The Verge - Environments |
- Today I learned Amazon will recycle small electronics for free
- Democratic lawmakers ask federal agencies to crack down on crypto mining
- NASA just launched a powerful new instrument to study dust
- Texas’ fragile grid isn’t ready for crypto mining’s explosive growth
| Today I learned Amazon will recycle small electronics for free Posted: 16 Jul 2022 03:27 PM PDT  If you have a flip phone that you haven't used in over a decade, or maybe even a broken tablet, Amazon will pay for a shipping label that you can use to send it in to get recycled. Apparently, this recycling program has been a thing for a while now, but several of us at The Verge never even knew about it until we saw this tweet from journalist Dave Zatz, and thought it might be a good idea to spread the word. Amazon's recycling program lets you ship your small electronics for free from any UPS dropoff point (you just have to provide the packaging). Amazon then transfers the devices it receives to a licensed recycling facility, and notes that it will remove or destroy any "identifying marks or personal information" during the process. Amazon still recommends performing a factory reset on your device (if it still works) before sending it in, however. According to Amazon spokesperson Saige Kolpack, the company's recycling program isn't new — it's actually been around "for years" and Amazon just relaunched a new page in April to make it easier for customers to find. It isn't to be confused with Amazon's trade-in program, which lets you send in Amazon devices, cellphones, video games, and other electronics in exchange for an Amazon gift card. You don't get anything in return for sending in devices to be recycled, other than the personal satisfaction that you're doing a small part in helping the environment. /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23870621/amazon_recycling_devices_list.png) Image: Amazon The program is limited to only small electronics. You can find a list of all accepted devices if you click through to Amazon's recycling page (which is still fully functional, despite looking like something you'd find on the web in 2005). This includes e-readers, tablets, keyboards, mice, video game consoles, device covers, cellphones, fitness trackers, smart home devices, and more. It pretty much accepts any small device you can fit into a small box or envelope — broken or not — so long as they don't have "swollen or leaking batteries." I'm already eyeing up a few devices around my house to recycle for free — like that mini speaker I thought at the time would be a great purchase from Dollar General (don't judge). And since I already have a pile of shipping boxes from my previous online purchases, I can double up and recycle that plus the device. But if you're not a cardboard box hoarder and don't want to pay for your own shipping material, it's worth noting you can always bring your old, smaller electronics to your local Best Buy. Here, you can drop off and recycle up to three items per household per day for free (or for a $29.99 fee for TVs and monitors). Best Buy will even haul away your old appliances for $39.99 if you order a replacement through the retailer. Alternatively, you can also pay Best Buy $199 to come to your house to take away up to two large items (like a TV or washer) without having to order a new one, in addition to an unlimited number of small electronics. |
| Democratic lawmakers ask federal agencies to crack down on crypto mining Posted: 16 Jul 2022 05:00 AM PDT  On Friday, Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to two federal regulators, urging them to take action on the explosion of Bitcoin mining in the US. Sent to the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy, the letter was spurred by preliminary investigation from lawmakers, which found that just a handful of cryptominers use an enormous amount of energy. In response, the lawmakers ask the agencies to require that crypto-mining companies share data on their energy use and emissions. Seven of the biggest crypto-mining companies in the US have the collective capacity to use over 1 gigawatt of electricity, according to the letter. That's the equivalent of two standard coal plants or, as the letter puts it, almost enough to power all the residences in Houston. That's just the tip of the iceberg, since there are no federal measures in place to capture a complete picture of the environmental impact of the recent boom in US crypto-mining. Crypto-mining has exploded in the US over the past year, driven in part by China's 2021 crackdown on the practice in. The US is the biggest hub globally for mining Bitcoin, typically running data centers around-the-clock to mine the currency. These data centers are filled with specialized hardware racing to solve complex equations in order to verify transactions, earning Bitcoin in return. All that computing power gobbles up vast amounts of electricity — and produces pollution as a result. Moving from China to the US has likely made the Bitcoin network even dirtier, with abundant hydropower in China replaced by coal and gas-derived electricity from the US grid. All this has policymakers worried about what impact crypto mining will have on the country's climate change goals, as well as on electricity bills. The practice has already inflated electricity prices in New York, for instance. In an extreme example, residents in Plattsburgh, NY saw their utility bills rise by up to $300 in the winter of 2018 after Bitcoin miners set up shop nearby. Last month, New York State passed a bill imposing a two-year moratorium on new permits for fossil fuel power plants used to mine energy-intensive currencies. The bill has not yet been signed into law, but