By Samuel Indyk
Investing.com – Argo Blockchain (LON:ARB) has announced that it is the first publicly traded cryptocurrency miner to become “Climate Positive” from Scope 1, 2 and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from the value chain associated with the company’s respective mining operations.
“Climate Positive” means that the company will address its own GHG emission to become carbon neutral and goes even further by mitigating emissions through support projects outside of Argo.
The cryptocurrency miner said it has achieved a number of significant milestones to date including the purchase of renewable energy credits retroactively for 2020 and for any remaining non-renewable electricity use, prioritising direct renewable purchases on-site or from a local gird, purchasing GHG offsets for any emissions associate with the Argo value chain, and purchasing additional offsets such as Verified Emissions Reductions to encourage reduction of emissions further.
“We are proud to be the first publicly traded company in the industry to report becoming climate positive and are pleased to announce our climate strategy,” said Argo Blockchain CEO Peter Wall. “This strategy is representative of our ongoing commitment to reducing our environmental impact and, importantly, ensures that the benefits of the actions taken are felt directly in the localities in which emissions occur as a result of Argo's operations.”
UNFCCC Climate Neutral Now initiative
Alongside the announcement, Argo also said it had to participate in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) Climate Neutral Now initiative. As a participant in the initiative, Argo will measure, reduce, contribute and report emissions on a yearly basis in order to achieve a Climate Neutral world by 2050.
The London-listed miner said it will also release an annual climate report, providing an overview of development within the company and wider sector.
“We are pleased to welcome Argo Blockchain as the first cryptocurrency miner to join Climate Neutral Now, and welcome its support, with other participants, in achieving a Climate Neutral world by 2050,” said Miguel Naranjo, Programme Officer at the UNFCCC secretariat.
Crypto industry and environmental impact
The cryptocurrency industry has come under increasing scrutiny in recent months for its environmental impact, highlighted when Elon Musk said Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) would stop accepting Bitcoin as payment for its vehicles, citing the energy usage of the network.
Estimates around the time of Musk’s intervention suggested that the Bitcoin network used as much energy as a country the size of the Netherlands or Argentina.
However, since then, China has cracked down on the cryptocurrency industry and many miners were forced to halt operations. According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, the amount of energy used on the network has almost halved from what it was in May, before the tougher Chinese regulations.