Hochul’s DEC gives Greenidge crucial time extension to expand bitcoin mining before it rules on air permit renewal

In a personal settlement with Greenidge Generation LLC, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s environmental regulators awarded the corporate a crucial two-month window to set up hundreds of recent Bitcoin mining rigs at its Dresden energy plant before they rule on renewing its long-expired air emissions permits.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation says it delayed its allowing choice from Jan. 31 to Mar. 31 to “full its ongoing evaluate” of about 4,000 public feedback on the case.

The postponement severely undercuts state efforts to management greenhouse fuel emissions and clashes with DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos’ personal declaration final fall that “Greenidge has not proven compliance with New York’s 2019 local weather legislation.”

Last week’s DEC choice drew harsh criticism from teams who’ve pressed Hochul to declare a statewide moratorium on energy-intensive “proof-of-work” cryptocurrency services such because the Dresden plant.

“This delay from the DEC isn’t benign,” Seneca Lake Guardian mentioned yesterday. “Every day that Gov. Hochul and Commissioner Seggos drag their toes on this (allowing) choice is one other day for Greenidge to proceed increasing operations.”

Robert Howarth, a member of the state’s Climate Action Council, which helps implement 2019 Community Leadership and Climate Protection Act, known as the delay “disappointing. I hope that the DEC ultimately will make the proper choice and deny the air permit. Time will inform…”

Greenidge has been racing to set up particular objective pc “rigs” that affirm crypto transactions and earn Bitcoin before any potential state crackdown on the plant’s rising greenhouse fuel emissions.

At yearend, the plant operated 17,300 rigs that ran on roughly 45 megawatts of plant-generated electrical energy. Greenidge has instructed buyers it plans to deploy a complete of 32,000 rigs utilizing 95 megawatts this yr, greater than doubling its capability to compete with different Bitcoin miners worldwide.

The firm is at the moment erecting 4 buildings on the Dresden plant to home the brand new machines.

The further energy utilization will drive up the plant’s greenhouse fuel emissions even because the state struggles to minimize statewide ghg emissions by 40 p.c by 2030 (from a 1990 base), as required by the CLCPA.

Greenidge’s Title V air permit expired in September. While legally allowed to function below the expired permit, the corporate has requested that it be renewed with no change in its annual allowance of 641,878 tons of ghg emissions per yr.

But the corporate instructed the DEC in August that its estimated mixed onsite and upstream emissions totaled 1.05 million tons yearly — even before its present Bitcoin rig buildout and their new power calls for.

That acknowledgement prompted hundreds of Finger Lakes residents, companies, wine growers and environmental teams to demand that the DEC reject the corporate’s software to renew its Title V and Title IV air permits. Seggos appeared to agree when he Tweeted in September that Greenidge had not proven compliance with the CLCPA.

Since then, state Assembly Member Anna Kelles (D-Ithaca) has reintroduced legislation that will impose a statewide moratorium on proof-of-work crypto mining, which has a companion invoice within the state Senate.

Kelles issued a statement yesterday on the permit choice delay, calling on the DEC “to lead and take swift motion on this vital local weather subject.”

Her assertion got here a day after gubernatorial candidate Jumaane Williams held a press convention within the Finger Lakes to name on Hochul to impose a proof-of-work crypto moratorium. He additionally urged the DEC to deny the Greenidge air permit software.

Williams mentioned he wasn’t essentially opposed to cryptocurrencies — solely these like Bitcoin that rely on the energy-intensive proof-of-work affirmation methodology.

“(Proof-of-work) mining is absolutely the worst,” Williams mentioned. “There is a method to do that that isn’t as harmful to the local weather.”

But the DEC’s choice to postpone its air permit ruling douses any prospect for a Hochul moratorium, activists mentioned. And if Greenidge completes its buildout before Hochul indicators any future moratorium invoice into legislation, it would doubtless not apply retroactively to a longtime Bitcoin facility.

The DEC introduced final week that it and Greenidge had “mutually agree to droop the Uniform Procedures Act timeframe for permit critiques” in order that it may evaluate public feedback.

Joseph Campbell, president of Seneca Lake Guardian, requested, “Why was it a bilateral choice between Greenidge and the DEC to delay the choice two months? No different stakeholders had been concerned within the choice. Nobody requested us (SLG) or EarthJustice or NYPIRG.

“Obviously, we’d have mentioned, ‘Absolutely not.’”