the state has also taken regulatory actions to discourage mining. In June, New York also denied a renewed air permit to an embattled power plant, the Greenidge Generating Station on the grounds that its use for Bitcoin-mining "would be inconsistent with the statewide greenhouse gas emission limits." Greenidge was one of the companies Warren and other Democratic lawmakers sent queries to back in January, demanding information on their energy use and emissions. Greenidge was responsible for 273,326 tons of carbon dioxide emissions over a year, equivalent to the tailpipe emissions from almost 60,000 cars, according to the new letter released today. Still, the impact of crypto-mining in the US is way bigger than what the letter details. For starters, "None of the companies provided full and complete information in response to our questions," the lawmakers wrote. There are other clues as to how much energy crypto mining companies are actually gobbling up across the nation. In Texas, another hot spot for Bitcoin mining in the US, the crypto mining industry collectively freed up about 1 gigawatt of energy after temporarily powering down this week. The companies ramped down operations in response to an appeal from the state's grid operator to conserve energy as a searing heatwave threatened to overwhelm the grid. That hunger for energy is growing fast. "There are over 27 gigawatts of crypto load that is working on interconnecting over the next four years," a spokesperson for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) told The Verge in an email this week (the spokesperson declined to be named). That's an impossibly large load to add to the grid in such a short time frame, experts tell The Verge. "The results of our investigation, which gathered data from just seven companies, are disturbing, with this limited data alone revealing that cryptominers are large energy users that account for a significant – and rapidly growing – amount of carbon emissions," the letter to the EPA and Department of Energy says. It was signed by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and and Ed Markey (D-MA), and Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Jared Huffman (D-CA). |
| NASA just launched a powerful new instrument to study dust Posted: 15 Jul 2022 09:34 AM PDT  A payload making its way to the International Space Station could help researchers back on Earth finally solve a climate mystery that's stymied scientists for years. NASA launched a key instrument for its climate research, called the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT), aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft Thursday night from the Kennedy Space Center. Dust is a surprisingly powerful force up in the atmosphere, which is why NASA is determined to better understand it. The tiny particles waft up from deserts and other arid regions, and depending on many different factors, they can have a cooling or heating effect on our planet. Which scenario is actually playing out across the globe, however, continues to elude scientists. "EMIT is studying mineral dust because it's currently an unknown element," Robert Green, EMIT's principal investigator and Jet Propulsion Laboratory senior research scientist, said at a July 13th briefing on the mission. "Not just the magnitude of how much it heats or cools, but whether it heats or cools is uncertain." One reason why dust is such a mystery is that dust particles come in different colors. It might be dark red, for instance, because it contains iron. Dust particles containing clay, on the other hand, are usually much lighter in color. Those lighter dust particles will reflect sunlight, helping to cool the planet. On the opposite end of the spectrum, dark dust particles will actually absorb the sun's energy and have a heating effect instead. With climate change already heating things up to dangerous levels for life on Earth, scientists really want to know whether dust is helping or hurting efforts to stabilize global temperatures. That's where EMIT can help. It will use an instrument called an advanced imaging spectrometer to collect over a billion measurements over the next year, recording the composition of dust around the globe. To do this, the instrument will actually measure the spectrum of light reflected from the surface of our planet. This will tell scientists how much dust in the atmosphere comes from dark minerals or light minerals. Hopefully, that'll finally solve the mystery of what effect dust has cumulatively on the planet, as well as the heating or cooling effects it might have from region to region. /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23845146/e2_emit_1041.jpeg) Image: NASA Answering those questions is crucial for building better climate models, which researchers use to try to understand what climate change might have in store for us in the future. For now, climate models generally assume the dust is yellow — averaging a mix of both dark and light-colored dust. "We wanted to send [EMIT] because of a gap in our knowledge, it relates to climate now and in the future, and that will allow us to have better information to adapt to climate change," Green said at the briefing. Beyond climate change, EMIT's data will also be used to study other phenomena on Earth influenced by dust. Dust can travel thousands of miles from North Africa to the Amazon rainforest, where it provides nutrients for plants. Dust also has a hand in cloud formation, air quality, and even water availability. When it lands on snow, it can accelerate snowmelt — which many regions, including the parched western US, depend on for freshwater. The International Space Station's orbit around the planet is ideal for dust-measuring because it revolves around some of Earth's most arid regions. Deserts are the source of most of the dust traveling around the world. The harsh, remote conditions of these regions have made it difficult for scientists to sample dust over vast areas on the ground by hand. EMIT, among 5,800 pounds of other science experiments and crew supplies, is scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station on Saturday, July 16th, at around 11:20ET. It should be ready to start collecting data by the end of July, which NASA expects to start sharing publicly within roughly two months. |
