要点：
- 总部位于纽约的加密货币挖矿设施 Greenidge Generation 发现自己处于州和全国关于挖矿公司对环境及其当地社区影响的辩论的中心。
- 至少在纽约，这场辩论导致了针对像 Greenidge 这样的公司的立法。
- 虽然各方在更大的比特币挖矿辩论中使用的言论往往基于错误信息，但在纽约州北部，环保主义者实际上正在用充满错误的论点影响立法。
- 但住在该设施附近的当地人表示，他们已经被排除在谈话之外，更广泛的辩论忽视了格林尼奇在他们生活中扮演的角色。
纽约州德累斯顿——去年，州长 Kathy Hochul 签署了一项为期两年的禁令，禁止使用天然气发电厂等碳基能源驱动的新加密采矿设施。
纽约州具有里程碑意义的法律是在就比特币 (BTC) 开采对该州的影响进行了数月的辩论之后出台的。当地工会成员和 Greenidge Generation 附近的居民反对暂停，Greenidge Generation 是一家在这场辩论中开采比特币的发电厂。该法案的支持者认为，该工厂负责将热水喷入冰川湖，杀死数千条鱼，并导致对其他水生生物有害的有毒藻类大量繁殖。
该法案的支持者，包括代表卡尤加湖以南和东部多个城镇的纽约州女议员安娜·凯勒斯、地球正义和塞拉俱乐部等国家环保组织以及塞内卡湖卫士等超本地化组织，都宣布该法案的通过是一项重大举措胜利。现在，他们正在全国范围内进行战斗。
仅今年一年，凯勒斯就在美国参议院的环境和公共工程小组委员会以及宾夕法尼亚众议院的环境资源和能源委员会作证。参议院小组主席、参议员埃德·马基 (D-Mass.) 称这次听证会是“国会长期以来举行的信息最丰富的听证会之一”。
“像 Greenidge 这样的设施也对水生生物产生负面影响，每年杀死数千条鱼，并增加对野生动物和人类都有毒的有害藻华爆发的风险，”凯勒斯在参议院听证会上说。
但有一个大问题：凯勒斯和她的盟友使用的大部分言论虽然肯定是出于善意，但并不是真的。环保主义者发表的许多声明——例如，Greenidge 导致塞内卡湖的平均温度升高，或导致有害的藻类大量繁殖，或发出喷气发动机的巨响——很容易被国家收集的数据和当面推翻经验。
与此同时，该行业的游说者和倡导者越来越多地吹捧比特币挖矿的潜在好处，称加密行业的这一领域可以促进对可再生能源或清洁能源的投资，并加强能源网络，否则将没有理由加以改进。这些比特币拥护者中最狂热的人攻击任何不同意他们的人。本月，有人在 Kelles 在宾夕法尼亚州立法者面前就比特币开采问题作证时入侵了她的 Twitter 帐户，并使用她的提要来宣传 pepecoin (PEPE)，这是一种在 15 分钟内成名的模因硬币。
这些辩论已经变得高度政治化，这是环保主义者和比特币制造者之间近乎棘手的冲突，从表面上看，这是一场环境辩论，而其核心是关于加密货币行业为世界提供的价值的哲学辩论——以及这种价值是否值得承担明确且可能沉重的环境成本。
到目前为止，关于挖矿的争论只是针对这种哲学对话，而没有真正深入到细微差别。CoinDesk 也没有试图回答比特币开采是否“值得”的问题。
纽约和得克萨斯州已成为这场辩论的热点，而格林里奇则不太可能成为典型代表。尽管其他挖矿设施，例如德克萨斯州奥斯汀郊外的 Riot Platforms 中心，在比特币挖矿辩论中发挥了更大的作用，但 Greenidge 在奥尔巴尼（纽约州首府）和华盛顿特区的讨论中占据了突出位置
值得注意的是，Greenidge 扮演着独特的角色，很难直接比较这些不同的设施以及它们如何影响周围的社区。Riot 利用现有的（有时不稳定的）能源网络，而 Greenidge 则自己发电。其他挖矿设施，例如华盛顿州北部的挖矿设施，可能依赖有限的电力或使用社区作为集体支付的电力，这意味着使用量增加的成本会转嫁给每个人，无论每个人的电力有多少个人可以使用。田纳西州的一个县正在起诉当地的一个矿山，部分原因是它产生的噪音，德累斯顿的一些当地人说这种抱怨不适用于他们。
围绕 Greenidge 的辩论和媒体报道已经成为滚雪球般的错误信息集的一部分，这些错误信息没有考虑到纽约德累斯顿的实际情况。
错误信息滚雪球
这种错误信息的滚雪球既包括国家话语中夸大的次要陈述，也包括建立在错误假设基础上的大规模运动。
例如，2021 年 7 月，在塞内卡湖拥有房屋和土地的当地环保活动家阿比·巴丁顿 (Abi Buddington) 告诉 NBC，该湖“非常温暖，让您感觉就像在热水浴缸中一样。” Buddington 的言论被 Ars Technica 和 Business Insider 等主要媒体转载。
Buddington later clarified that she meant not the lake itself, but the water near Greenidge’s discharge pipes (the facility uses water from the lake for cooling, as it has since it was built in 1937 as a coal-fired power plant) in Keuka Outlet.
