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Artificial intelligence is also involved.
Categorizing Crusoe Energy is not easy. The startup is a Bitcoin miner and data center operator. It’s a “high-performance” and “carbon-negative” cloud platform provider. It’s a darling of the clean tech world that’s raised nearly $750 million in funding. The company has historically powered its operations with natural gas, but its overall business model actually reduces emissions. Confused yet?
Here are the basics. The company was founded in 2018 to address the problem of natural gas flaring. Natural gas is a byproduct of oil extraction, and if oil field operators have no economical use case for the gas or are unable to transfer it elsewhere, it’s often simply burned. If you, like me, have spent time sourcing stock images of air pollution, you’ve probably seen the pictures of giant flames coming out of tall smokestacks near oil pump jacks and other drilling infrastructure. That’s what flaring natural gas looks like, and it is indeed terrible for the environment. That’s largely because the process fails to fully combust methane, which is the primary component of natural gas and 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.
That’s where Crusoe comes in. The company’s co-founder, president, and chief operating officer, Cully Cavness was working in the oil and gas industry when he realized that stranded natural gas could be harnessed to power Bitcoin-mining data centers if they were sited directly next to the oil field infrastructure. Burning natural gas for electricity production fully combusts methane, producing CO2 as a byproduct. Still bad, you might say! But it’s definitely not as bad as methane leaking into the atmosphere via flaring, the status quo where Crusoe operates.
So regardless of what one might think of the utility of Bitcoin mining overall, “if you were to delete what we’re doing you would just have a big ball of fire and that would be worse,” Cavness told me.
Plus, it’s dirt cheap. “It is the lowest cost way to generate power that we’ve ever seen,” Cavness said, though he wouldn’t disclose exactly how much Crusoe pays the oil companies for their natural gas. “This is truly a waste product. I mean, there is no value being ascribed to it.”
According to Crusoe’s most recent ESG report, for every ton of CO2 equivalent that the company produced in 2022, it reduced over 1.6 tons through avoided methane emissions. And the opportunity for growth is enormous. “There is a huge amount of flared gas around the world,” Cavness said. “If you captured it all, it would power like two thirds of all of Europe’s electricity and it would power the entire data center industry many times over.”
Of course, in an ideal world, flared gas wouldn’t even be an option. There have been some state level-efforts to ban “routine flaring” in Colorado, New Mexico, and Alaska, but enforcement has often fallen short. “Nothing about flaring should be routine,” Deborah Gordon, a methane expert at the think tank RMI, told me. “It should be an emergency piece of equipment. It’s there to handle a burst of gas that would otherwise present a safety problem to the people on the ground.”
But in the places where Crusoe operates, Cavness said flare gas is available 98% to 99% of the time. Today, the company has about 30 sites located throughout all the major oil fields in the U.S., plus one facility in Argentina.
Gordon views circumstances like this, where gas is being perpetually flared, as “opportunities to decommission” oil wells. But given sheer demand, that may not be an economically or politically feasible solution in the short term. Last year was a record-setting one for oil production, as the U.S. pumped more than any country had in history.
So given that oil isn’t going to disappear overnight, this particular fossil-fuel powered Bitcoin miner has been wildly successful with climate-focused investors. Two years ago, Crusoe closed its $350 million Series C round, led by clean tech investor G2 Venture Partners with participation by existing climate tech venture firms Lowercarbon Capital and MCJ Collective, among others.
“It’s not just the lowest hash rate for Bitcoin mining, or the cheapest cost of compute. It’s also the greenest and when those two things are true, you’ve got an amazing business on your hands,” Clay Dumas, a partner at Lowercarbon Capital, told me. He views shutting down oil fields that flare natural gas as simply “not tractable” given today’s energy environment.
But now Crusoe is shifting its focus on multiple fronts. Cavness told me the company never planned to build its long-term business solely around Bitcoin mining, though historically nearly all of its revenue has come from the famously volatile world of cryptocurrencies. His co-founder, Chase Lochmiller, has a masters in computer science with a focus on artificial intelligence and has long understood AI’s energy demands.
“And so since way before ChatGPT, we’d had a view that GPU computing was going to be actually the bigger opportunity and the bigger driver of data center power demand. And if we could align that with wasted energy sources and other curtailed energy sources, it could be a really effective approach to reduce costs and also reduce emissions,” Cavness told me.