| Texas’ fragile grid isn’t ready for crypto mining’s explosive growth Posted: 14 Jul 2022 09:13 AM PDT  Bitcoin mining could bring higher electricity bills and more pollution to Texas Even though energy-hungry Bitcoin mining companies have volunteered to power down in Texas this week to alleviate the stress placed on the grid by a searing heatwave, the industry could still trigger more problems down the line if it continues its explosive expansion in the state. Higher electricity bills and even more carbon dioxide emissions could be on the way for Texans, despite crypto mining industry claims that it can spur the growth of affordable renewable energy. The problem is the Bitcoin network's enormous demand for electricity, which is spiking faster than the grid can reasonably keep up with. Texas' energy system is already bracing for the Bitcoin mining industry to keep growing at breakneck speed. The amount of electrical load crypto miners are expected to add to the Texas grid over just the next four years represents nearly a third of the grid's current maximum capacity. Crypto mining is set to increase demand on the grid by a whopping 27 gigawatts by 2026, a spokesperson for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) told The Verge in an email. ERCOT is the main grid operator in the state, in charge of managing its power supply. The spokesperson, replying from ERCOT's media relations email, refused to provide their name. Let's break down why 27 gigawatts is such a big deal. The first thing to know is that a single megawatt (MW) can power about 200 homes during times of high demand in Texas. A gigawatt is one thousand megawatts. On July 12th, during the heatwave, the state hit a record. More than 78 gigawatts of electricity were needed to meet peak demand, according to ERCOT. The power grid in Texas can currently supply a maximum of about 92 gigawatts of electricity — and that's only if every source of power generation is working perfectly, which usually isn't the case. That leaves limited breathing room for most of the state during periods of high demand. All of that brings us back to the crypto boom in Texas. "There are over 27 gigawatts of crypto load that is working on interconnecting over the next four years," the unnamed ERCOT spokesperson said. That's an "astronomically impossible" load to add to the grid in that short timeframe, according to Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin. "There's no way we could do 27 gigawatts of crypto [in four years] ... that would put too much stress on the system too fast," says Rhodes. "We barely have the power plants to cover today," he tells The Verge. In very little time, Texas has become a major player in the global Bitcoin mining industry. China banned the practice in 2021, and almost immediately, the US took its spot as the biggest hub in the world for crypto mining. Many miners set up shop in Texas, initially enticed by low energy prices and lax regulation. The state is now home to about a quarter of Bitcoin mining that takes place in the US, by some estimates. Large-scale crypto mines essentially look like giant data centers filled with specialized computers that "mine" Bitcoin. The machines typically run around the clock, solving computational math problems in return for new tokens. Those problems become more complex over time, requiring more computing power and making it a deliberately energy-inefficient process. Realistically, many of the proposed crypto mining projects that want to connect to the grid between now and 2026 will likely not materialize, experts tell The Verge. That's the case for new projects in other industries, they say, so they expects the same for crypto mining. On top of that, Bitcoin miners have to contend with the "crypto winter" that's battered the industry and sent the price of the cryptocurrency plunging this year. Rhodes thinks 5 gigawatts is probably a more viable number in terms of how much energy demand crypto mining might bring to the state over the next four years. And even 5 GW is a lot to accommodate. "We would have to speed up significantly the process of building transmission lines," Rhodes says. It would also necessitate building out more power plants or wind and solar farms to provide the additional energy. Unfortunately, the costs for building out all this infrastructure are often passed on to consumers — particularly if it's done at a huge scale under a rushed timeline as crypto mining might demand. Rising energy prices have already been the consequence of crypto mining operations in other states. For instance, in upstate New York — another major crypto mining hub — electricity bills have increased by about $8 monthly for individual customers and $12 monthly for small businesses, according to an analysis last year by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Chicago. "Large amounts of new demand are never helpful for your electricity bill," says Eric Hittinger, an associate professor at Rochester Institute of Technology with a background in electricity system policy. "The more crypto mining that comes into the state, the higher the residents should expect the electricity