The world’s richest people are funding a massive ‘treasure hunt’ on the west coast Greenland.

The climate crisis is rapidly melting the ice in Greenland, offering a unique opportunity to investors and mining companies looking for a treasure trove of natural resources that can power a green energy transition.

Billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates believe that beneath the hills and valleys on Greenland’s Disko Island and Nussuaq Peninsula lie minerals that could power hundreds of millions of electric vehicles.

“We are looking for a deposit that will be the first or second largest nickel and cobalt deposit in the world,” Kurt House, CEO of Kobold Metals, told CNN.

Several billionaires are funding Kobold Metals, a California mining start-up, officials say. Kobold is working with Bluejay Mining to find rare and precious metals in Greenland that are needed to make electric vehicles and batteries.

Thirty geologists, geophysicists, cooks, pilots and engineers have set up camp at the site where the Kobold and Bluejays search for buried treasure.

Scientists take soil samples and use drones and helicopters with special transmitters for geological mapping. Using artificial intelligence, they analyze the data to determine exactly where to drill next summer.

“The implications and implications of climate change in Greenland are alarming,” Bluejay Mining CEO Bo Meller Stensgaard told CNN. “But because of climate change, exploration and mining in Greenland is easier and more affordable than ever before.”

According to the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Greenland could become a mining hotspot for minerals such as coal, copper, gold, zinc and rare earths. The Greenland government has conducted several “ice-free resource assessments” and the government “recognizes the country’s potential for economic diversification through mining.”

Stensgaard also noted that minerals “will be part of the solution” to the problems caused by the climate crisis.

However, melting ice in Greenland, causing sea levels to rise, is of great concern to scientists studying the Arctic.

“The big concern about Arctic sea ice is that it has been disappearing over the past few decades and will likely disappear in 20 to 30 years,” NASA scientist Nathan Kurtz told CNN.

According to CNN