Cryptocurrency mining company Argo Blockchain announced Tuesday that it has reached an important milestone in its climate strategy, sending a strong signal that environmental sustainability remains one of its main focuses.

The company claimed that its crypto operations have become "climate positive" for Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions. According to Carbon Trust, a global advancement group for environmental sustainability, Scope one emissions are direct emissions from a visitor's owned or controlled sources; Telescopic two covers indirect emissions through the purchase of electricity; and Scope 3 includes all other indirect forms of emission that occur in a visitor'southward value chain.

Argo intends to become carbon neutral and plans to get even further "by mitigating emissions through support of projects outside of Argo," the company said. Every bit role of its Climate Positive Strategy, Argo became a signatory to the Crypto Climate Accord and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change.

When asked about what it means to be a "climate positive" miner, a spokesperson for Argo told Cointelegraph that the company monitors its emissions and so takes various steps to mitigate them. This includes purchasing boosted verified emission reductions, or VERs, for its forestry project in Tennessee and energy efficiency project in Communist china. The company has purchased over 30,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent VERs for these and other projects.

Regarding the visitor'south future plans, the spokesperson said:

"Argo is in the procedure of developing its Helios site in Westward Texas, planned to commence operation in 2022. It will include 200 MW of electricity consumption coming more often than not from renewable power."

Related: Measuring success: Offsetting crypto carbon emissions necessary for adoption?

Offsetting the cryptocurrency industry's carbon footprint has become top of mind for businesses and other stakeholders afterward Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his visitor would no longer accept Bitcoin (BTC) payments due to environmental concerns. MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor later on convened an manufacture group called the Bitcoin Mining Council to address sustainability concerns when it comes to mining.

Proponents of Bitcoin claim that the digital currency accounts for a tiny fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions — and a level that is negligible compared with the broader financial system. They also claim that Bitcoin miners increasingly utilize sustainable technologies in their operations. Even so, the rising of ESG-witting investing — an acronym for ecology, social and governance practices — ways that Bitcoin miners are facing a greater sense of urgency to demonstrate their light-green mining capacity.

Related: Elon Musk lays out when Tesla will begin accepting Bitcoin payments