Theminermag said in January 2024 that 19 self-mediated public miners produced 22% of the network BTC. This year, that figure was around 30%, reflecting an increase in hashrate share.
The bars are higher, but they aren’t out of the game, as small and medium-sized miners are hard to match these electricity costs. We are still seeing many small RIG operators at VIABTC relying on pools for stable cash flow. At around $0.06/kWh, the disruptive BTC prices for mainstream rigs, including typical home units, often range from $50,000 to $70,000, and are still below the spot level of nearly $100,000. Small miners also benefit from flexibility and ingenuity. In higher latitude regions, some reuse the waste heat from ASICs for heating the home, increasing overall energy efficiency and reducing effective costs.
How do you see the role of mining pools evolving as costs rise?
Hypoyan: If capital and energy benefits serve as a measure for large miners, pools continue to open and decentralize bitcoin mining.
The pool has dramatically lowered the barrier. Early mining was aimed at tinkers. I’ve configured the software or even written it myself. I know this firsthand. I write my first VIABTC code myself and remember how high those hurdles were. Today you connect your rig to the pool and you’re there. Whether you’re on a big farm at home or running some machines, the pool offers stable and predictable payments.
Block discovery is probabilistic: more hashrate means higher odds. Without the pool, small miners struggle to get blocks in a reasonable time frame, leaving and direct networks towards centralisation. Our PPS+ Payout Model helps participants of all sizes share their rewards fairly, maintain wide participation, and keep their networks safe.
There is also the misconception that pools create decentralization risks, as they appear to “control” most of the hashrate. The pool does not own a hashrate. They can switch pools at any time. If the pool acts against the miners’ interests, the hashrate will transition. This is a powerful market check that actually protects decentralization.
In 2021, VIABTC opened sourced the Bitcoin Pool Stack. This absorbed various merged coin services, protocol implementations, modules. A technically sloping miner can be built on it to optimize or launch its own services. I believe in open source. It’s good for the health of the community, and invites more people to participate and benefit from mining.
At the end of the day, whether the hashrate is large or modest, or you are deep and technical or not, the pool is a coordinating tier and payment infrastructure that makes combining and gaining easier.