One company, in upstate New York, had to find ways to offset emissions from its bitcoin farms after protests from NGOs and citizens.Īs the value of bitcoin climbs, miners of the currency will have more incentive to expand their operations-more incentive, in other words, to build their own captive power plants, or to draw power from the waste gas in fracking fields, or to go nuclear.
New York’s legislators, for instance, are mulling over a bill that can stop new or refurbished fossil fuel-powered plants from feeding electricity to cryptocurrency mining facilities. This surge in emissions, coming as it does in the lead-up to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, presents a worrying prospect to those in the US trying to shrink the country’s carbon footprint.
