US Congressman Urges Government To Ban Crypto Mining, Waste Of Energy And Unfriendly To The Environment

Elizabeth Warren and other members of the US Democratic Congress sent a letter to two federal regulators.. (photo: twitter@BostonDotCom)

JAKARTA - On Friday, July 15, Elizabeth Warren and other members of the US Democratic Party of Congress sent letters to two federal regulators. They urged regulators to take action on the Bitcoin mining boom in the US.

The letter was sent to the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. The contents of the letter were prompted by an initial investigation from lawmakers, who found that only a handful of cryptominers were using large amounts of energy.

In response, lawmakers asked the agency to require crypto mining companies to share data on their energy use and emissions.

According to the letter, seven of the largest crypto mining companies in the US have the collective capacity to use more than 1 gigawatt of electricity. That's the equivalent of two standard coal plants or nearly enough to power all Houston homes.

That is only the tip of the iceberg, as there has been no federal government action to capture the full picture of the environmental impact of the recent boom in crypto mining in the US.

Crypto mining has exploded in the US over the past year, fueled in part by China's 2021 crackdown on the practice. The US is the largest hub globally for mining Bitcoin.

They usually run data centers around the clock to mine currency. These data centers are filled with specialized hardware racing to solve complex equations to verify transactions, which earn Bitcoins in return. All that computing power devours huge amounts of electricity, and as a result produces pollution.

The move from China to the US has likely made the Bitcoin network dirtier, with China's abundant hydropower being replaced by electricity coming from coal and gas from the US grid.

All of this has policymakers worried about the impact crypto mining has on the country's climate change goals, as well as on electricity bills. Even the practice has raised electricity prices in New York.

In an extreme example, residents in Plattsburgh, NY saw their electricity bills rise to $300 in the winter of 2018 after Bitcoin miners set up shop nearby.

Last month, New York State passed legislation imposing a two-year moratorium on new permits for fossil fuel power plants used to mine energy-intensive currencies.

The bill has not yet been signed into law, but the state has also taken regulatory action to prevent mining. In June, New York also denied the Greenidge Generating Station permit, which was renewed for power generation, arguing that its use was for Bitcoin mining. This would not be consistent with statewide greenhouse gas emission limits.

Greenidge is one of the companies that Warren and other Democratic lawmakers sent in January, demanding information about their energy use and emissions. Greenidge is responsible for 273.326 tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, the equivalent of exhaust emissions from nearly 60.000 cars, according to a new letter released today.

However, the impact of crypto mining in the US is far greater than detailed in the letter. "No company has provided complete and complete information in response to our inquiries," the lawmaker wrote, as quoted by The Verge.

There are other clues as to how many crypto mining companies are literally gobbling up energy across the country. In Texas, another hot spot for Bitcoin mining in the US, the crypto mining industry collectively released about 1 gigawatt of energy after being temporarily shut down this week.

The companies ramped up operations in response to calls from state network operators to conserve energy as a searing heat wave threatened to overwhelm the grid.

That hunger for energy grew rapidly. “There are more than 27 gigawatts of crypto load at work for interconnection over the next four years,” a Texas Electrical Reliability Council (ERCOT) spokesperson told The Verge in an email this week.

That's a huge burden to add to the network in such a short period of time, experts told The Verge.

"The results of our investigation, which gathered data from just seven companies, are disturbing, with this limited data alone revealing that cryptominers are large energy users who contribute significant and rapidly growing amounts of carbon emissions," the letter to the EPA and Department of Energy said.

The letter was signed by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Ed Markey (D-MA), and Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Jared Huffman (D-CA).