Last year the company expanded its Crusoe Cloud service, which is essentially its version of Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. It works like this: Crusoe builds the data centers (or co-locates with existing facilities), buys the GPU servers, and operates a software layer on top of it all. Then, companies looking to train AI models or synthesize large datasets pay to access Crusoe Cloud over the internet, remotely spinning up Crusoe’s GPU clusters to do the hard lifting.
Last month, Cavness said that the majority of the company’s revenue came from its AI data centers, outpacing Bitcoin revenue for the first time. If all goes according to plan, AI will comprise more than 75% of the company’s revenue by year’s end. “You couldn’t really have timed the launch of a cloud business focused on generative AI much better than they did,” Dumas told me.
Then, as the world (potentially and eventually) moves away from oil, Crusoe is also shifting its focus towards stranded renewable assets. That means sourcing power from areas where there’s excess wind, solar, hydropower, or geothermal on the grid, which leads to curtailment or negative pricing for these resources. “So that’s how we think about operating on the other side of the energy transition,” Cavness told me. This business model, he said, creates an incentive for renewable operators to build even more capacity, since they know they’ll have customers for their excess energy.
Of course, Crusoe isn’t the only company and data centers aren’t the only industry looking to access the cheap power that stranded renewables can supply. Excess clean energy could be used to make green hydrogen, provide heating and cooling for buildings, operate direct air capture facilities, or power microgrids. If renewables are used to mine speculative cryptocurrencies, many would likely argue there are worthier opportunities.
But high compute data centers — whether they’re mining Bitcoin or training AI models — do have one major advantage. “You can talk about highest use from a CO2 avoidance standpoint. But generally, the market is going to treat highest use as the greatest willingness to pay,” Dumas told me. “At this particular moment, it’s hard for me to imagine any application that has a higher willingness to pay, and that is more deployable than data centers.”
Crusoe wouldn’t reveal what portion of its operations run on renewables vs. natural gas. The company’s current focus is expanding its Crusoe Cloud service in Iceland, partnering with an existing data center that’s powered by the country’s abundant hydropower and geothermal energy. Crusoe also says it’s working to develop domestic behind-the-meter wind and solar projects, which would be separate from the main grid and directly supply their data centers with power, though none have been formally announced yet.
Ultimately though, whether Crusoe uses renewables or flare gas, whether it mines Bitcoin or trains AI models, investors have decided that it’s undeniably better than business as usual. “You can complain all you want about the carbon emissions of Bitcoin and compute, but they’re not going anywhere except for up,” Dumas told me, saying it’s incumbent upon us to bring this new computational power to market as cleanly as possible. “And that’s really what Crusoe’s in a position to do.”
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On environmental justice grants, melting glaciers, and Amazon’s carbon credits
Current conditions: Severe thunderstorms are expected across the Mississippi Valley this weekend • Storm Martinho pushed Portugal’s wind power generation to “historic maximums” • It’s 62 degrees Fahrenheit, cloudy, and very quiet at Heathrow Airport outside London, where a large fire at an electricity substation forced the international travel hub to close.
President Trump invoked emergency powers Thursday to expand production of critical minerals and reduce the nation’s reliance on other countries. The executive order relies on the Defense Production Act, which “grants the president powers to ensure the nation’s defense by expanding and expediting the supply of materials and services from the domestic industrial base.”
Former President Biden invoked the act several times during his term, once to accelerate domestic clean energy production, and another time to boost mining and critical minerals for the nation’s large-capacity battery supply chain. Trump’s order calls for identifying “priority projects” for which permits can be expedited, and directs the Department of the Interior to prioritize mineral production and mining as the “primary land uses” of federal lands that are known to contain minerals.
Critical minerals are used in all kinds of clean tech, including solar panels, EV batteries, and wind turbines. Trump’s executive order doesn’t mention these technologies, but says “transportation, infrastructure, defense capabilities, and the next generation of technology rely upon a secure, predictable, and affordable supply of minerals.”
Anonymous current and former staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency have penned an open letter to the American people, slamming the Trump administration’s attacks on climate grants awarded to nonprofits under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The letter, published in Environmental Health News, focuses mostly on the grants that were supposed to go toward environmental justice programs, but have since been frozen under the current administration. For example, Climate United was awarded nearly $7 billion to finance clean energy projects in rural, Tribal, and low-income communities.
“It is a waste of taxpayer dollars for the U.S. government to cancel its agreements with grantees and contractors,” the letter states. “It is fraud for the U.S. government to delay payments for services already received. And it is an abuse of power for the Trump administration to block the IRA laws that were mandated by Congress.”
