It’s early in the morning in June of 2022, and the only sound coming from most residences on Seneca Lake in upstate New York is the sound of water lapping against the wooded beaches. However, there is a hum of grassroots activism to combat one of the largest new risks to the climate within Yvonne Taylor’s home.
Taylor writes, “We’d love to talk with you about this.” “Bitcoin mining has an influence on us locally as well, and we’re establishing a nationwide group of people who are feeling the negative repercussions of this sector.”
Taylor is contacting a stranger in Pennsylvania on Facebook after seeing her town would soon have cryptocurrency mining operations there.
The drawback of several cryptocurrencies is the shockingly high electricity usage required for “mining,” the process of creating new virtual monies. When that energy is generated using fossil fuels, it produces significant local pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
A private equity company acquired the abandoned Greenidge coal plant in Seneca Lake in 2014 and turned it into a fracked gas plant. By directly connecting tens of thousands of PCs to the facility in 2020, that business launched a commercial cryptocurrency mining operation to mine Bitcoin. The decision proved to be a mistake.
Because bitcoin mining uses so much energy, it stimulates the market for new fossil fuel facilities or revitalises ageing ones.
A town with extensive experience fending off environmental hazards was unexpectedly invaded by an enterprise that had been operating covertly and was too new to be regulated.
The first cause Taylor, a speech therapist whose family has been on the lake for seven generations, rallied against was the practise of fracking there. Then, with the aid of Earthjustice’s legal team, she and others defeated a company’s plan to store 88 million gallons of liquified petroleum gas in salt caverns near the lake.
Taylor claims that, in a life that has otherwise been highly turbulent, the lake “has truly been the one consistency I’ve ever had.” I will defend it with the same ferocity as a mother grizzly would defend her cub. Taylor knew just who to turn to for assistance when she understood what was happening at the neighbourhood power plant in 2020 and found that the worldwide Bitcoin mining industry consumes more electricity than certain medium-sized European countries.
She made a call to Earthjustice. New Battle, Old Enemy
Mandy DeRoche, a brand-new deputy managing attorney at Earthjustice, received Taylor’s tip-off. DeRoche, a former securities and commercial litigator with experience in corporate disclosures, with the ideal qualifications to deal with a sophisticated new climate danger.
DeRoche was updated on their efforts to act as environmental watchdogs by Taylor and other neighbourhood partners. The Greenidge power plant was reopened as a gas-fired facility in 2017. It ran irregularly for a few years, supplying power to the grid when needed. The watchdogs then observed odd activity at the factory. They learnt of applications for permits to build structures to house computers for a “data centre” and to operate “behind the metre,” which means the power would go directly to this data centre instead of going to the grid for general consumption.
Yet, this wasn’t your typical data centre. The power facility stepped up operations in 2020. Locals started to notice a low droning sound, which one resident compared to the sound of an unlanding jet. Fans cooling computers were making the sounds. Levels of air pollution increased.
News Summary:
- Crypto Miners purchased a power plant of their own. Climate catastrophe
- Check all news and articles from the latest Business news updates.