And while Buddington was correct in asserting that Greenidge is putting warmer water back into the lake than it takes in, the water discharged is nowhere near the “hot tub” temperature or 108 degrees Fahrenheit activists and Kelles claim it is.
The average temperature difference between Greenidge’s water intake and its output is between 9 and 13 degrees – making it roughly 32 degrees below the level permitted by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, a Greenidge spokesperson said in response to CoinDesk’s inquiry. NBC News reported that 108 degrees is the maximum allowed temperature for water Greenidge puts back into the lake, contradicting Kelles’ claim that that was the actual temperature of the water discharge. The local activists at Seneca Lake Guardian accused Greenidge of strawmanning its critics, asserting that “no one ever said” Greenidge was discharging water at that temperature, but Kelles has said so often, including in a February 2022 press release.
Furthermore, the average temperature of Seneca Lake has remained generally consistent over the past few years, Vice News’ Motherboard reported, citing data from scientists at local Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
According to Motherboard’s investigation, the college has recorded a steady, annual 0.2 degrees Celsius rise in temperature for Seneca Lake since the mid-1990s, indicating the lake is warming slowly, but that rise has not been correlated with Greenidge’s operation.
Despite Buddington’s subsequent clarification, the ball was already rolling. In December 2021, less than six months after NBC’s article was published, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Greenidge Generation’s CEO demanding information about the firm’s impact on climate change and the local environment. Her letter cited local residents’ concerns about “the temperature of water outflow.”
The water temperature misrepresentation is just one example of how an incredibly nuanced subject has become something of a political and emotional flashpoint for environmentalists and bitcoiners alike.
Complicating matters, bitcoin mining’s supporters have too-often chosen to combat misinformation with misinformation of their own or, at best, bad-faith trolling.
A recent video from Riot Platforms in response to a New York Times article about the pollution created by bitcoin mining facetiously claimed that “bitcoin mining has zero carbon emissions” based on indoor carbon dioxide testing at the Bitdeer mining facility in Rockdale, Texas.
If taken at face value, that would obviously be a disingenuous statement. If it’s a joke, as Riot claimed after receiving online backlash, it wasn’t widely recognized as such and served mainly to incense the other side.
It is not a question that bitcoin mining is energy intensive. In 2020, the most recent year data is available from the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC), Greenidge emitted a massive 288,440 tons of carbon dioxide into the air.
Some locals are OK with that, given the benefits the facility brings.
Steve Griffin, a native of New York’s Yates County and the CEO of the Finger Lakes Economic Development Center, a quasi-governmental organization tasked with growing the economy in Yates, said that despite Greenidge’s emissions, concerns that it’s harming local wildlife may be overblown.
“We know the value and the importance of the lakes’ worth and in our environment or climate. I mean, we’re a big agricultural community, we know what the value is of the climate,” he said. “We wouldn’t want to incentivize anything that was going to clearly negatively impact that.”
