On the 21st of December, BC Hydro, an electric utility provider in the Canadian province of British Columbia, paused the new electricity connection for Bitcoin miners for around 18 months, a move to support the province’s climate action and economic goals.
In a press release today, Josie Osborne, Minister of Energy, Mines, and Low Carbon Innovation, said that cryptocurrency mining consumes massive amounts of electricity to run and cool banks of high-powered computers 24/7/365 while making very few jobs in the local economy. According to the press release, this suspension would target cryptocurrency miners who have yet to connect to the grid. It would also target those that were in the early phases of getting hooked up.
According to the press release, the existing Bitcoin mining operators and those who are well advanced in the connection process of BC Hydro would not be affected by this suspension. Environmentalists worldwide have criticized Bitcoin for its energy expenditures, and many compared the network’s electricity consumption to that of entire countries.
The Bitcoin network depends on PoW, the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm that requires huge energy because Bitcoin miners compete to crack cryptographic puzzles. However, in this process, the miners keep the blockchain secure while earning rewards for their actions.
According to the data from the Canada Energy Regulator, around 87% of the electricity of British Columbia is generated by hydropower. According to the British Columbia government, this way of electricity production has attracted unprecedented interest from crypto miners. According to the energy regulator, BC Hydro is currently serving seven crypto-mining operations and has six in the advanced stages of connection, which all take 273 megawatts of power.
British Columbia is facing requests from 21 projects with a projected power usage of 1,403 megawatts enough energy to power 570,000 homes for a year. This is the reason why the province is suspending new requests from cryptocurrency miners.
