Iceland's Prime Minister Vows to Prioritize Food Security Over Bitcoin

Iceland’s Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir has vowed to focus more power on producing food internally while reducing the energy expenditure in data centers and bitcoin mining. Jakobsdóttir stated that while the country was working to achieve carbon neutrality, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies were “not part of that mission.”

Iceland’s Prime Minister to Shift Power Away From Bitcoin

Iceland’s allegiance with bitcoin miners might be about to change. Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Prime Minister of Iceland, has criticized the power used by bitcoin mining operations, vowing to divert part of this energy to strengthen the country’s food sovereignty.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Jakobsdóttir explained that the country was on a mission to achieve carbon neutrality and that renewable energy should be reallocated to power the 375,000 citizens of Iceland.

Jakobsdóttir explained that bitcoin and cryptocurrency, which use “a lot of energy,” were “not part of that mission.”

The winter season has affected the power deliveries to the country’s hydroelectric plants. This has made food processing plants turn to dirty energy sources to keep operating, something that has been qualified as “unacceptable” by Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson, Iceland’s environment minister.

Jakobsdóttir detailed the difficulties of growing crops in Iceland. She stated:

It’s not exactly easy to be a farmer in Iceland. It’s not exactly great fields. But it’s an important part of our strategy for security and safety in this world.

It is estimated that bitcoin miners and data centers consume over 120 MW of energy in Iceland, more than what’s consumed by all the households combined.

Jakobsdóttir did not detail which methods or regulations would be enacted to achieve this shift. However, she did mention that the nation would start to grow corn, stressing that it hasn’t been tried before even when it is technically possible.

Iceland’s situation is not new. In December 2021, Iceland’s Landsvirkjun, the national power company, started rejecting energy requests from new companies in the cryptocurrency mining industry due to limitations in its distribution system.

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