Other examples of the misinformation surrounding the Greenidge debate range from debates about how many employment opportunities it provides to the impact it has on the local electricity grid.
在关于 Greenidge 和更广泛的加密货币挖矿的辩论中，像格里芬这样的本地声音在很大程度上被淹没了。
本地声音
2022 年年中，CoinDesk 记者前往手指湖地区，参观了塞内卡湖上 Greenidge 设施附近的小镇，并与当地居民、企业、城镇官员和工会工作人员交谈，了解他们如何看待翻新后的发电厂。
德累斯顿市长威廉·霍尔 (William Hall) 表示，这次访问是前所未有的。尽管媒体围绕格林尼奇大肆宣传，但霍尔表示，从未有记者、游说者或政治家就格林尼奇与他联系过。这既包括使用 Greenidge 作为成功企业示例的比特币倡导者，也包括称其正在损害当地环境的批评者。
When CoinDesk contacted Hall again in May 2023, his staff confirmed that no one had called or visited him to speak about Greenidge since our last visit.
“Nobody has ever come to talk to us about it,” Hall said. “We need people from somewhere to take an interest, to come talk to the people that are benefitting [from Greenidge’s presence], not the anti-[Greenidge] people that don’t even live here.”
In Hall’s telling, only the so-called “cottage people” – wealthy out-of-towners with lake houses or plans to retire on Seneca Lake – were upset about Greenidge’s presence. One of the “cottage people” Hall referenced was Buddington.
“We had a lady down on Arrowhead Beach that was very, very involved in the anti-[Greenidge] side,” Hall said. “[Buddington and her husband] are Rochester residents, eventually going to live here when they retire, which I understand. She told the press that the water in front of her cottage was bathwater warm. And that morning, someone had already checked the temperature and it was in the 40s.”
Buddington did not respond to a request for comment.
霍尔说，德累斯顿 300 多名居民中的大多数人都支持该工厂。他们熟悉它在湖上的长期存在，并感谢其高管为社区做出的贡献，例如为当地医院支付昂贵的新 CT 扫描仪和液压“生命之颚”的部分费用” 消防部门的救援系统，75岁的霍尔仍然是一名志愿消防员。
整个德累斯顿都有 Greenidge 投资的（字面）迹象。该公司赞助了一个当地的儿童游乐场，以及一个欢迎人们来到村庄的电子标志。
CoinDesk 采访过的许多人，包括当地居民和企业主，都同意 Greenidge 在湖上的存在对该地区有利——如果他们对 Greenidge 有任何看法的话。
航空许可证被拒绝
CoinDesk spoke to Hall less than two weeks after NYSDEC decided to deny Greenidge’s application to renew its Title V air permit – five-year permits required to operate facilities deemed as high polluters (Cornell University, for example, is another facility in the region with a Title V Air permit).
The decision came after a lengthy campaign against Greenidge by environmental groups, in which 4,000 letters were submitted to NYSDEC – 98% of which were anti-Greenidge.
Though Greenidge was operating within the limits set by its NYSDEC-granted permits, the Department claimed its decision to deny the renewal application was “based on the determination that the facility’s continued operation would be inconsistent or would interfere with the attainment of the Statewide greenhouse emission limits” established by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), an ambitious plan to reach zero net emissions by 2050.
“The very first hearing, they bussed people in here. You couldn’t move in the village. But they were not residents, they came from a long ways away.”
Dresden Mayor William Hall
Three months before NYSDEC’s denial, however, Greenidge argued that it was already compliant with CLCPA guidelines and even proposed adding two new binding emissions limits to its renewed permits – to reduce permitted greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by the end of 2025, five years before the CLCPA’s first targets in 2030, and to become a zero-carbon-emitting power generation facility by 2035.
The issue, to Hall, felt so cut-and-dried in favor of Greenidge that the massive outcry against it came as a shock.
“Through this whole thing, the [pro-bitcoin] groups have been weak,” Hall said, noting that the environmentalists, on the other hand, have mounted a strong campaign.
