The Greenidge fossil fuel power plant in the Finger Lakes primarily generates electricity used to power computer servers that mine Bitcoin. (Credit: Matt Wittmeyer, City & State New York)
On a sunny, 75-degree day in June 2023, Yvonne Taylor and her husband were out for a drive in the Finger Lakes – a lush section of Central New York known for rolling vineyards and sparkling glacial lakes. As she looked into the distance, Taylor heard a loud screech and watched as a flame shot into the air like a torch, as a local bitcoin mining operation flared natural gas as part of a mandatory safety check.
The flare, and the screech, interrupted an otherwise bucolic Father’s Day weekend. For Taylor, the vice president of the grassroots environmental group Seneca Lake Guardian, it was yet another reminder that the Greenidge power plant was burning fossil fuels around the clock. And unlike typical power plants, which produce energy to power homes and businesses, Greenidge’s power is primarily used to run thousands of computer servers stored on the grounds of the plant. Those servers are mining bitcoin – running the same computational process over and over again in order to help secure and verify the cryptocurrency’s decentralized network, in exchange for some of the virtual currency. Taylor and other advocates in the state have been working for years to shut down the Greenidge facility and other energy-hungry crypto mining operations. So far, they have had mixed success.
As the presidential election draws near, the fate of New York’s crypto mining policies – and the state’s overall climate goals – hangs in the balance. Environmental advocates and policy experts say that federal regulation of fossil fuel-based bitcoin mining is needed, especially since state-level policies meant to restrict the practice have proven difficult to enforce. With both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris looking to attract support from the cryptocurrency industry, which has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the presidential race and congressional campaigns, a federal crackdown on the industry seems increasingly unlikely.