Advocates for the crypto industry such as the Blockchain Association have criticized the Biden administration's reporting, calling it a "missed opportunity" that disproportionately focused on the risks associated with the industry without providing solutions to improve access and security.
In response to the White House findings, US Senator Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, and US Rep. Jared Huffman, D-California, introduced the Crypto Asset Environmental Transparency Act in December. US Senator Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, is one of the sponsors.
The bill would require the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a comprehensive impact study of US crypto mining activity and would require crypto mining operations that use more than 5 megawatts of power to report their greenhouse gas emissions. greenhouse.
Meanwhile, Oregon and Washington are working to ensure that crypto mining operations are eventually unable to purchase power from non-renewable sources to meet their power demands.
Oregon's clean energy goals call for investor-owned utilities in the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below baseline emissions levels by 2030; 90% by 2035; and 100% by 2040.
Washington's Clean Energy Transformation Act requires utilities to phase out coal-fired electricity from their state portfolios by 2025. By 2030, their portfolios must be greenhouse gas emissions neutral, allowing them to use limited amounts of electricity generated from natural gas as long as it is offset by other actions, such as renewable energy credits. By 2045, utilities must provide electricity from 100% renewable sources, with no ability to use offsets.
Joshua Basofin, Oregon clean energy policy manager with Climate Solutions, an environmental nonprofit, said advocates had realized in recent years the potential for data centers and crypto mining operations to contribute to ongoing carbon emissions under House Bill 2021, Oregon's climate law passed in 2021. They wanted to close the loophole.
โData centers and cryptocurrency have been very attracted to Oregon,โ Basofin said. โWe were thinking that it would be great if there was parity with HB 2021 for these other large loads. Crypto is not as developed here, but I think there is great potential for it to grow."
โClimate change is real, it is affecting our communities, and we must hold our large energy users to the standard that we hold for our large utilities,โ Marsh said.
Oregon and Washington still have double-digit percentages of their power supply to go nonrenewable, according to data from both states.
The most recent figures published by the Oregon Department of Energy on the mix of power generation resources across the state showed that coal accounted for 26% of electricity on the state grid in 2020, followed by 21% from natural gas, 40% from hydroelectric power and 7 % of wind.
Washington's hydro share was higher, at about 55%, but its power companies' overall resource mix still included about 10% of coal as of 2020, according to data from the Washington Department of Commerce. Nearly 13% came from natural gas, while wind and nuclear power combined accounted for 9%.
The severity and scale of the task ahead is why state legislators are trying to strike a balance between crushing the crypto mining industry and opening the doors for more power to be diverted to bitcoin miners.
โEven if they are building their own clean new resources, they could still compete for a scarce resource, which is clean new sources of electricity,โ said Blackmon of the Washington Office of Energy.
โIn the meantime, there are other novel uses that we are also very interested in, and we would tend to rank them as more valuable than cryptocurrencies.โ
InvestigateWest (invw.org) is an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reporter Kaylee Tornay can be reached at kaylee@invw.org.