“The very first hearing, they bussed people in here. You couldn’t move in the village. But they were not residents, they came from a long ways away,” Hall said.
“这让我心烦意乱，以至于我……”霍尔的声音越来越小。“你看看这些 [环境] 团体中的一些已经存在了数百年，拥有各种资金和政治支持，他们来到这里形成了一个小社区，这就是发生的事情。他们只是超越了你。”
没有好工作
霍尔和 Greenidge 的其他当地支持者不太关心比特币。然而，他们真正关心的是工作。
需要明确的是，尽管许多比特币矿工争论不休，Greenidge——实际上是任何比特币挖矿业务——并不是该地区的主要雇主。运行比特币挖矿业务不需要那么多人，而且创造的大部分工作要么是临时建筑角色，要么是维护或保安等低薪职位。
But, in upstate New York – a region once defined by a plethora of well-paid and unionized manufacturing jobs that have dried up – a job is a job. Many towns that were once filled with working-class families have withered as the plants that provided their residents’ jobs closed and moved overseas. The Finger Lakes region is no exception.
Griffin, of the development center, said Greenidge employs 54 people, paying roughly twice as much as the traditional manufacturing salaries in the area.
Griffin, who is also a basketball coach at the local high school, told CoinDesk that it was rewarding to see some of his students go to work for Greenidge after graduation.
“Kids I used to coach are now working near home, where you never would have expected that. Their parents sure wouldn’t have expected their kids to be able to live near them, making more money than they probably made out of college,” Griffin said. “It’s honestly everything from an economic development perspective you’d hope it to be.”
Mike Davis, the business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 840, said Greenidge is an important source of work for union members, especially during slow winter months when construction normally slows down.
IBEW’s workers, Davis said, have good paying jobs – especially by local standards, where the major employer is the region’s $3 billion agri-tourism industry, which mainly provides low-paid and often part-time labor and hospitality jobs. A junior wireman, according to Davis, makes $38.95 per hour, with an additional $20 per hour in benefits.
In the summer months, Davis said Greenidge typically needed six to eight of the Union’s electrical workers at any one time, but that number was closer to 40 in the winter months – the company deliberately scheduled certain upgrades and similar operations for those winter months, Davis said, so as to keep these workers employed.
If Greenidge were to shutter its operation, Davis said, winters could be tough to find enough work to keep all his members paid.
“这可能会影响 10 到 15 个家庭，”戴维斯说。“如果整个冬天在 Greenidge 工作的人减少 15 个，那么该地区我可以派人去的工作岗位就会减少 15 个。”
在全国各地设有分会的 IBEW 一直强烈反对凯勒斯推动通过暂停采矿令的努力。联盟的反对派对扼杀凯勒斯在之前议会会议上通过该法案的第一次尝试负有责任，但不足以阻止该法案最终在凯勒斯的第二次尝试中获得通过。
Kelles 没有回复 CoinDesk 的多次置评请求。
流言蜚语
立法者和地方活动家愿意牺牲几十个工会工作岗位来保护塞内卡湖周围的环境，这或许是可以理解的。
In their telling, Greenidge is a monstrosity, a gas-guzzling “cancer” that blights the otherwise serene, rolling hills surrounding the glacial lake, as Yvonne Taylor, vice president of Seneca Lake Guardian put it in a press release,
Activists like Taylor express anger that the power plant, built in 1937 but mothballed in 2011, was purchased by a Connecticut-based private-equity firm, converted to a natural gas–fired plant and brought back online – something they see as a step backward.
Easily disproved is Kelles’ assertion that the area surrounding Greenidge sounds like standing near a “jet engine on a tarmac.”
When CoinDesk visited the facility last summer – standing outside, because Greenidge, which has been notoriously tight-lipped with the press, did not respond to CoinDesk’s repeated requests to tour the facility – the only sounds to be heard were the soft whooshing of fans and bird calls.
Another major complaint from Taylor and activists like her is that the warm water Greenidge is putting back into Seneca Lake – the same process used by the facility since 1937 – is contributing to harmful algal blooms (HABs) on Seneca Lake. If true, that would be worrisome. HABs (essentially, explosions of algae) can be devastating to aquatic life.
