Few will understand why this post is significant, but I'll say it anyway because it will be more obvious in a year's time.

Landfill methane capture has been technically possible for decades. The obstacle was always economic.

2 problems:

No buyer for the power. Most landfills in the Global South can't sell electricity to the grid: no transmission lines, too expensive to upgrade the grid to handle the power, or govt regulations actively prevent it

Credits priced too low. On voluntary carbon markets, methane mitigation earns ~$5 per credit. That finances nothing.

Bitcoin mining solved the first problem: the miner buys every megawatt on site, no grid connection required.

Now it is starting to solve the second.

Under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, a country that signs a cooperative agreement can sell its carbon credits on international compliance markets at ~$20 per credit instead of ~$5. That difference is what turns a marginal project into one investors will fund.

For years, several Latin American governments saw no reason to join. With no viable projects, why build the regulatory framework?

Bitcoin mining made the projects viable. Now the agreements are being signed.

The full sequence: a mining rig gives landfill gas its first buyer, the buyer makes the project viable, the viable project gives a government its reason to enter compliance carbon markets, and the compliance price funds the next ten projects.

Methane that has warmed the planet for decades is becoming the revenue that pays for its own destruction.

And the unlikely catalyst is Bitcoin mining: the industry everyone was once told was the climate's enemy.