For more than a year, local residents and businesses have protested a natural gas plant that has powered a bitcoin mining operation in the Finger Lakes region — now it faces even greater peril due to a NY state law designed to cut down on carbon emissions.
The Greenidge Generation bitcoin mining facility is in a former coal plant by Seneca Lake in Dresden, New York.The Greenidge Generation bitcoin mining facility is in a former coal plant by Seneca Lake in Dresden, New York.Residents and business owners in the Finger Lakes region have been protesting for more than a year against a natural gas plant that has powered a bitcoin mining operation in the area.
When we first moved here, you would see all manner of species and numbers of fish off the end of our dock, and we don’t see that anymore.“The air [permit] application does not currently meet the requirements of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act,” the state Department of Environmental Conservation wrote in an email to Gothamist.
“They're plowing energy into something that's just a make-believe currency,” said Rainey, owner of Forge Cellars on Seneca Lake. “We're here planting vineyards, caring for the land and actually creating tangible things that people can look at, can enjoy, that give pleasure.”, a Connecticut-based investment company, bought the decommissioned coal plant in 2014 and invested $100 million to convert it to natural gas.
More than half of the nation’s power plants directly discharge water with temperatures that exceed 90 degrees Fahrenheit. This near-boiling liquid can have negative consequences for aquatic life, said Todd Cowen, director of the DeFrees Hydraulics Lab at Cornell University. At top capacity, the air pollution would be very significant according to calculations from Anthony Ingraffea, a Cornell University civil engineering professor who prepared an analysis for local environmental group, Seneca Lake Guardian. He estimated 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and methane would be released into the air as a result.