This is a claim activists have repeated over and over and over again.
But here’s the rub: data shows that each of the Finger Lakes – not just Seneca Lake – has experienced HABs in recent years. There is not a power plant on any of the other lakes. The first reported cyanobacterial HAB on Seneca Lake was in 2015 – two years before the plant re-started and five years before it began mining bitcoin.
Furthermore, the State of New York commissioned a report on Seneca and Keuka lakes last August that found that phosphorus discharges are “considered the primary substance affecting water quality and the usability of the resource for both aquatic habitat and human uses.” Greenidge’s operation does not discharge phosphorus, a compound found in most fertilizers.
Bruce Murray has kept a fairly low profile in the debate. His winery, Boundary Breaks, sits on the east side of Seneca Lake and occupies 150 acres opposite Greenidge.
He told CoinDesk that in the last 25 years, there have been substantial changes in the aquatic condition of Seneca Lake. The salinity of the lake has risen (there are several salt mines in the area), the population of lake trout has decreased and invasive species of wildlife, like quagga mussels, have proliferated.
Activists have also repeatedly reiterated concerns that Greenidge’s intake pipes were responsible for sucking up fish, larvae and other aquatic critters and killing them. Greenidge spent $6 million constructing and installing wedge-wire fish screens in response to concerns.
CoinDesk tried to reach Taylor, calling and emailing several times to get Seneca Lake Guardian’s side of the story. When a reporter finally reached her by phone, Taylor was curt.
“We’re not interested in working with you, OK?” Taylor said, before hanging up.
“这是非常政治化的”
当地环保组织的说法不准确，这让霍尔和戴维斯等 Greenidge 的当地支持者感到不安。
戴维斯告诉 CoinDesk，他的大部分工会成员都是当地人，他们的家人世代居住在该地区，其中许多人是狂热的猎人和渔民。
“我们会是第一个站出来说’嘿，这对湖泊不利，我们不想再这样做了’，但事实并非如此，”戴维斯说。“那些藻类在所有湖泊上都大量繁殖，而且所有湖泊上都没有发电厂。为什么我们不进行测试以找出原因？为什么我们只是指责说它是 Greenidge？”
“[Kelles’s] region has been notoriously environmentally friendly,” Davis added. “She goes to her base, and that’s her base. It’s very political. It’s very divisive. And, unfortunately, most of the time, the information that’s out there is from a special interest group. But the real information, if you sit down and look at it, doesn’t add up.”
Griffin, too, expressed frustration with what he described as the “constant punching back-and-forth” between environmentalists and bitcoiners over Greenidge.
He speculated that the real issue for the anti-Greenidge camp was that bitcoin simply wasn’t relevant to their lives. When other data centers open up, Griffin said, there are ribbon cuttings.
Hall, the Dresden mayor, appeared to agree.
“有些人绝对不明白，”他说。“有人告诉他们缺点，而且有很多人——我们这里有一些人，在当地——这只是嫉妒。他们没有进入一楼，他们没有赚到钱，所以其他人也赚不到钱。就在那里。
酿酒厂老板穆雷告诉 CoinDesk，他理解赚钱的愿望，原则上不反对能源使用，但不明白比特币的意义。
“他们可以在那里运行数千台采矿机，”他说。“为了什么，这是个问题。为了什么？”
网格问题
While bitcoin’s relevance may be debatable, the need for a consistent and reliable source of power is not. Meeting the state’s increasing energy demand, which is ballooning as more electric cars come online (electric vehicles are expected to gobble up 14% of New York’s total energy output by 2050), is not currently possible without fossil fuels.
The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), which monitors the state’s power grid, said in its 2022 annual analysis that the grid is strained by the “deactivation of generation resources that provide critical reliability services to the grid.”
Griffin told CoinDesk that Greenidge is, first and foremost, a power generation plant.
“Their primary operating purpose is to generate power and send it to the grid when the grid needs it,” Griffin said. “Every day, power goes from that plant to the grid. Every single day.”
