by Philip Gillemot

Three years after its air permit was denied by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), the Greenidge Generation cryptocurrency-mining facility on Seneca Lake remains in operation. Burning natural gas, it spews out huge amounts of carbon dioxide as waste gas into our atmosphere every day, worsening climate change, global warming, and its provoked climate disasters including hurricanes, storms, floods, heat emergencies, drought, fires, crop failures, loss of life, loss of communities, and economic loss. It has been appealing the loss of its air quality permit ever since and the state has allowed it to continue to operate while appealing. 

The irony of this is that facility could mine cryptocurrency using less than one percent of its current electrical energy by switching to an alternative method. Greenidge "mines" Bitcoin by making multitudes of calculations with miniature computers through the Proof of Work (PoW) method. The Proof of Stake (PoS) method makes the necessary calculations in a different way, and it requires only 0.2% of the energy that the PoW method uses. And thus, the amount of climate-warming carbon dioxide produced would be similarly reduced. Another leading cryptocurrency, Etherium, switched from the PoW method to the PoS method three years ago, has continued to be very successful financially, and has been able to drastically reduce its environmental footprint. Bitcoin claims that its method is more "democratic" in the way that it awards its cryptocurrency and thus stubbornly holds onto its current method. The Greenidge facility states that it also puts some generated electricity into the statewide grid when demand for electricity outpaces its generation from other sources. Note also that wind and solar are the cheapest ways to generate electricity; more costly is fossil fuel generation (including natural gas, coal, and oil), and the most expensive (and time-consuming in plant construction) is nuclear.  

The Finger Lakes Times reported that on June 17 that the DEC confirmed that a mixture of oil and water leaked from the Greenidge plant, seeping into a nearby marsh. It also reported that on Saturday, June 28, environmental advocates, local business owners, and state lawmakers gathered with Seneca Lake Guardian to call for the immediate shutdown of the Bitcoin mining facility. The rally, held at the Finger Lakes Welcome Center along the shore of Seneca Lake in Geneva, marked the third anniversary of the DEC's decision to reject Greenidge’s Title V air permit, citing noncompliance with New York’s climate laws.

Yvonne Taylor, Vice President of Seneca Lake Guardian wrote in a June email, "Only a few weeks ago, we learned that they (Greenidge) appealed yet another decision, with proceedings not set to begin until January 2026. This can't happen here, or anywhere else in New York. We must insist on better regulations that would set a limit on the length of time a polluting corporation can continue to operate once its permit has been denied. PERIOD."

New York State signed legislation into law in 2022 that placed a two-year moratorium on the use of fossil fuel power plants for cryptomining while the DEC completed an environmental impact study of the industry.  While delayed, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) was recently released, and now we have an opportunity to comment on that study. 

Here's where everyone that is outraged by this degradation of our environment can help:

Register to comment at an upcoming virtual hearing on cryptomining in NY! Register here: https://dec.ny.gov/environmental-protection/climate-change/statutes-regulations-policies   Scroll down to the "Cryptocurrency Mining Law Hearing" of the site and date of your choice. All are welcome to attend and speak at any of the hearings listed; residents of the region will have priority for speaking.