Greenidge faces a strong battle to renew the BTC mining permit according to Basil Seggos who is the Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation in New York so let’s read more about it in our latest Bitcoin news today.
The Department of Environmental Conservation said Greenidge faces an uphill battle while trying to renew its BTC mining permit. Seggos said:
“Our belief still stands that this is a facility that’s going to have an uphill battle complying with the law.”
The DEC Commissioner added a new caveat to the statemetn saying that the regulator owed it to the company to review what the company submitted for a permit renewal:
“We owe it to the applicant to review what they submitted to us, take a deep dive into that. If in fact that shows the ability to comply, then maybe we’ll have a second impression as to whether or not they could comply with the law.”
Greenidge Generation’s upstate facility in Dresden and New York started life as a coal-fired power plant in 1937 before pivoting to BTC mining using natural gas. The company’s permission to mine BTC came in the form of a Title V permit that obliges Greenidge to control the amount of greenhouse gas emission the produces annually. The company obtained the Title V permit in 2016 aiming for a renewable with an SEC decision to come in June this year. In March 2021, Greenidge submitted documents to the SEC that included a letter that specified the legal maximum emissions that the company could emit at the Dresden facility.
The permission allowed the company to produce more than 641,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year with other reports showing that this figure is equivalent to 708 million pounds of burned coal and 116 thousand homes’ average electricity consumption or 1.6 billion miles driven by a vehicle. Other environmentalists fear that Greenidge and other BTC mining risk New York’s ability to honor the climate pledges. The state’s climate obligations are set out in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act that was signed into law in 2019 which obliges New york to generate 70% of the electricity from clean energy sources by 2030 and 100% by 2040.
Greenidge other occasions claimed it remains fully compliant with the regulatory requirements but it hasn’t convinced environmentalists and climate activities with Mandy DeRoche saying:
“If other plants like Greenidge are converted to Bitcoin mining, then I don’t see how we can meet our emissions goals.”
- "
- 000
- 116
- 2016
- 2019
- 2021
- About
- According
- Act
- activities
- activity
- Aiming
- amount
- Annually
- average
- Battle
- Billion
- Bitcoin
- Bitcoin mining
- BTC
- carbon
- carbon dioxide
- Coal
- come
- community
- company
- Company’s
- competition
- compliant
- consumption
- control
- could
- documents
- driven
- electricity
- emission
- Emissions
- energy
- environmental
- equivalents
- faces
- Facility
- Figure
- form
- GAS
- generate
- Goals
- going
- How
- HTTPS
- included
- IT
- Law
- Leadership
- Legal
- March
- million
- Mining
- more
- Natural
- Natural Gas
- New York
- New York’s
- NY
- obligations
- Other
- power
- produce
- protection
- regulatory
- Reports
- Requirements
- review
- Risk
- Said
- SEC
- set
- So
- stands
- started
- strong
- submitted
- the Law
- Title
- today
- tons
- us
- vehicle
- What
- whether
- while
- WHO
- year