When the power isn’t needed, Griffin explained, Greenidge uses its excess capacity – which would otherwise be wasted – to power its bitcoin mining operation.
NYISO, the state’s independent entity which oversees its power generators, referred CoinDesk to its Gold Book annual report in response to a request for comment about how much electricity Greenidge provides to the state’s energy grid or what shuttering Greenidge might mean for it. A spokesperson told CoinDesk the entity did not have any data on how much of the energy generated goes to the grid, versus mining.
Before Greenidge began mining bitcoin, it sent an average of 186,878 megawatts (MW) of power to New York’s grid, according to data provided by a Greenidge spokesperson. After its bitcoin mining operation came online, the amount of power Greenidge was sending to the grid – excess power that was not consumed by bitcoin mining – was comparable, at a yearly average of 184,889 megawatts of power.
A review of Greenidge’s most recent quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission indicated it did indeed generate revenue from selling electricity to the NYISO, but only provided dollar figures and not the electricity mix itself. Bitcoin mining is more profitable than selling electricity to NYISO, based on these filings. According to both the filing and NYISO’s annual report, Greenidge reported a nameplate capacity of 106 MW per hour for 2022. That translates to an annual capacity of 928,560 MW, though Greenidge says it doesn’t operate to that maximum capacity.
Davis, the IBEW director, told CoinDesk he’s sympathetic to desires to get away from natural gas as an electricity source.
“但现在，这就是你的选择，”戴维斯说。“因为当你的需求上升时，如果没有阳光，没有风，你就没有任何动力。你必须在某个地方生成它。”
真实政策
比特币挖矿对环境有着真实而切实的影响。这个事实是毋庸置疑的。在矿工利用现有能源网络或资源的地方，他们创造了可能未被考虑在内的需求。在矿工开发自己的发电设施的地方，他们可能会推动更多地使用化石燃料。
如果可再生能源不足以满足新需求，即使是在拥有可再生能源的地方设立矿工，也可能再次导致更多的化石燃料排放。
A Greenidge spokesperson declined to respond to specific questions about the company’s operations or impact on the local grid. In a statement attributed to Greenidge President Dale Irwin, the company said “the campaign run against Greenidge for years has been factually inaccurate and intentionally misleading. Those untruths masked as advocacy have unquestionably impacted policy decisions and it’s unfortunate.”
“It truly didn’t become an issue until they started doing bitcoin mining. That was the trigger for when all of a sudden, all of the alarm came.”
Finger Lakes Economic Development Center CEO Steve Griffin
The debate around bitcoin mining’s role in the U.S. ignores much of the nuance around these companies’ roles and conflates the different types of facilities. This wouldn’t be a problem, except these debates are driving real policies and policy outcomes in the U.S. without always hearing from those most directly affected, particularly in places like Dresden and other immediately adjacent villages like Torrey and Penn Yan.
“We’re direct beneficiaries of that plant,” Hall said. “The town of Torrey is a direct beneficiary. They get payment in lieu of taxes – the town, the county, the school district is a huge beneficiary. If the school district benefits from the tax money, it obviously benefits me and you as the homeowners.”
Griffin, of the development agency, said Greenidge generated $3 million in 2021 in the payments in lieu of taxes.
Though he acknowledged there are some residents who oppose the plant, Griffin said he knew “way more people” who supported Greenidge’s continued operation than who opposed it.
“In my day-to-day, I hear more positives about the plant operating than negatives. Far more,” Griffin said. “It truly didn’t become an issue until they started doing bitcoin mining. That was the trigger for when all of a sudden, all of the alarm came.”
He added: “We did it here, and it’s the end of the world. The opposition to this one, it’s confusing to me. And the only thing I can point to is that people are just not sure what bitcoin does for them.”
Nolen Hayes contributed reporting.
This story originally appeared on Coindesk
该法案的支持者，包括代表卡尤加湖以南和东部多个城镇的纽约州女议员安娜·凯勒斯、地球正义和塞拉俱乐部等国家环保组织以及塞内卡湖卫士等超本地化组织，都宣布该法案的通过是一项重大举措胜利。现在，他们正在全国范围内进行战斗。
