Sounds like they're preventing a larger societal problem.
> It said the pause ordered by the government was in response to "the very real prospect that devoting such a large proportion of the available electrical power supply to one industry would leave less energy for other uses which might result in increased costs to all other residential and industry customers in B.C."
What happened to scaling the offer based on (future) demand? That is what a government who wants growth should focus on... instead of telling their citizens which use cases are acceptable or not.
See in Texas how the Bitcoin mining industry negotiated agreements for curtailing and greatly help scaling the grid better... this seems like a way more efficient approach to these offer/demand and scaling issues than "we can't let you buy our product because other people want to buy it".
> See in Texas how the Bitcoin mining industry negotiated agreements for curtailing and greatly help scaling the grid better...
They get paid not to use power to prevent the grid from collapsing. That's not what I want my tax dollars spent on, and such silliness is why I tend not to look at Texas for good governance.
They provide constant demand in low consumption periods which makes it possible to have a stronger grid when indeed there is a spike in demand due to external conditions like a heat or cold waves... something which will keep happening more and more (and more extremely) if you listen to climate scientists.
The keywords are scaling and stability, if you prefer to piss this money away on building plants that will work at 50% capacity for years you essentially pay for the rest of the capacity with no other utility, that's bad governance.
Indeed. Such a general response can literally be applied to every industry and so shows the judicial response in this case is working on feelings rather than facts.
I assume it would be applied to any other industry. If you started a steel plant without telling anyone and created a potential electricity shortage in the process, it would probably be shut down too.
Industry-scale resource usage requires planning and coordination.
> Such a general response can literally be applied to every industry
One difference from other industries:
> Energy Minister Josie Osborne said when the policy was introduced that cryptocurrency mining consumes ... adds “very few jobs” to the local economy.
So it's okay for the local electrical utility to not provide service if they feel you aren't contributing enough jobs to the local economy? That seem very absurd on the face of it. And easily slippery sloped to abuse and corruption.
> It said the pause ordered by the government was in response to "the very real prospect that devoting such a large proportion of the available electrical power supply to one industry would leave less energy for other uses which might result in increased costs to all other residential and industry customers in B.C."