The article completely ignores The Beast - a.k.a. the Texas bitcoin mining industry.
The article conveniently ignores the massively energy-consuming bitcoin mining industry.
The article below is critical of the bitcoin mining industry in Texas, and points out how, when it comes to regulators and government, it's "hands-off."
https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-mining-texas-energy-grid/
Texas residents have complained that industrial-scale bitcoin mines are driving up energy prices and destroying the quality of life of those living nearby. Meanwhile, politicians are demanding clarity over crypto mining’s impact on both the environment and the stability of the ailing Texas energy grid.
The lawsuit is just the latest flareup of a broader fight over bitcoin mining in Texas. Detractors and government agencies trying to understand the industry’s full impact have so far been forced to scrape together only “piecemeal information,” says Adrian Shelley, an energy policy expert and branch director of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
The bitcoin mining industry in Texas claims that details of its energy usage are proprietary. To tell you how much power they have over regulators and politicians - the government backed off. ERCOT could easily provide this information - and they don’t want to either.
It may seem harebrained to invite industrial-scale consumers of power onto an already-creaking grid
Why yes it does, regardless of the counterintuitive nonsense that the bitcoin industry tries to peddle.
The state of Texas was sold (or encouraged the sale of) a bill of goods, because bitcoin mining has not provided the “failsafe” that it was supposed to. Its real purpose was to make gobs of money for mining companies, which could then be shared with Texas energy regulators and politicians - all at the expense of the people who live, work and pay taxes there. I bet if we looked into the ownership of those companies, we would find substantial foreign influence, and not just everybody's favorite boogieman, China.
In June 2021, Abbott signed a new law that established a formal legal definition for virtual currency and set clear rules for businesses handling it, which he described as part of a “master plan” to attract crypto firms to the state. The following November, in an interview with the TBC, Abbott declared his intention to turn Texas into the “centerpiece” of the bitcoin industry.
...a long queue of companies, representing around an additional 32 GW of consumption, are either awaiting approval for new mining installations or beginning construction. ERCOT declined to provide up-to-date figures.
The prospect of more miners tapping the Texas grid has sparked concern among stakeholders who believe, variously, that the influx of mining activity will lead to blackouts, increase the price of energy for consumers, drive up carbon emissions, and damage Texans’ quality of life.
Others argue the state’s strategy of paying bitcoin miners not to mine when the grid is under heavy load is nonsensical. “The most important thing a regulator can do is match assets and liabilities—match supply and demand,” says Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston. With the deterioration of the state’s fleet of fossil fuel plants, he says, allowing large-scale mining facilities to increase demand on the grid can only “exacerbate the situation” and invite further instability.
In Texas, claims Hirs, crypto mining is primarily an energy arbitrage business, the profitability of which is dependent on the ability to purchase energy cheaply in bulk and sell it back to the grid at a premium when demand is high. These operations are effectively double-subsidized by residents, says Hirs, whose taxes provide both the funds for buying energy from the miners in periods of peak demand and the fees paid to miners for participating in demand response. Hirs likens miners to parasites, calling them “the tapeworm on the ERCOT grid.”
Before the recent surge in the price of bitcoin, which has made mining more profitable, news reports noted that some firms made more money by switching off and collecting fees when the grid was under pressure than they were through mining bitcoin. In August 2023, when a Texas heatwave led to a surge in energy demand, Riot said it earned $31.7 million through its participation in grid stabilization programs and only around $10 million from mining.
Opponents of inviting more mining facilities into Texas have been stymied by the absence of data showing the extent of the additional burden on the grid. Other than the miners themselves, nobody currently knows quite how much energy is devoted to mining in the state or the wider US. The EIA says it has “developed general estimates,” but can’t piece together an accurate picture due to the “difficulty of identifying cryptocurrency mining activity among millions of US end-use customers.”
This one sounds like a whopper. The U.S. government can get any information it wants, anytime. In 2024, everything, including all electrical grids, are managed and controlled. The information exists somewhere, even if the gov't wants to pretend it doesn't.
Critics of the mining industry have interpreted the move to squash the EIA survey as a cynical attempt to preserve a shroud of secrecy. “The last thing a parasite wants you to know is how bad it is going to become,” says Hirs. But the mining industry says it had every reason to object, as evinced by the sympathy of the judge, who stated in a ruling that the government’s justifications for expediting the survey—that a rise in crypto prices would incentivize more mining activity and, if the weather were to turn, destabilize power grids—“fall far short” of the necessary level of risk.
The bitcoin mining industry has carte blanche - not only in Texas, but everywhere else. It steamrolls into rural areas, compromising quality of life for millions of Americans. It raises electricity rates for consumers, and devours electricity. It ignores the government at no detriment. It's unregulated and untouchable. You really have to wonder why.