Pennsylvania alone has over 220 million tons of environmentally harmful coal waste.

Millions of tons of coal waste litter across Pennsylvania at coal mining sites that were abandoned after their useful coal was mined and sold to steel mills and power plants. Stronghold Digital Mining (NASDAQ: SDIG) has devised a method to turn these waste mountains into energy that can be used to mine bitcoin. (COINTELEGRAPH)

Left to itself, the coal waste can hazardously catch fire due to lightning strikes or other factors. Worse, the waste may contain heavy metals that could prove carcinogenic to nearby communities. It is also the source of acid mine drainage, and polluted water that leaches into streams and water bodies, killing aquatic life.

Stronghold’s fleet of trucks and bulldozers collect this coal waste, which has a relatively low thermal value, and burn it safely to obtain usable heat energy. That is converted to power to run banks of servers that engage in bitcoin mining using the power intensive “proof-of-work” process.

Stronghold Digital: A win-win situation

“The bitcoin mining network itself is the largest decentralized computer network in the world, and it’s power hungry, so co-locating bitcoin mining and a power plant makes a lot of sense,” Greg Beard, chief executive officer of Stronghold, told Reuters.

Apart from being environmentally friendly, the company’s operations have also generated hundred of jobs. The company estimates that for each bitcoin mined, 200 tons of waste coal is eliminated.

After the waste has been removed, Stronghold returns the cleaned-up land to communities.

Stronghold commenced operations at the Scrubgrass power plant in Venango. In August 2021, it purchased the Panther Creek plant, a second power generating facility in northeastern Pennsylvania.

The company listed on the Nasdaq in October and it said in its SEC registration statement: “Simply put, we employ 21^st century crypto mining techniques to remediate the impacts of 19^th and 20^th century coal mining in some of the most environmentally neglected regions of the United States.”

It priced shares in the IPO at $19 per share and raised $114.8 million of net proceeds. The stock currently trades at $9.70.

Related Story: Stronghold Digital Mining Raises $105M To Mine Cryptos Using Waste Coal