Crypto Miners will be Turned Off in British Columbia
2022.12.22 01:13
Crypto Miners will be Turned Off in British Columbia
Budrigannews.com – For the next 18 months, a state-owned electric utility in the Canadian province of British Columbia is going to stop taking new requests from cryptocurrency miners to connect to electricity.
The pause will enable the government and BC Hydro to develop a permanent framework that can better balance the needs of crypto miners with those of the region’s residents and businesses, according to a statement issued on December 21 by the British Columbia government.
The move was made, according to Josie Osborne, Minister of Energy, Mines, and Low Carbon Innovation, to keep the clean energy it provides to its residents and businesses, which creates jobs and is better for the environment.
“Cryptocurrency mining consumes massive amounts of electricity to run and cool banks of high-powered computers 24/7/365, while creating very few jobs in the local economy.”
BC Hydro serves seven crypto-mining operations at the moment. Six more, totaling 273 megawatts, are in the advanced stages of connecting to the system; these are not expected to be affected.
It added that 21 cryptocurrency mining projects are currently requesting a total of 1,403 megawatts of electricity. However, new cryptocurrency mining projects will not be able to begin the process of connecting with BC Hydro, and projects at the early stages of the connection process will also be halted.
This amounts to the energy required to power approximately 570,000 homes or 2.1 million electric vehicles annually in the province, according to the Ministry.
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The English Columbia hydro and power authority delivered a report in Dec. 2022 named Crypto problem, where it cautioned that an “extraordinary level” of solicitations for digital currency mining tasks might actually strain the accessible energy supply and lead to higher power rates for occupants of B.C. It noted:
“BC Hydro’s available energy could be challenged by cryptocurrency mining operations, which could mean less energy for greener pursuits such as electrification or hydrogen production, and higher electricity rates for British Columbians.”
According to Statista, Bitcoin’s annualized electricity consumption hit a record high in early 2022. It was estimated to be higher than Finland’s total power consumption, at “204.5 TWh per year.”
New York as of late forced a ban on confirmation of-work (PoW) mining, turning into the main US state to do as such, denying any new mining tasks that aren’t founded on 100 percent environmentally friendly power.