Energy and environmental officials feared Greenidge would spark a trend of reviving old plants to force Bitcoin miners. Abi Buddington Get it in your inbox. By Peter Sterne First opened in 1937, the coal-fired power plant in the town of Dresden in the Finger Lakes region is one of several upstate power plants decommissioned in recent decades due to their inefficiency and excessive greenhouse gas emissions. . But the plant gained new life in 2014, when Atlas Holdings acquired it and upgraded it to burn grass fuel instead of coal. Greenidge Generation, a subsidiary of Atlas Holdings, has filed an application with the state Department of Environmental Conservation for a Title V compliance authorization that would allow them to restart power generation. In that request, Greenidge said the plant would only operate part-time, essentially supplying electrical power to the state’s power grid during peak demand hours. Greenidge’s air permit was issued in 2016 and is scheduled to be renewed in September 2021. The Dresden plant became operational in 2017. At first, it only operated when grid needs and the value of electrical energy were particularly high. high. offering electric power only to the grid,” said Mandy DeRoche, deputy director of the Clean Energy Program at Earthjustice, which represents environmental groups that oppose Greenidge. “So we can see from the previous log of the screens and the days and times they were open that they were only online a few days a year. Each of those years corresponds to heat waves and bloodless snaps. » But Greenidge temporarily found a way to monetize its year-round electrical energy production. A Lucrative Opportunity In the years since the Dresden plant came online, an increasing number of cryptocurrency mining companies have located in upstate New York, attracted by relatively reasonable electrical power values. Greenidge learned that he had access to a reasonable source of energy, as he had his own power plant, and began investing in bitcoin mining. As of 2020, Greenidge began working with the Dresden factory for maximum full time, employing maximum of the force produced to power its own Bitcoin mining rigs rather than selling them to the network. “As the cryptocurrency and electric power markets constantly fluctuate, we do what is most successful at any given time: sell the generated strength or mine cryptocurrencies with that strength. “Tim Rainey, Greenidge’s chief financial officer, told Forbes in 2020. As it became a leading cryptocurrency mining company, Greenidge went public on the Nasdaq stock market through a cross-merger and raised significant loans to fund the acquisition of more mining rigs. ” And a temporary power plant/cryptocurrency mining facility in South Carolina. Emissions create a disadvantage. While the Dresden plant now ran 24 hours a day, its total greenhouse fuel emissions skyrocketed from about 40,000 tons of carbon dioxide in 2019 to more than 200,000 tons in 2019. Environmental advocates protested. , arguing that the state Department of Environmental Conservation had only legalized the construction of a part-time power plant, not a full-time cryptocurrency mining facility. It ultimately rejected this argument, but the company was more receptive to its defenders’ claim that Greenidge’s inconsistent resignation from the Dresden plant may also violate the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, a landmark weather law that the state enacted in 2019. It is the big update between the new law of 2016 and that of 2021. The request for renewal is that a revolutionary climate law has been adopted, which does not allow the increase in carbon dioxide emissions. interfere with or be inconsistent with emissions rebates in New York State,” DeRoche said. After a months-long public comment hearing and repeated delays, the Department of Permitting’s Environmental Division denied Greenidge air consistent with renewal on June 30, 2022. “Based on the data contained in the application prepared and submitted through Greenidge, in combination with public comments and other applicable data, the Department hereby determines that continuing the facility in the current manner would be inconsistent with or interfere with compliance with statewide GHG emission limits,” the firm wrote in a letter explaining your resolution. Unsafe destination. Greenidge immediately appealed the ruling and it is currently under review through an administrative law ruling. If the ruling upholds the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s consistent grant denial, Greenidge will likely appeal the ruling in state court. Until Greenidge has exhausted all appeals, which may also take a year or more, the Dresden plant will not be able to continue using exhaled air. But mining at the Dresden plant is likely to prevent much before that. Like other cryptocurrency mining corporations, Greenidge was hit hard by the collapse in Bitcoin value. On December 20, the company agreed to sell most of its mining apparatus to NYDIG, a creditor to which it owes $74 million, and warned investors that it would soon have to file for voluntary bankruptcy. Greenidge did not respond to a request for comment for this article. The company’s shares, which were worth about $15 per percent in early 2022, are now worth less than $1 per percent, putting it at risk of being delisted from the Nasdaq. NEXT STORY: Are cryptocurrencies dead in New York? Do Not Sell My Personal Information When you visit our website, we store cookies in your browser to collect data. The information collected may relate to you, your personal tastes or your device, and is mainly used to make the site work as you expect and to provide a less hyped internet experience. 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