Cryptomining and hardware company Canaan has announced a strategic partnership with an energy firm to develop next-generation “green mining” technology.

The deal with SynVista Energy aims to significantly reduce the environmental impact and cost of Bitcoin mining through a “renewable-adaptive” ecosystem.

This will see an AI-powered scheduling engine synchronize real-time energy supply with hash-rate demand in order to optimize mining profits.

If successful, the system would maximize the utilization of clean energy sources like wind and solar during periods of oversupply.

Canaan said it represented a “new paradigm for converging digital economy with energy transition.”

The announcement comes as the cryptomining industry faces criticism over its energy consumption and environmental sustainability.

The Bitcoin network’s estimated electricity consumption is around 198TWh per year, or about 0.8 percent of global consumption, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. This puts it on a par with mid-sized countries like South Africa and Thailand.

Less than half of the electricity is generated from renewable energy sources. However, proponents of Bitcoin claim that cryptomining incentivizes the adoption of clean technologies by offering ways to monetize surplus power.

Canaan stated that the “renewables-plus-blockchain” model is expected to boost SynVista’s internal rate of return by unlocking on-site consumption and marginal-power monetization.

The Singapore-based firm said it will also come with lower operational costs, improved grid stability, and future-proofing against any upcoming regulations that mandate the use of clean energy.

“The alliance advances ‘green mining’ from isolated pilots to an engineered, replicable solution, materially lowering its carbon footprint and energy mix, while offering the industry an economically viable and regulation-ready blueprint,” Canaan said in a statement.

“Longer term, the on-chain data backbone will enable tokenization and securitization of generation cash-flows and carbon credits, enhancing price transparency and liquidity of green assets and providing a new paradigm for converging digital economy with energy transition.”

A demonstration project is currently under development, though Canaan is not disclosing details about its location or scale.

Founded in 2013, Singapore-based Canaan created the world’s first ASIC Bitcoin miner under the brand name Avalon and went public on the Nasdaq in 2019. The company offers a range of mining hardware, including container-based solutions. Canaan also mines crypto for itself, with mining rigs located in a number of third-party facilities.

In its latest quarterly reports, Canaan said it was partnering with Aurora AZ Energy Ltd to launch a 2.5MW gas-to-computing pilot in Alberta, Canada. The project, which will use stranded or flared gas to power 700 Avalon A15 Pro miners installed directly at the wellhead.