The authorities of the Canadian province of British Columbia will limit the supply of electricity to miners

BC Hydro, the state-owned electricity supplier in the Canadian province of British Columbia, will stop processing new applications from miners for the use of electricity for 18 months.

Energy, Mining and Low Carbon Innovation Minister Josie Osborne said the Canadian government and BC Hydro will be able to optimize energy infrastructure during this period. This will help balance the needs of local miners, ordinary residents and businesses in the province. The move was taken to save clean energy for businesses that create jobs.

According to Osborne, cryptocurrency mining consumes huge amounts of electricity, including for cooling powerful computers around the clock, while creating very few jobs, which does not contribute to the development of the local economy. The minister added that the high consumption of electricity by miners could lead to an overload of the grid and increase electricity rates for residents of British Columbia.

BC Hydro is currently providing electricity to seven mining farms, and six more are in the advanced stages of connecting to the system with a total capacity of 273 MW. It is expected that the new regulation will not affect their activities. However, as far as new requests from mining farms at BC Hydro are concerned, they will be denied power supply. BC Hydro has already received 21 such requests for 1,403 MW of electricity. Osborne noted that this amount of electricity would be enough to power 570,000 homes or 2.1 million electric vehicles for a year.

In November, the state-owned energy company Hydro-Quebec also called on the Canadian province of Quebec to restrict miners’ access to electricity. A few years ago, the financial regulator of Canada (AMF) even proposed to equate mining with securities transactions.