Crypto boom hits Texas. Is the grid ready?
Within a year, crypto miners in Texas could wield more power than the city of Houston.
The state’s cheap energy and lax regulations have quickly made it the country’s bitcoin capital. That raises concerns that the boom could further endanger Texas’ fragile grid and exacerbate global warming pollution.
Cryptocurrency mining is an energy-intensive process. Computers “mine” bitcoin and some other types of digital currency by solving complex puzzles around the clock.
After China banned the practice earlier this year, miners began flocking to Texas, which by some estimates is now home to a quarter of all US digital coin mining operations.
Governor Greg Abbott has embraced the influx as a way to drive investment in increased power generation. But the scale of potential climate damage is prompting the White House to consider ways to crack down on manufacturers of energy-intensive digital assets.
A recent study in Scientific reports found that mining bitcoin is as energy-intensive as producing beef or burning gasoline, and causes comparable climate-related damage when taken as a proportion of market capitalization.
During this summer’s record heat wave, energy demand in Texas topped 80 gigawatts for the first time ever, prompting the grid operator to call for conservation. The crypto industry says it can quickly reduce power consumption when the grid is stressed – and did so when energy demand peaked in July.
But critics have raised concerns that crypto miners were given heavy subsidies to limit usage, helping the industry avoid higher electricity prices.
And on Wednesday, seven Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Texas’ main grid operator expressing concern about the expected strain on the grid.
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Hurricane Ian
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That’s all for today folks! Thank you for reading.
