Sen. Warren leads lawmakers demanding that the DOE, EPA track “disruptive” Bitcoin, Ethereum energy use

Diving license:

• The U.S. Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency should require crypto-mining companies to report their energy use and associated carbon emissions, a group of six lawmakers led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Said in a Friday letter to agencies.
• Miners use “disturbing” amounts of energy with little supervision, and significant growth is still expected. Six large companies have developed more than 1 GW of capacity for mining, according to the letter.
• Mining is increasingly moving to the United States, following a breakdown of energy consumption and pollution from China last year. Legislators warned the DOE and EPA that the US share of global Bitcoin mining increased from 4% in August 2019 to almost 38% in January.

Diving insight:

More than a third of the global computing power used by crypto-miners is in the United States, and this is “likely to be problematic for energy and emissions,” the group of lawmakers told the Biden administration.

The group sent letters to seven large crypto mining companies asking for information about their energy use. The results of the survey “are disturbing … and reveal that crypto miners are large energy users who account for a significant – and rapidly growing – amount of carbon emissions,” the group said.

Six companies responded with specific energy use data: Greenidge, Riot, Bitdeer, Stronghold, Marathon and Bit Digital. These miners have developed “almost enough capacity to run all the homes in Houston,” lawmakers said, and the load is expected to grow. A seventh company, Bitfury, was asked for information but did not provide specific data on energy use.

Some experts believe that the electricity load used for crypto mining in the United States will reach almost 10,000 MW over the next five years. Texas alone can see 5,000 MW of new demand by 2023, according to state-owned crypto miners.

To understand the crypto industry and its impact, the DOE and EPA should use their authorities under the Clean Air Act to require reporting of energy use and emissions from crypto miners, lawmakers said. Together with Warren, the letter was signed by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, DR.I., Edward Markey, D-Mass., Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., And Representatives Jared Huffman, D-Calif., And Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.

Lawmakers in particular are concerned about the two largest cryptocurrenciesBitcoin and Ethereum: The global energy used to extract these coins last year resulted in almost 80 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, they said. The total annual energy to extract these coins was estimated at 300 TWh, equivalent to the UK’s annual electricity consumption, according to the letter.

While mining companies often maintain that their supplies are carbon-free or cleaner than the power grid, lawmakers claim that miners “use huge amounts of electricity that can be used for other priority end uses that contribute to our electrification and climate goals, such as replace home heaters with heat pumps. “

However, not all mining is powered by pure electricity. One respondent, Riot, said that a 51 MW plant in New York “uses almost exclusively hydropower”. However, the same company has a 350 MW plant that uses electricity from the Texas grid, which lawmakers note is heavily dependent on natural gas and coal generation.

Crypto Miner Greenidge, based in New York, told lawmakers that the facility does not generate any air emissions that are not already subject to the terms of the air permit, and which are fully accounted for by the state’s federally approved state cleanup implementation plan for the Clean Air Act. In June, however, New York decided it would not extend the plant’s air permit because it would be “inconsistent with or disrupt the achievement of state-wide greenhouse gas emission limits.”