Two consortia have big plans in northern Sweden. Sustainable hydrogen is also produced from water using renewable electricity. However, the demand for electricity from heavy industry is also growing there, especially for the production of ' green steel.' Here, iron is processed into steel using renewable electricity and green hydrogen instead of coal. 'The Nordic region has for the front year an expected oversupply of power of nearly 30 terawatt-hours a year under average weather conditions,' Olav Johan Botnen, an energy analyst at Norwegian market researcher Volue Insight, told DW. Renewable energy is available in such large quantities in Scandinavia that some countries hardly know what to do with it. 'Especially in the north of the country, where we also operate a mining farm, the conditions are comparable to those in Iceland,' he said.Д®xisting geothermal (pictured) and hydropower plants in Iceland are reaching their limits Is Scandinavia in for the same fate? Salter thinks that Sweden also has what it takes to become a hot spot for Bitcoin prospectors.

Norway has already overtaken Iceland in terms of hash rates.

The Scandinavian mainland is also a popular location for mining companies. Mining pioneer Salter says he can understand why Icelanders don't want to sacrifice their unique natural resources for more power capacity. Today Iceland's global share of Bitcoin mining has fallen below 2% or even 1% depending on who's counting. In recent years, the cryptocurrency mining industry has already grown much faster elsewhere. Therefore, the cost advantage of Iceland's electricity is on the line. Meanwhile, however, the country's generatingВ capacity is reaching its limits: 'There could be very little excess energy in 20,' Landsvirkjun CEO Hordur Arnarson told Bloomberg recently. Its founders include Philip Salter, who is now chief technical officer of affiliate Genesis Digital Assets and can sumВ up the island nation's advantages in one line.В 'There are no political or geopolitical risks, the infrastructure is very reliable and the electricity is sustainable and incredibly cheap,' he told DW. One of the first companies to build a Bitcoin mine in Iceland was Genesis Mining in 2013. Instead, the decision was made to attract energy-intensive industries to the island, including aluminum smelters and the blockchain industry. It's so cheap that for years there has been talk of laying an undersea cable to the UK to deliver green power to Europe, where it's much more expensive. Using geothermal and hydroelectric power, state-owned Landsvirkjun and other energy companies generate nearly 100% of the island's electricity. According to the Icelandic Blockchain Foundation, 8% of all Bitcoins have been mined there. Iceland was one of the trailblazing countries. That's why Bitcoin mining in Scandinavia is considered a green way out of this dilemma. In addition, another combined 15% of the computing power comes from Russia and the US, which are not exactly pioneers in green energy. And none of them generates more than a quarter of its electricity from renewable sources. Especially since currently about 80% of the so-called hash rateВ -В the combined computing power for mining and processing BitcoinsВ - is provided in Asian countries. That is why Bitcoin and the entire blockchain technology on which it is based are suspected of harming the climate. Germany's entire annual power consumption is just over 500 terawatt-hours. That is about half of what all data centers - for the internet, cloud computing, the entire financial sector and all other cryptocurrencies - consume. Depending on the estimate, the global energy required for mining the most successful cryptocurrency is between 67 and 121 terawatt-hoursВ a year.

Best mining software