A group of Democratic lawmakers led by US Senator Elizabeth Warren is demanding details from six of the world’s biggest Bitcoin miners about their electricity consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions, a warning shot that comes amid growing concern over the cryptocurrency industry’s environmental impact.
The eight lawmakers sent letters on Thursday asking miners including Marathon Digital Holdings and Riot Blockchain to provide their facilities’ annual electricity consumption, growth plans and impact on local power prices.
Cryptocurrencies have come under increasing fire for the industry’s power consumption, which is now comparable to the entire country of Argentina.
The letters raise the stakes in Warren’s campaign to crack down on wasteful Bitcoin operations after she sent a similar request last month to Greenidge Generation Holdings, which powers its upstate New York facility with a natural gas plant.
They also come as the industry reels from Bitcoin’s near 50 per cent slump. “Given the extraordinarily high energy usage and carbon emissions associated with Bitcoin mining, mining operations raise concerns about their impacts on the global environment, local ecosystems, and consumer electricity costs,” wrote Warren and seven other US lawmakers.
The letters also went to Stronghold Digital Mining, Bitfury Group, Bitdeer Technologies Holding and Bit Digital. The miners have operations across the U.S. and in countries including Norway, Russia, Japan and Kazakhstan.
The letter to BitFury’s Chief Executive Officer Brian Brooks asked him to provide details on the company’s electricity needs and climate impact.
“What is your projected electricity consumption for cryptomining across all of your US facilities combined over the next five years? What are your projected associated carbon emissions for that mining?” the lawmakers wrote.
Brooks defended the industry’s energy consumption before a US House subcommittee hearing this month.
“Bitcoin mining consumes a small but nontrivial amount [of] energy relative to the amount of value created, and that that energy is on average drawn more from sustainable sources than the US electric grid as a whole,” he told the committee.
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