Every day, large volumes of associated gas are flared around the world, mostly because there’s not enough infrastructure in place to transport the gas to market. This isn’t just a colossal waste of energy — flaring generates a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) and, according to a recent study, it’s only 91% efficient (on average) at zapping methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas (GHG). But what if there was a cost-effective way to beneficially consume the gas that’s stranded in remote parts of the Permian, the Bakken and other major production areas? It turns out there is — by using the gas onsite to produce electricity to power portable, modular data centers used to support cryptocurrency mining, artificial intelligence (AI) programs like ChatGPT, and other high-tech endeavors requiring massive amounts of computation power and energy. In today’s RBN blog, we discuss the growing use of stranded natural gas as a power source for middle-of-nowhere data centers.
Stranded – Bitcoin Mining and ChatGPT Can Help Reduce Gas Flaring … Wait, What?
