More than a year has passed since the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation rejected the air permit application of Greenidge Generation, a Finger Lakes power plant that fuels a Bitcoin-mining operation by burning natural gas.
According to publicly available documents, the cryptomining company is on pace for its most lucrative year to date as its appeal undergoes an administrative review with the state. The company is also operating with a water permit that expired last year.
Local community members and advocacy groups have pushed for Greenidge’s closure ever since 2018 when its air permit was up for a customary five-year renewal. In June 2022, the DEC rejected the renewal application on the grounds that the company had violated the Community Leadership and Climate Protection Act, or CLCPA — the state’s signature climate law that requires all industries and sectors to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by the end of this decade. Cryptocurrency mining consumes large amounts of energy due to the large computer farms needed to solve the complex algorithms that release new coins.
The DEC’s assessment at the time was that Greenidge had no evidence of any plans to significantly reduce its actual emissions.
A month later, the company’s water permit came under jeopardy. The DEC cited the facility for operating without fish screens on its 7-foot-diameter intake pipes, which suck in nearly 140 million gallons of water from Seneca Lake each day at a maximum rate of 68,000 gallons per minute. Doing so can be deadly for fish and other aquatic life that gets sucked in, and fish screens are an inexpensive and standard practice at power plants, according to Edwin Cowen, a civil engineering professor at Cornell University. In January, the screens were installed after more than five years of operation without them.
Greenidge is appealing the air permit decision with an administrative law judge at the DEC’s Office of Hearings and Mediation…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply