A group of French parliamentarians is drafting legislation to harness excess electricity from nuclear power facilities for bitcoin mining, as per recent public announcements. The plan involves installing mining equipment at sites owned by the state-owned utility company Électricité de France. This approach would capitalize on the surplus energy generated by these nuclear power plants. As the largest producer of nuclear energy in the European Union, France produced 338,202 gigawatt hours of nuclear power in 2023, accounting for over half of the EU's total output.
However, more than two-thirds of the heat produced by nuclear fission is lost during electricity generation. According to Aurélien Lopez-Liguori, a parliament member involved in drafting the bill, 'It's a highly secure and extremely profitable solution.' Although the draft is still in its early stages, it follows a previously rejected amendment from June that proposed assessing the contribution of cryptocurrency mining to France's energy mix.
The concept of utilizing surplus energy for bitcoin mining is not new, as demonstrated by Pakistan's commitment to allocate 2,000 megawatts of electricity for bitcoin mining and powering artificial intelligence data centers, leveraging underutilized coal-fired power plants. Similarly, Tether, a leading stablecoin issuer, is exploring bitcoin mining using excess renewable energy from Adecoagro, a South American agribusiness firm in which Tether holds a 70% stake.