Dept. of Energy begins process of drafting a new bitcoin miner survey

The Department of Energy is once again working to develop a survey seeking information related to proof-of-work crypto mining’s energy use in the U.S., about four months after getting sued in a Texas court for trying to force through an "emergency collection of data request."

On Wednesday, the Energy Information Administration, the DoE's statistics wing, hosted the first in what it hopes will be a series of public conversations about designing a better survey. Steve Harvey of the EIA led the discussion.

In late February, the Texas Blockchain Council and Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms successfully sued the Department of Energy for its “targeted misuse of government emergency authority” after sending around a multi-page survey asking Bitcoin miners around the country about their energy consumption and business practices.

The EIA was then forced to "destroy any information" it had received and withdraw the survey. At the time, the agency said it would look to collaborate more closely with industry participants when designing a new survey.

In the hour-long session, Harvey noted that the EIA is looking to address three key questions before designing a new survey. The first question is what specific factors industry participants or onlookers consider the most important regarding energy use in PoW crypto mining. The second is what data the agency should look to collect. The third is whether there is existing information available that could replace a survey or reduce costs.

“We want to focus on your ideas,” Harvey told the 115 attendees.

When finished, the new survey will need to be approved by the DoE. It will also be entered into the Federal Registry, which will kickstart a 60-day public comment period. After that period, the EIA will incorporate the commentary, resubmit the survey in the registry, and provide 30 additional days for public review.

The 1995 Paperwork Reduction Act explicitly laid out this new process, which the agency initially ignored.

Harvey noted that when developing the first recalled survey, the agency was motivated to collect information after developing “rough” preliminary estimates that found crypto mining already accounted for between 0.6% and 2.3% of total U.S. energy consumption, which is “a lot.”

The agency was also aware of “key challenges” related to tracking crypto mining energy use, including the difficulty of actually identifying market participants and the industry's “dynamic nature” that allows mines to relocate to areas with cheaper electricity costs.

Participants respond

At the time, however, many in the Bitcoin sector saw the EIA’s survey as a blatant attack on this burgeoning industry.

President and founder of the Texas Blockchain Council Lee Bratcher, for instance, discussed his concern that the bitcoin industry was being “singled out,” and suggested that the EIA should work to design a survey that takes a more comprehensive look at data centers in the U.S., especially given the rise of energy-intensive industries like AI and cloud computing.

It was a point echoed by Bitcoin Policy Institute co-founder Margot Paez who suggested that if the EIA wanted “industry buy-in” it should consider using a third-party agency, like the Georgia Institute of Technology where she studies, to collect the data. Paez, who studies Bitcoin energy usage, is already researching the subject.

Others, including former DoE official and now head of the Digital Energy Council Tom Mapes, noted the EIA should gear the survey to study ways bitcoin mining might benefit the U.S. electrical grid. He suggested miners help incentivize the development of renewable sources of energy and strike “load-balancing” deals with utility providers, where miners turn off their factories in times of peak demand.

While most speakers appeared to be pro-Bitcoin, several were skeptical of the cryptocurrency or concerned about the negative environmental effects a growing industry would have.

Electrical engineer Dennis Heidner, for instance, asked the EIA to include a survey question asking miners and utility providers how often these demand-response shutdowns occur, considering miners “may be incentivized to not disconnect even if they say they will.”

Harvey noted that this was just a “first discussion.”