New York is home to four of the largest bitcoin mines in the country, which consume huge quantities of electric power and water to cool their server farms, emit loud humming noises around the clock and flood the atmosphere with copious greenhouse gases and pollutants. 

In many cases, they are also driving nearby residents crazy.

“I’m probably within a mile and a half of the facility, and I can hear it,” said Erin Robinson, a sociology professor at Canisius University in Buffalo who lives close to a bitcoin mine near the New York border with Canada. “It’s a low hum that just kind of sits in your ears.”

Bitcoin, the largest and best-known cryptocurrency, is managed by a decentralized network of bitcoin users. A network algorithm assigns each transaction a unique random identifying code, which bitcoin “mines” derive by operating powerful computers day and night, running an endless series of random numbers to break those codes. 

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Once a correct code is reached, confirming a transaction, which happens on average across the network every 10 minutes, a bitcoin miner receives 3.125 newly minted bitcoins (each worth around $95,000), which is the fee for helping maintain the network and keep it secure. The energy use for these operations is very high—which means the price of electricity governs where these mines are located. 

Some bitcoin miners are attracted to New York for its cheap electricity—many Northern towns that border Canada have low rates due to abundant hydropower. But others are enticed by the state’s decommissioned or low-use power plants, which they buy and connect to their computers, often running those power plants all day, every day. 

Two different bitcoin mines have set up their operations in small Northwestern New York towns, and bought local “peaker” gas plants—power plants that only operate during times of peak demand. 

When miners bought these plants, they drastically increased operations at the gas plants, ultimately increasing greenhouse gas emissions. These mines are made up of hundreds of computers—and they all run hot. Numerous large fans are used to cool down the servers, which are often very loud for local residents. Cold freshwater is also used to cool the computers. The water consumption of bitcoin mines is understudied, but concerning to many experts. 

In these small New York communities, the resistance to these bitcoin mines has been stark and wide-ranging, employing multiple different levers in local and state governance. 

“Crypto mines exploit all of the distributed impacts in a way that has made it really hard to regulate and hard for communities to understand,” said Mandy DeRoche, a deputy managing attorney with Earthjustice that has fought the sale of these power plants to bitcoin miners in court.

An Energy-Intensive Operation

The amount of energy that bitcoin mines—or more broadly cryptocurrency mines—use is relatively obscured. In early 2024, under former President Biden, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) was directed to collect data from 130 identified commercial cryptocurrency miners operating in the U.S., but the survey is still ongoing. 

As of last year, the EIA puts cryptocurrency’s energy usage at anywhere between 0.6 percent  to 2.3 percent of U.S. electricity consumption. In New York, the energy for bitcoin mining usually comes from either the electric grid, operated by the New York Independent System Operator, or a power plant that the miners own. 

Greenidge Generation, a power plant off the coast of Seneca Lake near Dresden, New York, was initially a coal-fired plant but had been operating as a gas “peaker” plant since 2017, after it was acquired by Atlas Holdings LLC in 2014. In March 2020, a bitcoin mine adjacent to the power plant began operations.

“The Greenidge facility actually became the test case for how 49 other underutilized or decommissioned power plants across the state could turn to bitcoin or cryptocurrency mining and be resurrected,” said Yvonne Taylor, who lives next to Seneca Lake and is the vice president of Seneca Lake Guardian, an organization that works to preserve the Finger Lakes.

Power plants that operate in New York must obtain an air permit from the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation every five years. Greenidge Generation’s permit expired in 2021, and as it made its way through the renewal process, the company shared data on its energy generation activities. 

According to the company, it produced 203,918 megawatts of electricity for the state grid in 2018, when it was still operating as a peaker plant. In 2020, when it began to expand its operations into bitcoin mining, it still supplied 215,588 megawatts to the grid, but also produced an additional 132,215 megawatts for bitcoin mining, meaning the plant would have to run much more often.

In 2022, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law a two-year moratorium on air permits for fossil fuel power plants that serve cryptocurrency mines. Greenidge was grandfathered in because it had submitted its application for a renewal air permit before the law went into effect.

In June of that same year, however, the Department of Environmental Conservation still denied the renewal of Greenidge Generation’s air permit, saying that its continued operation would be inconsistent with the State’s Climate Act, which sets stringent greenhouse gas emissions limits over the next two decades. 

Since it began its cryptocurrency mining operations, Greenidge Generation has been emitting more greenhouse gases. According to court filings, the plant’s projected total emissions from 2022 through 2026 “is more than six times the emissions the facility was producing, on average, prior to shifting to cryptocurrency mining operations.”

