Enlarge (credit: Andriy Onufriyenko | Moment)
This is not the summer that Americans want to deal with an unknown number of cryptocurrency firms unexpectedly flooding the power grid. More Americans are already expecting to experience rolling blackouts as the nation’s power grid strains against record heat and drought conditions currently spiking energy usage from coast to coast. Now, lawmakers are worried that US cryptocurrency mining operations planning for rapid growth will potentially further destabilize the grid while quietly spiking carbon emissions and driving up utility costs to more and more consumers.
That’s why Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) joined five other Congress members to submit a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy, recommending the agencies combine forces to draft new regulations requiring emissions and energy use reporting from all cryptomining operations nationwide. Only then, Warren and others suggest, will we know exactly how many firms are