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They recycled old power plant. That is a huge CO2 offset, building new plant would had huge emmisions.
by throw3838 5y ago
They recycled old power plant. That is a huge CO2 offset, building new plant would had huge emmisions.
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoRenewables have been cheaper (in monetary and carbon) than running existing coal plants for a while. Even more so if you reuse the sites grid connection. So it still doesn't add up to me. Clearly the couldn't sell energy before if they were about to shutdown, so there must be something different about the miners compared with their usual market, can't just be cheaper. In the article they seem to be suggesting they couldn't buy renewable power in 2020 which seems odd, but no follow up detail on it, apparently they're phasing coal out in a year so it may just have been a short term thing.
- throw3838 5y agoWell, bitcoin mining is not going to be here forever. It could be time limited thing. And knowing Montana, it is difficult to get electricity connection there.
- jhgb 5y agoFalse dichotomy; they could have done neither. NOT operating an old coal plant NOR building a new plant would have produced zero emissions.
- kcplate 5y agoPretty sure the only way to have produced zero emissions was to not mine the bitcoin at all. Old or new plant, or consumption of power from the existing grid would have produced some level of emissions, although Montana tends to have pretty high renewable energy from hydroelectric.
- jhgb 5y ago> the only way to have produced zero emissions was to not mine the bitcoin at all Yes, obviously. And what's the downside of that?
- woodruffw 5y ago"Recycling" a coal power plant by turning it on again is one of the more tortured uses of that word I've seen recently. It's similarly not a "CO2 offset": the offset is latent in the plant remaining dormant, or possibly being scrapped. By turning the plant back on, these miners have converted a CO2 offset into an ongoing source of CO2 emissions.