Campbell mentioned the DEC ought to merely dedicate sufficient employees to course of the feedback. That’s one thing he and Kelles consider “they might do in a few days in the event that they actually wished to.”

Campbell mentioned he was dismayed to be taught that the DEC instructed WaterEntrance that after the remark evaluate was full it would think about ordering an adjudicatory listening to on the permit software — additional delaying the method for months, if not years.

He mentioned SLG would adamantly oppose an adjudicatory listening to as a result of it would trigger unwarranted delay on the expense of CLCPA compliance.

Williams joined Campbell and a number of other vineyard officers at a Jan. 31 press convention on Greenidge’s Bitcoin buildout on the Forge Cellars vineyard in Burdett.

Several audio system pressured that hovering ghg emissions within the Finger Lakes had been a risk to the area’s grape-dependent wine business.

Michael Warren Thomas famous that world-renowned winemakers — together with Louis Barruol of Forge Cellars — had been investing tens of millions of {dollars} in Finger Lakes vineyard operations, a few of that are downwind of the Greenidge plant.

“We want the state Legislature and Gov. Hochul to assist shield one of many greatest financial engines within the state, which is the Finger Lakes, a world-class wine area,” Thomas mentioned.

Williams, a former member of the New York City Council, is difficult Hochul within the Democratic main this yr. He misplaced to Hochul within the 2018 race for lieutenant governor. A yr later, he was elected New York City Public Advocate, changing Letitia James, who turned the state Attorney General.

Williams trails Hochul by a large margin within the polls.

But that is the third straight Democratic main for governor that has featured an underdog challenger elevating a Finger Lakes environmental risk as a key marketing campaign subject.

In the 2014 marketing campaign, Zephyr Teachout strongly opposed fracking for pure fuel  when then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo was much less dedicated on the problem. Although she misplaced the first, Teachout carried many upstate counties, together with a lot of the Finger Lakes area.

Months later, Cuomo ordered a statewide ban on fracking.

In her 2018 marketing campaign in opposition to Cuomo, Cynthia Nixon stood in opposition to a plan to construct the state’s largest rubbish incinerator in Romulus, a challenge proposed by one in all Cuomo’s largest marketing campaign contributors. Nixon goaded him by saying:

“Jerry Brown (then-governor of California) would by no means ever enable an enormous rubbish incinerator to be sited in the course of Napa Valley. Why on the earth would our governor sit idly by and permit this incinerator to be sited within the coronary heart of the Finger Lakes?”

Cuomo, who demolished Nixon within the main by greater than 30 proportion factors, finally signed the incinerator invoice into legislation.

Hochul’s workplace didn’t reply to emailed questions Thursday about her stance on the Greenidge air permit subject.

The DEC, when requested to reply to fees that it had politicized the air permit course of, mentioned Thursday:

“DEC topics each software to all relevant federal and state requirements to make sure the company’s choice is protecting of public well being and the atmosphere and upholds environmental justice and equity, together with requirements associated to the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.”

DEC didn’t immediately handle questions on its function in enabling Greenidge to proceed constructing out its Bitcoin mining operators or the potential adjudicatory listening to.

Greenidge’s Dale Irwin mentioned at the moment: “DEC requested an extension to proceed its evaluate of public feedback acquired, which is commonplace below the State Administrative Procedures Act, and we had been completely happy to agree to the extension.  Greenidge operates in full compliance with our present permit and appreciates the DEC’s evaluate of our software.  We look ahead to finalizing this renewal course of with publication of a robust ultimate permit.”

The Hochul Administration’s choice to delay its ruling on the Greenidge air permit follows the Cuomo Administration’s routine observe of stress-free the corporate’s environmental deadlines.

For instance, Greenidge signed a consent order with the DEC in 2015 that required the corporate to clear up its Lockwood coal ash landfill by late 2016, however that deadline has been repeatedly postponed.

Cuomo’s DEC additionally allowed the corporate 5 years to adjust to federal Clean Water Act rules on water consumption and discharge. Its consumption pipe nonetheless doesn’t comply.

The company has additionally allowed the corporate to take years to present a report on thermal air pollution from its water discharges into the Keuka Outlet, which flows into Seneca Lake. Warmer lake water is believed to contribute to dangerous algal blooms.

And a DEC permit that permits Greenidge to discharge mercury and different pollution immediately into Seneca Lake doesn’t require a dilution examine report till subsequent yr. Even then, the report doesn’t want to specify how the mercury has unfold in Seneca Lake.

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