prices to become." In the short term, residents might compete with crypto companies for a limited supply of electricity and face higher rates when greater demand raises prices. In the long term, the spike in new electricity demand for crypto mining could spark the massive build-out of new power sources. Bringing more power sources online to meet demand could ultimately push prices back down over time, but there are initially big upfront costs. Those costs might cover the construction of solar and wind farms, which power grids do need more of for the world to have a fighting chance at getting climate change under control. That green possibility is why many crypto mining companies in the US say it's a good thing that their hunger for energy can boost the development of power sources. Industry advocates say crypto mines are the perfect consumers for solar and wind energy, which — depending on the weather — might generate too much electricity for the grid at any one time. Instead of utilities having to ask solar and wind farms to curtail their energy generation because grids don't yet have enough storage for it, crypto mines can gobble it all up so the renewable energy doesn't go to waste. Increasing energy demand is generally a driver for investment in new energy generation. But it would have to happen under very specific circumstances for crypto miners to actually induce enough renewable energy growth to have a positive impact on the environment. Otherwise, pollution would continue to rise with electricity consumption, according to Rhodes. It's basic math. If crypto mining gobbles up about 5 gigawatts of electricity in Texas but only incentivizes about 2 gigawatts of clean energy, then the industry is still going to be responsible for the extra pollution created by that excess 3 gigawatts. In order to help bring enough clean energy online to actually reduce carbon dioxide emissions in Texas, crypto mining data centers would have to be willing to power down for about 15 percent of the year — whenever wind and solar power generation are low. That's according to an analysis Rhodes completed last year for the crypto mining company Lancium in his role as a managing partner for the consulting firm IdeaSmiths. "That's a pretty big caveat, in terms of [crypto miners] have to be willing to be flexible," Rhodes says. Many mining companies do pride themselves as being "flexible" customers, able to quickly ramp their energy consumption up or down quickly, but powering down for 15 percent of the year is a big ask that goes far above what we've seen so far from the industry. /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23827976/1235927077.jpg) Photo by MARK FELIX / AFP via Getty Images This week, Bitcoin mining companies have shown some flexibility by deciding to shut off their machines after the state's grid operator started asking Texans to conserve energy on Monday. The brutal heatwave is testing the grid as residents turn up their air conditioning to cope with triple-digit heat. Cryptomining companies have powered down voluntarily, collectively freeing up 1 gigawatt of electricity or about 1 percent of the grid's total capacity. Being "flexible" like that is crucial to avoid power outages whenever peak demand threatens to overwhelm the grid. Texas' power grid is especially vulnerable to outages because it doesn't interconnect to other states so that they can share energy, which other states do so they can fill in for each other if there's a shortfall in supply somewhere. Texas' grid is also notoriously fragile. Last year, a brutal cold snap wrought havoc on the grid and triggered massive, deadly blackouts. While Bitcoin mining companies voluntarily curbed their power use this week to ease stress on the grid, there were also financial motives behind the move. Spot prices for electricity rise when there's peak demand, making it less profitable to keep running their machines. Under those conditions, mining companies might actually make more money selling the unused electricity than they would by mining (if they've secured the electricity through long-term contracts with energy providers), according to Hittinger. "So it's not exactly charity, as some people might frame it," Hittinger says. Nor is it a new service for the grid. Historically, other industries — from chemical processing to manufacturing — have played similar roles in helping to stabilize the grid by powering down when needed. That crypto companies curtailed mining in Texas this week is a sign that the industry is capable of providing the same service, Hittinger says, if there are the right economic incentives. "Just in efforts to support the citizens of Texas, that's always going to be our priority," says Alexis Brock, marketing coordinator at Bitcoin mining company Riot Blockchain, when asked whether the company planned to continue conserving energy during times of peak demand in the future. Riot operates what it claims is the largest Bitcoin mining facility in North America in Rockdale, Texas, and it powered off completely for at least 10 hours a day for several days over the past week. That hasn't eased concerns that Jackie Sawicky has about another massive crypto mine Riot plans to build in Navarro County, Texas, where she lives. "We do NOT want this enormous burden on our already fragile infrastructure," reads a petition Sawicky started to stop its construction. Once completed, the new facility is expected to have the capacity to use 1 gigawatt of electricity. "They talk about stabilizing the grid," Sawicky says to The Verge. "And it is so infuriating to me that they can claim something like that when they're putting an incredible burden on the grid." |
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