Democratic lawmakers ask federal agencies to crack down on crypto mining

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On Fri­day, Eliz­a­beth War­ren and oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers of Con­gress sent a let­ter to two fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors, urg­ing them to take action on the explo­sion of Bit­coin min­ing in the US. 

Sent to the heads of the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency and Depart­ment of Ener­gy, the let­ter was spurred by pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion from law­mak­ers, which found that just a hand­ful of cryp­tomin­ers use an enor­mous amount of ener­gy. In response, the law­mak­ers ask the agen­cies to require that cryp­to-min­ing com­pa­nies share data on their ener­gy use and emissions.

Sev­en of the biggest cryp­to-min­ing com­pa­nies in the US have the col­lec­tive capac­i­ty to use over 1 gigawatt of elec­tric­i­ty, accord­ing to the let­ter. That’s the equiv­a­lent of two stan­dard coal plants or, as the let­ter puts it, almost enough to pow­er all the res­i­dences in Hous­ton. That’s just the tip of the ice­berg, since there are no fed­er­al mea­sures in place to cap­ture a com­plete pic­ture of the envi­ron­men­tal impact of the recent boom in US crypto-mining.

Cryp­to-min­ing has explod­ed in the US over the past year, dri­ven in part by China’s 2021 crack­down on the prac­tice in. The US is the biggest hub glob­al­ly for min­ing Bit­coin, typ­i­cal­ly run­ning data cen­ters around-the-clock to mine the cur­ren­cy. These data cen­ters are filled with spe­cial­ized hard­ware rac­ing to solve com­plex equa­tions in order to ver­i­fy trans­ac­tions, earn­ing Bit­coin in return. All that com­put­ing pow­er gob­bles up vast amounts of elec­tric­i­ty — and pro­duces pol­lu­tion as a result. 

Mov­ing from Chi­na to the US has like­ly made the Bit­coin net­work even dirt­i­er, with abun­dant hydropow­er in Chi­na replaced by coal and gas-derived elec­tric­i­ty from the US grid.

All this has pol­i­cy­mak­ers wor­ried about what impact cryp­to min­ing will have on the country’s cli­mate change goals, as well as on elec­tric­i­ty bills. The prac­tice has already inflat­ed elec­tric­i­ty prices in New York, for instance. In an extreme exam­ple, res­i­dents in Platts­burgh, NY saw their util­i­ty bills rise by up to $300 in the win­ter of 2018 after Bit­coin min­ers set up shop nearby.

Last month, New York State passed a bill 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 actions to dis­cour­age min­ing. In June, New York also denied a renewed air per­mit to an embat­tled pow­er plant, the Greenidge Gen­er­at­ing Sta­tion on the grounds that its use for Bit­coin-min­ing “would be incon­sis­tent with the statewide green­house gas emis­sion limits.” 

Greenidge was one of the com­pa­nies War­ren and oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers sent queries to back in Jan­u­ary, demand­ing infor­ma­tion on their ener­gy use and emis­sions. Greenidge was respon­si­ble for 273,326 tons of car­bon diox­ide emis­sions over a year, equiv­a­lent to the tailpipe emis­sions from almost 60,000 cars, accord­ing to the new let­ter released today.

Still, the impact of cryp­to-min­ing in the US is way big­ger than what the let­ter details. For starters, “None of the com­pa­nies pro­vid­ed full and com­plete infor­ma­tion in response to our ques­tions,” the law­mak­ers wrote.

There are oth­er clues as to how much ener­gy cryp­to min­ing com­pa­nies are actu­al­ly gob­bling up across the nation. In Texas, anoth­er hot spot for Bit­coin min­ing in the US, the cryp­to min­ing indus­try col­lec­tive­ly freed up about 1 gigawatt of ener­gy after tem­porar­i­ly pow­er­ing down this week. The com­pa­nies ramped down oper­a­tions in response to an appeal from the state’s grid oper­a­tor to con­serve ener­gy as a sear­ing heat­wave threat­ened to over­whelm the grid. 

That hunger for ener­gy is grow­ing fast. “There are over 27 gigawatts of cryp­to load that is work­ing on inter­con­nect­ing over the next four years,” a spokesper­son for the Elec­tric Reli­a­bil­i­ty Coun­cil of Texas (ERCOT) told The Verge in an email this week (the spokesper­son declined to be named). That’s an impos­si­bly large load to add to the grid in such a short time frame, experts tell 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 that account for a sig­nif­i­cant – and rapid­ly grow­ing – amount of car­bon emis­sions,” the let­ter to the EPA and Depart­ment of Ener­gy says. It was signed by Sen­a­tors Eliz­a­beth War­ren (D‑MA), Shel­don White­house (D‑RI), Jeff Merkley (D‑OR), and and Ed Markey (D‑MA), and Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Rashi­da Tlaib (D‑MI), and Jared Huff­man (D‑CA).

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