The lives of 2 billion people, or about a quarter of the human population, are threatened by melting glaciers due to climate change. That’s according to UNESCO’s new World Water Development Report, released to correspond with the UN’s first World Day for Glaciers. “As the world warms, glaciers are melting faster than ever, making the water cycle more unpredictable and extreme,” the report says. “And because of glacial retreat, floods, droughts, landslides, and sea-level rise are intensifying, with devastating consequences for people and nature.” Some key stats about the state of the world’s glaciers:
In case you missed it: Amazon has started selling “high-integrity science-based carbon credits” to its suppliers and business customers, as well as companies that have committed to being net-zero by 2040 in line with Amazon’s Climate Pledge, to help them offset their greenhouse gas emissions.
“The voluntary carbon market has been challenged with issues of transparency, credibility, and the availability of high-quality carbon credits, which has led to skepticism about nature and technological carbon removal as an effective tool to combat climate change,” said Kara Hurst, chief sustainability officer at Amazon. “However, the science is clear: We must halt and reverse deforestation and restore millions of miles of forests to slow the worst effects of climate change. We’re using our size and high vetting standards to help promote additional investments in nature, and we are excited to share this new opportunity with companies who are also committed to the difficult work of decarbonizing their operations.”
The Bureau of Land Management is close to approving the environmental review for a transmission line that would connect to BluEarth Renewables’ Lucky Star wind project, Heatmap’s Jael Holzman reports in The Fight. “This is a huge deal,” she says. “For the last two months it has seemed like nothing wind-related could be approved by the Trump administration. But that may be about to change.”
BLM sent local officials an email March 6 with a draft environmental assessment for the transmission line, which is required for the federal government to approve its right-of-way under the National Environmental Policy Act. According to the draft, the entirety of the wind project is sited on private property and “no longer will require access to BLM-administered land.”
The email suggests this draft environmental assessment may soon be available for public comment. BLM’s web page for the transmission line now states an approval granting right-of-way may come as soon as May. BLM last week did something similar with a transmission line that would go to a solar project proposed entirely on private lands. Holzman wonders: “Could private lands become the workaround du jour under Trump?”
Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, this week launched a pilot direct air capture unit capable of removing 12 tons of carbon dioxide per year. In 2023 alone, the company’s Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions totalled 72.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
If you live in Illinois or Massachusetts, you may yet get your robust electric vehicle infrastructure.
Robust incentive programs to build out electric vehicle charging stations are alive and well — in Illinois, at least. ComEd, a utility provider for the Chicago area, is pushing forward with $100 million worth of rebates to spur the installation of EV chargers in homes, businesses, and public locations around the Windy City. The program follows up a similar $87 million investment a year ago.
Federal dollars, once the most visible source of financial incentives for EVs and EV infrastructure, are critically endangered. Automakers and EV shoppers fear the Trump administration will attack tax credits for purchasing or leasing EVs. Executive orders have already suspended the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, a.k.a. NEVI, which was set up to funnel money to states to build chargers along heavily trafficked corridors. With federal support frozen, it’s increasingly up to the automakers, utilities, and the states — the ones with EV-friendly regimes, at least — to pick up the slack.
Illinois’ investment has been four years in the making. In 2021, the state established an initiative to have a million EVs on its roads by 2030, and ComEd’s new program is a direct outgrowth. The new $100 million investment includes $53 million in rebates for business and public sector EV fleet purchases, $38 million for upgrades necessary to install public and private Level 2 and Level 3 chargers, stations for non-residential customers, and $9 million to residential customers who buy and install home chargers, with rebates of up to $3,750 per charger.
Massachusetts passed similar, sweeping legislation last November. Its bill was aimed to “accelerate clean energy development, improve energy affordability, create an equitable infrastructure siting process, allow for multistate clean energy procurements, promote non-gas heating, expand access to electric vehicles and create jobs and support workers throughout the energy transition.” Amid that list of hifalutin ambition, the state included something interesting and forward-looking: a pilot program of 100 bidirectional chargers meant to demonstrate the power of vehicle-to-grid, vehicle-to-home, and other two-way charging integrations that could help make the grid of the future more resilient.
Many states, blue ones especially, have had EV charging rebates in places for years. Now, with evaporating federal funding for EVs, they have to take over as the primary benefactor for businesses and residents looking to electrify, as well as a financial level to help states reach their public targets for electrification.
