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Because AI and Crypto use so much electricity, what if a law was made that they had to power it with green energy? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Something on the lines of if your company facility is using over X amount of energy the majority of that has to be from a green source such as solar power. What would happen and is this feasible or am I totally thinking about this wrong

Edit: Good responses from everyone, my point in asking this was completely hypothetical, ignoring how hard it would be to implement a restriction. My own thoughts are that requiring the use of renewable energy for high electricity products could help spur the demand for it as now it's a requirement. Of course companies would fight back, they want money

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[–] O_i@lemmy.world -1 points 9 months ago (8 children)

Also over half is used by green energy already and will continue to grow

[–] jaycifer@kbin.social 6 points 9 months ago (7 children)

There is a caveat to this. It’s been a few years since I read the article, but oftentimes the reason Bitcoin miners run on renewables is because they set up shop in places that have established local cheap electricity.

The example in the article was a town with ideal geography for hydro power, to the point electricity was cheap enough to sell it to the next town over. Crypto-miners set up in the first town and quickly began using more power, driving up the cost and eventually causing serious issues for the second town as there wasn’t enough electricity leftover to send their way anymore.

[–] FaceDeer@kbin.social 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I'm no fan of Bitcoin, but often the energy they use from hydro plants is energy that would literally be wasted otherwise. A hydro dam can't control how much water is entering the reservoir, so if there's more water entering the reservoir than is needed to generate electricity for the current demand then the dam will need to just throw the extra water away. Trying to transmit the electricty to remote markets can be an alternative, but that costs resources too and isn't always practical.

[–] jaycifer@kbin.social 3 points 9 months ago

I dug up the original article: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/09/bitcoin-mining-energy-prices-smalltown-feature-217230/

In this case, they already were exporting 80% of the hydro-energy generated, about enough to power Los Angeles in 2018 when it was written. Maybe there are some cases for your suggestion on a small scale, but if a site is generating enough excess electricity to make mining worthwhile, why would it be less worthwhile to connect it to a larger grid?

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