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EEnvironmentalists in Montana called it the “death watch”. After years of financial losses, the last remaining coal-fired power plant in the state looked doomed. Its likely fate offered a small but notable victory in the fight to prevent catastrophic climate change. Then, a bitcoin mining company intervened to save it.
The Hardin generating station is a 115-megawatt, coal-fired power plant that is located about 12 miles from the historic site at Little Big Horn in south Montana. 2018 closing of this facilityDue to a lack in customers, the company was unable to operate for 46 days in 2020. “We were just waiting for this thing to die,” said Anne Hedges, co-director of the Montana Environmental Information Center. “They were struggling and looking to close. It was at the brink. And then this cryptocurrency company came along.”
In a deal struck in late 2020, Marathon, a bitcoin “mining” company, became the sole recipient of the power station’s electricity. It established an extended data centerThere are 20 acres of land adjacent to the facility, which is home to more than 30,000 Antminer S19 machines. This is a specialized computer that mines bitcoin. Such thirst for power is common in crypto – globally bitcoin mining consumes more electricityNorway, home to 5.3 million people, is the country that’s most popular.
Hardin came back to life last year as bitcoin miners moved in. In the first nine months of 2021 alone, the plant’s boilers fired up on 236 separate days. Planet-heating emissions from the burning of Hardin’s coal soared too, with 187,000 tons of carbon dioxide emitted in the second quarter of last year, more than 5000% more than was expelled in the same period in 2020.
Another 206,000 tons of carbon dioxide was emitted in the third quarter, a 905% increase over 2020, according Environmental Protection Agency data. Hardin was operating at “near full capacity”, Marathon said in a December updateThe data center produced approximately 34 bitcoins on 1/12.
“I was horrified to see it all happen, it was a terrible turn of events,” said Hedges, who took to visiting the plant and photographing the new data center as it took shape, fans perched on its roof to help cool the humming computer hardware. “This isn’t helping old ladies from freezing to death, it’s to enrich a few people while destroying our climate for all of us. If you’re concerned about climate change you should have nothing to do with cryptocurrency, it’s a disaster for the climate.”
Hardin is part of a wave of America’s “zombie” fossil fuel plants that have been brought back from the dead by cryptocurrency companies looking to feed the insatiable energy demands of their mining operations. China, formerly the epicenter of the bitcoin industry, effectively banished around half of the world’s currency miners last year and the resulting search for cheap power has seen companies eye struggling US power stations.
A mothballed coal plant in Upstate New York was converted to gas and power in 2020 large-scale bitcoin mining operation, a move that owner Greenidge Generation said is “bringing a piece of the world’s digital future” to the state. Eric Adams, the New York City mayor, said last week that he would accept his first bitcoin paycheck. He also criticised the negative environmental effects of crypto mining.
Thousands of bitcoin mining computers were packed in shipping containers in western Pennsylvania. They were also packed in shipping containers with the Scrubgrass plant, which burns coal and was due to close before bitcoin became a reality. In Kentucky, there is a new bitcoin facility. is being builtNext to the Big Rivers Electric Corporation which owns and operates four coal fired power plants.
This tactic, crypto firms argue, generates local jobs – Kentucky aimed to lure currency miners by Adoption of a law that exempts them from an electricity sales tax – and uses up excess power without straining the grid for homes and businesses. Critics argue that the massive electricity consumption required to sustain the virtual currency is fueling a climate crisis and now threatens a partial return of coal in the US.
“Coal and natural gas power plants used for crypto mining that would otherwise be sunsetting as we decarbonize adds yet more carbon to the atmosphere in an era when we should be cutting such emissions,” said Benjamin Jones, a specialist in natural resource economics at the University of New Mexico. “Crypto’s continued or expanding use of fossil fuel sourced electricity imposes significant environmental economic costs on society.”
Jones said it is “troubling” to see that bitcoin’s already huge energy consumption This is increasing and that most of this is coming from fossil fuels, despite some efforts by mining companies to increase the amount of clean energy they use – Marathon, the company that draws power from Hardin, has struck a separate agreement in Texas to take power from a wind farm.
Even some early champions of bitcoin have balked at its energy use, with Elon Musk last year halting Tesla’s use of the crypto currency because, he said, the electric vehicle company is “concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel”. Uber, the ride-hailing company. Has said it won’t accept crypto payments until the climate impacts are reduced.
A little more than a decade back, it was possible for one computer to mine bitcoins at home. It required very little electricity. The ultimate supply of bitcoins was limited and new bitcoins were awarded to those who could help validate transactions – the miners.
Validation is basically a huge guessing game that becomes more difficult as more miners participate. As bitcoin interest has increased, faster, more powerful computers packed in warehouses have a better chance to win the guessing game and be rewarded with several bitcoins. These bitcoins are currently worth approximately $42,000 each.
This race for bitcoin wealth gobbles up an enormous amount of electricity – AroundGlobal consumption equals 0.5%. Every 60 seconds, bitcoin mining energy is used. That would be enough.To power an average American household for 17 year, while the annual electricity consumed for mining would be sufficient to power all the kettles used in the UK to boil water for tea. For 28 Years.
Although climate activists have criticized this usage, bitcoin miners argue that it should be seen in a different context. Marathon’s chief executive Fred Thiel stated that bitcoin is more energy-intensive than the movement of physical goods. “I understand the desire for some people to point bitcoin mining as the big bad boy, but on a comparison with every other industry out there, it’s insignificant,” he said in an interview.
Thiel likens bitcoin mining to the transactions processed in data centers by companies such as Amazon and Google and claimed that the industry is moving quickly towards renewable energy – Marathon plans to phase out its use of coal next year – after finding its options were limited when miners had to quickly shift away from China.
“Go back to 2020, renewable companies weren’t offering energy to bitcoin miners,” said Thiel. “Very few people wanted to even deal with bitcoin miners in the energy world. So bitcoin miners spent their time searching for stranded assets. And so the only way for us to mine was to find stranded energy, which we did in finding the Hardin plant.”
It is still unclear if bitcoin will make a significant shift away from fossil fuels. However, it will likely be under increasing scrutiny for its desire to consume fossil fuel-powered electricity. “We simply don’t know how emissions from bitcoin mining will look in five to 10 years,” said Jones, the University of New Mexico professor. “It seems likely, though, it will to continue to be a major consumer of energy going forward.”
