An article in the Telegraph this week claims that a “giant Yorkshire gas field" is to be exploited "to mine Bitcoin instead of boosting British energy". At issue is a stake that energy company Reabold Resources has in the West Newton gas field in northwest England. Reabold plans to extract the gas in a process similar to fracking but at much lower pressures than the Guardian would call “controversial”. The Telegraph, however, is not against generating a bit of controversy itself. It highlights the seemingly frivolous use of electricity from gas to make cryptocurrency, rather than, as the article suggests, to “meet more than a tenth of the UK’s annual need”. Nonetheless, confected 'controversies' aside, the story does highlight some important issues.
The creation of the controversy that produced the headline is owed to a comment by co-Chief Executive of Reabold Resources, Sachin Oza, who is quoted as saying: “A private gas supply means we can run a data centre to mine Bitcoin relatively cheaply.” This gives the cue to the idea that the entire gas field will support a cryptocurrency operation. “This would help fund the further development of the gas field and prove the concept – meaning it could become the precursor to a far larger data centre,” adds Oza. Yes – “could”. There might be more data centres. Or, “alternatively, we could also sell the gas to one of the adjacent industrial centres or connect it to the national gas grid”, explained Oza’s colleague Stephen Williams.
I can’t
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Net Zero Means Zero Energy
What a wizard idea, we’ll do some non-destructive fracking- gotta save the planet – in order to produce gas which we will burn in order to produce electricity not for domestic or even heaven forbid industrial production such as fertilisers, steel, bricks and so on but so some wonks can play video games.
Ah, the 21st. century; progress.
The most amazing technology ever invented being used for kitten videos and homework- the enstupidification continues apace.
The elite will probably argue that it’s “net”, not “identical value” (i.e. not zero), so the poor will have to reduce their demand to allow the rich to benefit from AI etc.
This is a good illustration of how, much as we like to think we live in a democracy in which elected officials represent the population and their wishes, we don’t. We live in a sort of oligarchy where a powerful elite decides almost everything mostly for their personal benefit.
A bunch of powerful tech people manage to force or convince the bureaucrats that we need lots of power for AI and all of a sudden, climate change disaster may not be quite as imminent as we thought.
The policy tensions we see are the tensions and disagreements between the ruling classes. The plebs with their annoying concerns and issues are merely there to be pacified.
As the saying goes :- If you would control a populace, first make them afraid