Bitcoin mining machines in a warehouse at the Whinstone US Bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, on October 10, 2021. | Photo by MARK FELIX/AFP /AFP via Getty Images
The US Department of Energy (DOE) will begin collecting data on crypto mines’ electricity use, following criticism from environmental advocates over how energy-hungry those operations are.
“We will specifically focus on how the energy demand for cryptocurrency mining is evolving, identify geographic areas of high growth, and quantify the sources of electricity used to meet cryptocurrency mining demand,” Joe DeCarolis, administrator of the Energy Information Administration (EIA), said in a press release today.
The EIA, the statistical agency of the Department of Energy, announced that it is “initiating a provisional survey of electricity…
