A webinar hosted by the Energy Information Administration today outlined its plans for future efforts on targeted data collection surveys of U.S. bitcoin mining operations after reaching an agreement on March 1 of this year to halt the previous emergency survey and destroy all records collected during its operation.
They explained that there are currently no survey efforts pending in the Federal Register or in progress at this time, and the purpose of the webinar was to solicit feedback from members of the public and ecosystem participants on what types of information they could collect, what types of data have already been collected that could be of value to them, and important factors they should consider when crafting a future survey.
They stressed that the two main challenges they face in trying to get a clearer picture of the state of Bitcoin mining in the United States are the difficulty in identifying mining operations among the general consumers of energy on the network, as well as the ability of mining operations to quickly move to areas with lower electricity prices, making it difficult to track the current state of operations.
They currently plan to begin the survey process sometime this year, possibly this quarter, and plan to incorporate any feedback that industry participants and other members of the public would like to provide into the survey structure.
The webinar featured a number of industry members: Thomas Mapes of the Digital Energy Council, Michael Postopak of the Blockchain Association, Margot Baez of the Bitcoin Policy Institute and Georgia Institute of Technology, Jason Broder of Marathon Digital Holdings, Lee Bratcher of the Texas Blockchain Council, and others.
All speakers emphasized that Bitcoin mining could be a net positive in its impact on energy infrastructure, particularly in helping facilitate demand response programs to free up electricity during periods of high demand by ordinary consumers, and in building more renewable energy capacity by absorbing excess production when there is no other source of demand during times of electricity surplus.
Lee Bratcher specifically raised the issue of Bitcoin miners being specifically selected for a survey targeting only them, and floated the idea of expanding the survey to include data centers in general, with a particular distinction between non-resilient data centers that must remain constantly running and resilient data centers that can be dynamically shut down in response to the needs of consumers or network operators.
Jason Broder confirmed that this is a source of hesitation and skepticism on the part of mining operators in the industry about why they were chosen as a target for the survey.
Dennis Heidner, an audience member who attended the webinar, expressed concern that capital investment by miners could discourage miners from shutting down operations during times of high demand. This was a concern that EIA raised in structuring future surveys as a factor to consider, since miners still have to work to recoup their investment in equipment, and scaling back operations results in lost revenue during that time period.
Margot Baez suggested the idea of a partnership between Georgia Tech and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where researchers work. Arman Shahabi is currently conducting research. Her rationale was that research was already underway to collect the type of data the EIA was seeking to collect in its surveys, and given the relationships she had developed within the mining industry, and the importance of data center energy consumption to EIA’s overall concerns about Bitcoin mining, this partnership could bring together existing research to meet EIA’s needs.
This would also allow a neutral, non-governmental group to handle the actual data collection themselves, anonymizing the data itself while still providing the EIA with the accurate perspective needed to inform policy decisions without compromising the privacy of space mining operations.
Overall, the webinar signals a profound rethinking of the EIA’s approach to collecting data on U.S. Bitcoin mining operations. In the wake of the court’s rejection of the emergency survey, it appears to be open to a collaborative path forward with industry players to advance an accurate view of energy consumption for policymakers to base their decisions on, rather than the aggressive and hasty path that the emergency survey attempted to take.