Hooray! All The Problems Are Solved!! Crypto Miners Promise To Use More Renewable Energy!!!
The word “sustainable” features prominently on the website for Merkle Standard’s crypto mining operation in remote eastern Washington, which aims to be carbon neutral by year’s end. In Idaho, budding company GeoBitmine plans to meet its “environmental, social and governance mandate” by using heat waste from its computers to grow crops in a greenhouse.
And in Texas, crypto miners trumpet their presence as eager customers of a growing portfolio of wind and solar power projects. Across the country, cryptocurrency miners are striving to remake the image of their industry in the public’s and policymakers’ minds: from flighty to reliable, from all about profit to altruistic, from energy guzzling and emissions heavy to climate conscious.
“We want to be allies, not adversaries,” said Jay Jorgensen, founder and CEO of GeoBitmine, the Idaho company. “Allies of the earth, of energy, of energy production, of the community we’re in.” But environmental groups and researchers are skeptical. They point to the industry’s track record of contributing to greenhouse gas emissions and e-waste, as documented by federal agencies and independent researchers, and to the general volatility of crypto’s first decade-plus of existence.
“I think there’s been a big shift in the public relations aspect,” said Nick Thorpe, climate and energy advocate with Earthjustice, an environmental law nonprofit that produced a sweeping report in 2022 on the crypto mining industry’s environmental liabilities. “(They’re) attempting to say all of the various talking points, like ‘We incentivize renewable energy … We’re near a wind farm so therefore we’re getting 100% clean energy,’ which, frankly, is incredibly misleading and very much like greenwashing.”
EDIT
https://www.invw.org/2023/02/17/can-crypto-mining-go-green-critics-are-skeptical/
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