U.S. lawmakers have found that cryptocurrency mining is responsible for “substantial and rapidly growing carbon emissions.” They want the EPA to do something about it.
U.S. congressional Democrats investigating the carbon footprint of the cryptocurrency mining industry are uncovering a problem that has been apparent for some time — the industry is a huge energy hog that threatens U.S. climate goals. Now, those same Democrats are asking the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy to take action.
Six Democrats from the House and Senate have asked seven major cryptocurrency mining companies to provide detailed information about their energy use. It turns out that just six of these companies are collectively responsible for consuming a patch of electricity the size of Houston. In total, these operations require 1,045 megawatts of power to maintain operations. (The only company that did not respond to its total energy use was Bitfury).
Most of these companies are planning to expand. Riot's Whinstone facility in Rockdale, Texas, consumes 350 megawatts of electricity, although it expects to reach 700 megawatts of mining capacity by the end of the year. The Greenidge mine in upstate New York has 50 megawatts of capacity, but it wants to grow to 500 megawatts by 2025. However, its air pollution permit renewal was recently denied. Overall, the report found, the companies included in the survey hope to add 2,399 megawatts of mining capacity "over the next few years," a total greater than the power needs of Los Angeles's 1.4 million homes.
The group of lawmakers said in a letter to the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Agency: "Our findings are troubling that the data collected from just seven companies shows that this limited data alone shows that encryption Money traders are large energy users and account for a large and rapidly growing amount of carbon emissions."
Currently, there are no federal laws and very few state or local laws governing energy use in cryptocurrency mining. But as the United States attempts to rein in carbon emissions and meet President Joe Biden's goal of halving carbon emissions by 2030, some form of oversight of the nascent industry is critical.
The group of Democrats, including Sens. Rashida Tlaib and Jared Huffman, called on the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy to use the Clean Air Act to force the mining industry to disclose its energy use and carbon emissions as part of a crackdown on the cryptocurrency mining industry. first step.
The United States has emerged as a cryptocurrency mining hub after some countries banned cryptocurrency mining in 2021. Lawmakers' investigations and requests for regulations will be the first step in developing future laws to address the industry's emissions problems. But the United States and the world need to get on top of carbon emissions sooner rather than later. As the relocation of the mining industry shows, reining in the carbon footprint of cryptocurrencies will require more than just one country enacting laws.
