Bitcoin miner using compute heat to supplement Canadian greenhouses

Hardware manufacturer and Bitcoin miner Canaan has continued its initiative of reusing energy for commercial and consumer applications by making compute heat available for greenhouses in Canada.

In a Tuesday notice, Canaan said it would participate in a 3 megawatt (MW) proof-of-concept with Bitforest Investment in the province of Manitoba to “recover heat from an Avalon computing system and use the heat as a supplemental source for greenhouse operations.”

The pilot program, expected to run for an initial 24 months, will use Canaan’s liquid cooling systems to capture heat and preheat the intake water for the greenhouses, reducing the energy required.

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The initiative would allow Canaan to supplement Bitforest’s greenhouses “by recycling heat from computing servers that would otherwise be wasted,” reducing the dependency on fossil-fuel boilers. The company said it would deploy a computing system with 360 units of liquid-cooled servers. According to Bitforest, its operations in Manitoba include tomato production.

Related: Bitcoin miners turn to renewable energy amid profit margin squeeze

Miners turning to green solutions, energy usage

Canaan announced the launch of a mining facility at a wind-powered site in Texas in September, but the Bitcoin (BTC) miner is far from the only company seeking to reduce energy costs through green solutions.

In November, mining and digital infrastructure company Phoenix Group announced a 30-MW facility in Ethiopia using hydroelectric power. Another Bitcoin miner, Sangha Renewables, launched a 20-MW solar-powered operation in Texas.

BTC mining difficulty, which affected costs for miners, reached all-time highs in 2025. Rising sharply in September before the price dropped during a market crash in October, mining difficulty is expected to surge this month. According to data from CoinWarz, BTC difficulty was about 148.2 trillion at the time of publication.

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