Since its air permit renewal was denied, Greenidge Generation has gone through multiple cycles of appeals, and all the while it continues to run its power plant. The plant is legally allowed to continue operating until the last day of the application process, which includes appeals and further reviews, under the State Administrative Procedures Act. 

Seneca Lake Guardian and other community groups oppose the company’s appeals in court, represented by Earthjustice.

“They’re behaving like a petulant, rich child, because they don’t like the answer that they get,” said Taylor. “At some point they’re going to exhaust their options, and I am confident that we will prevail.”

Bitcoin Mines—Loud, Thirsty and Polluting

When a bitcoin mine moves into a small community like the one near Seneca Lake, municipal officials are rarely aware of the impact it could have on local residents. Some are even swayed by the promise of new jobs to offer tax abatements.  

“I don’t think most communities realize what they’re inviting into their community until it’s too late,” said DeRoche. “With the water consumption, the fire and safety risks, the water pollution, the noise pollution, people realize after the fact that maybe this is not the best use of community tax dollars.”

The bitcoin mine near New York’s border with Canada, which is owned by the Canadian company Digi Power X (formerly Digihost), also bought a gas peaker plant—Fortistar—in order to power its operations in a small town just north of Buffalo called North Tonawanda. The bitcoin mine is located close to some local residents, like Robinson, the Canisius professor, which means that the low but persistent hum of the facility’s fans can be heard in some of their homes.

For the residents of North Tonawanda, this pushed many to action. Deborah Goldeck, a resident of the town for 40 years, has been fighting for more regulation on the Digi Power X mine since it started operations in 2022. According to Goldeck, a May 2024 meeting of the town’s common council where multiple people voiced their concerns led to widespread change across the town. 

Residents’ advocacy culminated in a two-year ban on cryptocurrency mining in North Tonawanda, and a formal noise study to evaluate whether the existing mine is violating the town’s noise ordinance. 

“We just can’t live like this,” said Goldeck. “We want out.”

A 2021 full environmental assessment of the operations at the Fortistar power plant filed with the city prior to the sale stated that Digi Power X planned to run the plant all day, every day to power its cryptocurrency mining operation. It also estimated its future water consumption at 500,000 gallons of water a day, the equivalent of around 25 swimming pools. 

Bitcoin mines use water, in addition to fans, to cool down their servers. In 2021, the water consumption of bitcoin mining was estimated to be 1,573 billion liters (also known as gigaliters), and has continued to increase since then. 

In North Tonawanda, residents are worried about pressure on the wastewater infrastructure. Near Seneca Lake, Taylor worries about the discharges of water from the Greenidge Generation data center into Seneca Lake and the nearby Keuka Lake. 

The warm water, she says, could lead to increased amounts of cyanobacteria in Seneca Lake, creating harmful algal blooms in the water source of many in her community. 

“My house has a pipe that goes down the hill into the lake, and that’s my water source,” said Taylor. “If there’s a harmful algal bloom in front of my water source, I can’t use my water at all. I can’t flush the toilet, I can’t shower, I can’t bathe.”

Taylor’s group, Seneca Lake Guardian, as well as Sierra Club and the Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes, sued Greenidge Generation in 2023, alleging that their discharges violated the Clean Water Act. 

The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed, with the court ruling that the company’s application for a permit renewal was sufficient. That same year, under direction from the state Department of Conservation, Greenidge Generation also made some efforts to protect local marine wildlife from its water intake systems. 

Though local residents have found some success in limiting the expansion of cryptocurrency mines in their towns by enacting local laws and moratoriums, it is these numerous larger lawsuits at the state level that can prevent existing mines from continuing their operations, even if they are not all successful. 

In November 2024, in North Tonawanda, another lawsuit was successful with the New York Supreme Court ordering the Public Service Commission to re-review its approval of the sale of Fortistar power plant to Digi Power X while considering the state’s Climate Act. Digi Power X can continue to operate the power plant until the commission makes a new decision.

“You cannot allow the purchase of this power plant, which is going to result in astronomical increase in operations and pollution, to go through without a climate law analysis,” said DeRoche. 

The Digi Power X air permit also expired in 2021. The Department of Environmental Conservation has yet to make a decision on its renewal application.

Digi Power X also plans to build a cryptomining facility on 20 acres in Hildebran, a small town in Burke County, North Carolina.  Town officials said at a public meeting that the company has yet to apply for permits.

