Crypto miners buy entire power plants to meet their energy needs

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Power plants and factories in a multitude of 20th century industries are finding ways to enter a new sector of the economy.

Cryptocurrencies have reached unacceptable price and trading levels, spawning several new currencies and spurring speculation on blockchain-backed NFTs. And high crypto prices have served to fuel substantial growth in mining operations, making former industrial spaces a tempting addition to the real estate market, with the potential to be converted into Bitcoin mining facilities, according to an initial report from Curbed.

“We have produced enough machines now” to meet the growing demand for crypto-mining facilities, Foundry CEO Mike Colyer said in the report. Foundry provides advice and equipment funding to other crypto miners who have plenty of devices to do what they love, but “have nowhere to plug them in,” he added.

Defunct industrial factories are great for crypto mining

Many factories that have disappeared are owned by private real estate developers who usually bought a multitude of them when manufacturing was phased out across the country. “We get phone calls from people even in New Hampshire and Vermont, from someone who might own a paper mill that’s gone down, who’s going to say, ‘I have a paper mill and nobody else. other does not want to go up. here, so I set up a bitcoin mining facility? ‘”Coyler said in the report.

Among crypto miners, there is a strong demand for cheap land, industrial infrastructure (which is not difficult to reuse), and factories that are no longer in use. Spaces previously dedicated to manufacturing are particularly high on the demand list, as the industrial process is a not too distant cousin to what crypto mining entails. “You have to get a lot of air into the building and a lot of air out of the building, so usually you open up the side walls and ventilate it through the roof,” Coyler said in the Curbed report. “This is why some places like the old Alcoa factories are some of the most popular, because they are very large buildings with a lot of electrical infrastructure installed, and the buildings were designed to dissipate heat, so they become natural places for mining. “

The crypto mining industry generates CO2 emissions

Not everyone is excited about the takeover of old manufacturing plants across the country, however, as concerns over electricity costs and energy use have fueled increased anxiety over how this industry can fit into a sustainable future. In 2019, scientists at the Technical University of Munich discovered that using Bitcoin generated around 22 megatonnes of CO2 emissions per year, a volume comparable to that of an entire city like Las Vegas or Hamburg in Germany. And with the recent introduction and buzz surrounding NFTs in the wake of the COVID-19 coronavirus, those numbers have increased dramatically.

While it cannot be denied the potential profit from crypto mining for owners of manufacturing and other industrial facilities that have fallen into disuse in recent decades, some elected officials and residents of New York, for example, are already worried about the effects crypto mining could have on the surrounding environment. In early June, around 200 people gathered at the regional headquarters of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to rally around a hydroelectric power plant that had switched to crypto mining. Called Greenidge Generation, it settled in a former coal-fired power plant last year, and later some residents suggested that nearby Seneca Lake was heated by crypto mining activity (however, Greenidge vehemently denied claims of negative environmental impact). It is too early to tell what will or may happen as cryptocurrency mining projects spread into the now-extinct manufacturing infrastructure of previous decades. But one thing is for sure: The new crypto mining industry is booming.

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