Illinois, for example, saw nearly 29,000 more EVs added to its roads in 2024 than 2023, but that growth rate was actually slower than the previous year, which mirrors the national narrative of EV sales continuing to grow, but more slowly than before. In the time of hostile federal government, the state’s goal of jumping from about 130,000 EVs now to a million in 2030 may be out of reach. But making it more affordable for residents and small businesses to take the leap should send the numbers in the right direction, as will a state-backed attempt to create more public EV chargers.
The private sector is trying to juice charger expansion, too. Federal funding or not, the car companies need a robust nationwide charging network to boost public confidence as they roll out more electric offerings. Ionna — the charging station partnership funded by the likes of Hyundai, BMW, General Motors, Honda, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, and Toyota — is opening new chargers at Sheetz gas stations. It promises to open 1,000 new charging bays this year and 30,000 by 2030.
Hyundai, being the number two EV company in America behind much-maligned Tesla, has plenty at stake with this and similar ventures. No surprise, then, that its spokesperson told Automotive Dive that Ionna doesn’t rely on federal dollars and will press on regardless of what happens in Washington. Regardless of the prevailing winds in D.C., Hyundai/Kia is motivated to support a growing national network to boost the sales of models on the market like the Hyundai Ioniq5 and Kia EV6, as well as the company’s many new EVs in the pipeline. They’re not alone. Mercedes-Benz, for example, is building a small supply of branded high-power charging stations so its EV drivers can refill their batteries in Mercedes luxury.
The fate of the federal NEVI dollars is still up in the air. The clearinghouse on this funding shows a state-by-state patchwork. More than a dozen states have some NEVI-funded chargers operational, but a few have gotten no further than having their plans for fiscal year 2024 approved. Only Rhode Island has fully built out its planned network. It’s possible that monies already allocated will go out, despite the administration’s attempt to kill the program.
In the meantime, Tesla’s Supercharger network is still king of the hill, and with a growing number of its stations now open to EVs from other brands (and a growing number of brands building their new EVs with the Tesla NACS charging port), Superchargers will be the most convenient option for lots of electric drivers on road trips. Unless the alternatives can become far more widespread and reliable, that is.
The increasing state and private focus on building chargers is good for all EV drivers, starting with those who haven’t gone in on an electric car yet and are still worried about range or charger wait times on the road to their destination. It is also, by the way, good news for the growing number of EV folks looking to avoid Elon Musk at all cost.
From Kansas to Brooklyn, the fire is turning battery skeptics into outright opponents.
The symbol of the American battery backlash can be found in the tiny town of Halstead, Kansas.
Angry residents protesting a large storage project proposed by Boston developer Concurrent LLC have begun brandishing flashy yard signs picturing the Moss Landing battery plant blaze, all while freaking out local officials with their intensity. The modern storage project bears little if any resemblance to the Moss Landing facility, which uses older technology,, but that hasn’t calmed down anxious locals or stopped news stations from replaying footage of the blaze in their coverage of the conflict.
The city of Halstead, under pressure from these locals, is now developing a battery storage zoning ordinance – and explicitly saying this will not mean a project “has been formally approved or can be built in the city.” The backlash is now so intense that Halstead’s mayor Dennis Travis has taken to fighting back against criticism on Facebook, writing in a series of posts about individuals in his community “trying to rule by MOB mentality, pushing out false information and intimidating” volunteers working for the city. “I’m exercising MY First Amendment Right and well, if you don’t like it you can kiss my grits,” he wrote. Other posts shared information on the financial benefits of building battery storage and facts to dispel worries about battery fires. “You might want to close your eyes and wish this technology away but that is not going to happen,” another post declared. “Isn’t it better to be able to regulate it in our community?”
What’s happening in Halstead is a sign of a slow-spreading public relations wildfire that’s nudging communities that were already skeptical of battery storage over the edge into outright opposition. We’re not seeing any evidence that communities are transforming from supportive to hostile – but we are seeing new areas that were predisposed to dislike battery storage grow more aggressive and aghast at the idea of new projects.
Heatmap Pro data actually tells the story quite neatly: Halstead is located in Harvey County, a high risk area for developers that already has a restrictive ordinance banning all large-scale solar and wind development. There’s nothing about battery storage on the books yet, but our own opinion poll modeling shows that individuals in this county are more likely to oppose battery storage than renewable energy.
We’re seeing this phenomenon play out elsewhere as well. Take Fannin County, Texas, where residents have begun brandishing the example of Moss Landing to rail against an Engie battery storage project, and our modeling similarly shows an intense hostility to battery projects. The same can be said about Brooklyn, New York, where anti-battery concerns are far higher in our polling forecasts – and opposition to battery storage on the ground is gaining steam.