How energy guzzling crypto mining is bringing power plants back to life in US

cnbctv18.com:

At a time when fossil fuel power plants are shutting down in favour of renewable energy, some plants in the US are getting a new lease of life to mine Bitcoin. Despite the known harmful impact on the environment, investors are pouring in money into reviving ageing fossil fuel plants.The idled Greenidge power plant in upstate New York was bought by private equity firm Atlas Holdings and retasked to mine cryptocurrency, while the once-struggling Montana coal plant, slated to shut down in 2018, was acquired by Bitcoin mining company Marathon in late 2020 to get the power station’s electricity.Energy guzzlersOne of the biggest environmental impacts of cryptocurrency is the electricity required for the mining process to create new digital coins.

To ensure that the crypto operation is secure, these networks rely on solving hard computational problems. The puzzles become more difficult when the price of the Bitcoin is higher, thereby consuming more electricity.

The harder the puzzles and higher the competition, the greater is the electricity usage.According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, the current annual energy consumption of Bitcoins is 147.67 terawatt hour (or one trillion watts for one hour), which is more than the energy consumption of Norway and Ukraine, EcoWatch reported.Thirst for electricityThe 115-megawatt coal-fired Hardin generating station in Montana had been struggling for years and was on the brink of closing down operations. In 2020, Marathon Digital Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed bitcoin mining company, partnered with Hardin’s owner to buy the power plant’s electricity.