Dozens of homes are near the proposed site. Bruce Berry, who lives about a mile away, told Hildebran Town Council members earlier this month that “anybody who lives close to one of these is not happy. What are we getting here? I’m looking for the benefits. It doesn’t create any jobs. People lose their serenity. If you want to go home and sit on your porch and listen to the birds, you can’t.”

Hildebran town officials said they can’t stop the company from building the facility because the state legislature has limited their zoning authority. However, a new bill would give local governments more leeway in some types of zoning decisions. It has yet to become law.

Both Digi Power X and Greenidge Generation did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Grid-Powered Mining

Other cryptocurrency mines in the state of New York are not powered by their own gas plants. Instead, like most businesses, they are hooked up to the electricity grid. This means that the greenhouse gas emissions linked to their operations, and their impacts on New York residents, are much harder to track—making lawsuits less likely. 

“I think it’s harder to get reliable information about the ones that are on the grid and how much power they’re using—how much they’re spiking local electricity rates, and how much they’re impacting the grid and the community’s price of power,” said DeRoche.

But recently, a group of scientists at Harvard released a study that attempted to trace air pollution from the 34 largest bitcoin mines in the country, previously identified by the New York Times. 

Using mapping technology, datasets from the New York Times and dispersion models, scientists were able to identify 635 power plants that were supplying electricity to these mines between August 2022 and July 2023. 

“The potential amount of energy demand that these [34] power-hungry facilities are able to put together is as high as 33 percent more than the entire city of Los Angeles,” said Gianluca Guidi, a visiting scholar at Harvard who co-authored the study. 

The study also tracked air pollution, specifically the pollutant PM2.5; exposure to it can lead to health impacts like childhood asthma and premature mortality. According to city data, long-term exposure to the pollutant even contributes to an estimated 1 in 25 deaths in New York City.

Although New York state only has four of these 34 large mines, multiple areas of New York City were identified as hotspots—counties where at least one community was experiencing a non-negligible amount of increased air pollution due to these bitcoin mines’ demand on the grid. 

One hotspot was identified in Queens, near the Astoria Generating Station, a local gas plant. While observing the way weather and the atmospheric conditions impact the dispersion of air pollutants, study authors found that other hotspots were less clear-cut. 

The hotspot in Staten Island, for example, was traced back to a New Jersey power plant, and the bitcoin mines that plant was serving were in upstate New York. This is because the electricity grid is not always divided perfectly along state lines. 

“It can happen that you have a bitcoin mine or any large facility in a specific state drawing energy from a power plant that is now in another state,” said Guidi. “Then you have the dispersion of the pollution coming out of the power plants that goes and affects, potentially, a community in another state.”

Allies of the cryptocurrency industry have pushed back against the results of studies like these, arguing that cryptocurrency mining can stabilize the grid, meaning they can power down operations at peak demand times and make use of excess renewable energy. 

According to a spokesperson for the New York Independent System Operator, the agency in charge of the state’s grid, this claim has not yet been tested. This notion of grid stabilization is based on “expected operation rather than actual participation in demand-side markets or other firm commitments to reduce consumption during peak demand conditions.”

Continued Deregulation

The cryptocurrency industry has received particular attention from President Trump, who spoke at the 2024 bitcoin conference during his campaign. Today, the Trump family also owns a crypto company, World Liberty Financial, and the president’s sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are heavily invested in a bitcoin mining company called American Bitcoin. 

Since taking office, Trump has signed an executive order declaring the need for a new regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies. He also placed cryptocurrency allies in the Securities and Exchange Commission, an agency that had previously been responsible for curbing corruption and fraud in the industry. 

Given Trump’s support for increased fossil fuel extraction and expanded infrastructure for oil, gas and coal, the energy-intensive operations of bitcoin mines may continue to be powered by polluting power plants.

Meanwhile, the New York Independent Systems Operator is already planning for an increase in energy demand over the next 10 years due, in part, to cryptocurrency mines and data centers. 

“As the demand on the grid grows at a rate greater than the build out of generation and transmission, deficiencies could arise within the ten-year planning horizon,” according to a 2024 report on grid reliability. 

Today, the mines in North Tonawanda and Dresden are still operating—and so are their polluting power plants. 

“The burden of proof still comes down to the people—we’re still in charge of proving that there isn’t a risk,” said Robinson, the Canisius professor. Agencies “assume that it’s safe until they see an accident or see devastation in terms of our power grid or wastewater or noise violations.”

Lauren Dalban

Reporter, New York City

Lauren Dalban is a New York City-based reporter with a background in local journalism. A former ICN fellow, she now covers environmental issues in all five boroughs. Originally from London, she earned a B.A. in History and English from the University of Virginia, and an M.S. from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

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