West Palm Beach CEO Breaks Barriers in Bitcoin Mining with Sustainable Energy Venture
Jolie Kahn, the Florida-based CEO of AgriFORCE Growing Systems Ltd., is making headlines as both a rare female leader in the bitcoin mining industry and the driving force behind a new sustainable computing initiative. AgriFORCE – which has offices in Vancouver, Canada, and West Palm Beach – announced Tuesday a joint venture with BlueFlare Energy™ Solutions to convert stranded natural gas in Alberta into power for high-performance computing infrastructure, including modular bitcoin mining facilities. Kahn, who took the helm of AgriFORCE in mid-2024, stands out in a male-dominated crypto sector; she is one of the few women leading a publicly traded bitcoin mining company, a field where roughly 94% of CEOs are male.
A Rare Woman at the Helm of a Bitcoin Miner
Kahn’s appointment marked a significant milestone for diversity in the cryptocurrency space. Industry data shows women occupy only about 6% of top leadership roles in crypto firms, making her role as CEO especially noteworthy. “Women in Bitcoin” advocate: Kahn has embraced her status as a trailblazer. At the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas this May, she participated in a “Women in Bitcoin” brunch where inclusive leadership in digital infrastructure was promoted. Her background has uniquely prepared her for this role – she is a seasoned corporate attorney with over 25 years of experience and previously served as Counsel to a large publicly traded Bitcoin miner from 2019 to 2023, a period during which the company grew into one of the world’s largest bitcoin mining companies.
Under Kahn’s leadership, AgriFORCE has pivoted toward digital assets while maintaining its roots in sustainable technology. Earlier this year, the company opened its U.S. headquarters in downtown West Palm Beach, with Kahn noting the city’s crypto-friendly business environment and “amazing renaissance” as a tech hub. AgriFORCE’s business now operates at the intersection of agriculture, clean energy, and blockchain. In late May, the company launched a new division called TerraHash Digital™, aimed at developing energy-efficient bitcoin mining campuses and next-generation computing infrastructure. The TerraHash strategy emphasizes vertically integrated operations and smart energy usage – such as harnessing underutilized power sources like stranded natural gas and flare gas to reduce costs – as well as innovative ideas like repurposing miners’ waste heat for sustainable agriculture. “By combining smart energy strategies, infrastructure ownership, and decentralized computing, we’re positioning to capture long-term value in an evolving digital economy,” Kahn said at the division’s launch, framing the effort as part of AgriFORCE’s mission to unite sustainability and high-tech growth.
Turning Stranded Gas into Power: New Alberta Joint Venture
On Tuesday, AgriFORCE’s TerraHash Digital division took a major step forward in that mission by unveiling a Strategic Power & Compute Initiative with BlueFlare Energy™ Solutions, a Canadian company based in Grande Prairie, Alberta known for its mobile natural gas power systems. The partnership will deploy modular, self-contained power plants and data centers at energy sites in Alberta, converting “stranded” or underutilized natural gas into electricity for computing. This electricity will fuel a range of high-performance applications – from bitcoin mining rigs to artificial intelligence and edge computing workloads – effectively turning remote well sites into digital infrastructure hubs. “At the heart of the initiative is a shared vision: transforming stranded or underutilized natural gas resources into resilient, decentralized computing infrastructure,” the company said in its announcement, highlighting plans to support everything from Bitcoin blockchain networks to real-time data analytics in the field.
This approach tackles two problems at once: it provides low-cost energy for power-hungry computing tasks while mitigating wasteful gas flaring. Around oil and gas fields, excess natural gas is often burned off, or flared, because it can’t be economically piped to market, which wastes energy and emits carbon dioxide. Increasingly, crypto miners are teaming up with energy firms to use that gas instead. In AgriFORCE’s case, BlueFlare’s portable generator units will be installed on-site to capture otherwise wasted gas and convert it into electricity on the spot. Trailers carrying these generators and containers of mining computers (or other servers) can be quickly deployed to remote wells, creating pop-up data centers that run on fuel that would have been thrown away. “Oil and gas companies don’t like to flare their gas – that’s money that’s burning away,” an oil producer told Reuters about such arrangements. By leveraging this stranded energy, AgriFORCE aims to lower its operational costs and environmental impact at the same time.
According to AgriFORCE, it will finance and acquire BlueFlare’s proprietary mobile power units for the project, while BlueFlare will handle deployment and day-to-day operation of the integrated power-and-compute sites. The technology stack involved is extensive. BlueFlare’s system includes a software platform (dubbed BlueFlare OS™) that provides a unified dashboard to remotely monitor each site’s power generation and computing performance – tracking metrics like energy output, equipment temperatures, and bitcoin “hashrate” in real time. Advanced control systems can automatically adjust settings (voltage, cooling fan speeds, etc.) to keep the hardware running optimally, extending the life of the miners. There’s also a remote command layer allowing technicians to reboot or reconfigure machines from afar, and AI-driven analytics for predictive maintenance (identifying anomalies or potential issues before they cause downtime).
Notably, the joint venture places a strong emphasis on carbon management and ESG (environmental, social, governance) goals. Each mobile data center will be equipped with BlueFlare’s Carbon Cube™, described as a high-precision emissions monitoring and environmental control module. This device continuously measures greenhouse gases and other environmental data at the site. By quantifying emissions reductions – for example, proving that methane which would have been flared is instead being used productively – the system can help validate carbon credits for the operation. Those carbon credits could then be sold or used to offset the project’s costs, adding an extra revenue stream tied to its environmental benefits. “The Carbon Cube and its supporting technologies represent a breakthrough in transforming stranded or uneconomical energy assets into value-generating infrastructure,” said Dave Jackson, CEO of BlueFlare Energy Solutions, in a statement. “Our goal is to not only enable advanced data mining and high-performance computing, but also to generate carbon credits that offset raw energy costs… It’s a value-added approach that enhances both operational intelligence and environmental accountability.”
The Alberta initiative will initially roll out in the Grande Prairie region, a natural gas-rich area, and could expand if successful. AgriFORCE disclosed that it has secured a right of first refusal on future projects sourced by BlueFlare that meet its criteria – essentially giving Kahn’s company first dibs on any similar sites BlueFlare develops going forward. This positions AgriFORCE to scale up its distributed computing network across energy-producing regions in Alberta and beyond, as part of TerraHash Digital’s growth plan. In fact, the company signaled at the Bitcoin 2025 conference that it was eyeing multiple pilot deployments leveraging stranded power, including one in Alberta by Q3 2025.
Kahn hailed the BlueFlare venture as a significant leap for AgriFORCE’s vision of greener, smarter crypto infrastructure. “This initiative is a leap forward in our mission to make computing infrastructure more scalable, sustainable, and financially efficient,” she said, underscoring the dual focus on performance and environmental impact. “Together with BlueFlare, we’re pioneering a new era of distributed compute — optimized for both environmental impact and performance.” If successful, the project could serve as a blueprint for turning forgotten energy resources into digital opportunities – all under the guidance of a CEO who is breaking new ground both as a tech innovator and as a woman leading in the bitcoin mining arena.
TMX Contributed to this story.
This story was originally published June 10, 2025 at 12:00 AM.
