Democratic lawmakers are urging federal agencies to crack down on crypto-mining

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

Sent to the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, the letter was prompted by preliminary investigation by lawmakers, who found that only a handful of cryptocurrencies use a huge amount of energy. In response, lawmakers are asking agencies to require crypto-mining companies to share data on their energy use and emissions.

Seven of the largest crypto mining companies in the United States have combined capacity to use more than 1 gigawatt of electricity, according to the letter. That equates to two standard coal plants or, as the letter puts it, almost enough to run all the homes in Houston. It is only the tip of the iceberg, as 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 United States over the past year, driven in part by China’s 2021 crackdown on the practice in the United States. These data centers are filled with specialized hardware racing to solve complex equations to verify transactions and earn Bitcoin in return. All that computing power consumes huge amounts of electricity – and produces pollution as a result.

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

All this has made policy makers worried about the impact that crypto mining will have on the country’s climate goals, as well as on the electricity bill. The practice has already inflated electricity prices in New York, for example. In an extreme example, residents of Plattsburgh, NY saw their spending bills rise by up to $ 300 in the winter of 2018 after Bitcoin miners established a store nearby.

Last month, the state of New York passed a bill that introduced a two-year moratorium on new permits for fossil fuel power plants used to extract energy-intensive currencies. The bill has not yet been signed into law, but the state has also taken regulatory measures to counteract mining. In June, New York also denied a renewed air permit for a controversial power plant, Greenidge Generating Station, on the grounds that its use for Bitcoin mining “would be inconsistent with state greenhouse gas emission limits.”

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

Nevertheless, the impact of crypto mining in the United States is far greater than what the letter details. First, “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 consuming across the nation. In Texas, another hot spot for Bitcoin mining in the United States, the crypto-mining industry collectively released around 1 gigawatt of energy after shutting down temporarily this week. The companies scaled down operations in response to an appeal by the state’s grid operator to save energy when a burning heat wave threatened to overwhelm the grid.

That the hunger for energy grows rapidly. “There are over 27 gigawatts of crypto cargo working on interconnection over the next four years,” said a spokesman for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). The Verge in an email this week (the spokesperson refused to be named). It is an impossible burden to add to the grid in such a short time frame, experts say The Verge.

“The results of our survey, which collected data from just seven companies, are disturbing, with these limited data alone revealing that cryptocurrencies are large energy users that account for a significant – and rapidly growing – amount of carbon emissions,” the letter to the EPA and the Department of Energy says. It 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).