Democrat lawmakers want government to ration electricity for climate change
Democrat lawmakers Friday suggested the federal government regulate energy to fight climate change, including rationing electricity to ensure it is used in an environmentally friendly manner.
The suggestion was included in a letter targeting cryptocurrencies, in which the lawmakers urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Energy (DOE) to take action against cryptominers, who consume a lot of energy in mining cryptocurrency.
The letter was signed by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Edward Markey (D-MA), Jeffrey Merkley (D-OR), and Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Jared Huffman (D-CA).
“The networks of Bitcoin and many other tokens are secured through a ‘proof of work’ algorithm, which involves ‘miners’ using highly-specialized and power-intensive computers known as ‘mining rigs’ to verify transactions by solving a mathematical puzzle, with the winning miner being rewarded in new tokens,” the letter explained. “As more miners compete and the value of the token increases, solving this puzzle becomes increasingly difficult, requiring more computational power and greater energy consumption.”
The lawmakers lamented that Bitcoin’s estimated annualized global power consumption over the last three-and-a-half years rivals “the total annual electricity usage of countries such as Norway and Sweden and reportedly exceeding the total reductions in greenhouse gas emissions attributed to electric vehicles.”
Furthermore, they said, the “annual global electricity consumption associated with just the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, Bitcoin and Ethereum, has been estimated to be as high as... [the] annual electricity usage of the United Kingdom.”
The legislators shared they had written to seven cryptomining companies to confront them about their damage to the environment. The companies assured the legislators that they were being environmentally conscious and described steps they had taken to remain so.
But this was not enough for the lawmakers who suggested that the electricity used for mining should instead be used for “our electrification and climate goals.”
“But these and similar promises about clean energy use obscure a simple fact: Bitcoin miners are using huge quantities of electricity that could be used for other priority end uses that contribute to our electrification and climate goals, such as replacing home furnaces with heat pumps. The current energy use of cryptomining is resulting in large amounts of carbon emissions and other adverse air quality impacts, as well as impacts to the electric grid.”
Besides, the lawmakers simply don’t trust the cryptominers.
“And it is worth noting that pledges like the Crypto Climate Accord are non-binding and do not hold cryptominers to specific actions.”
The letter concluded by demanding to know by August 15th how the EPA and DoE will require reporting by cryptominers on their activities.
Lawmakers such as Warren have crusaded against cryptocurrencies, which are decentralized and out of the reach of the federal government.
