The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) will begin to more closely track electricity consumption by cryptocurrency mining companies operating in the US, the agency said on Wednesday.
The EIA said it plans to launch a survey next week of selected bitcoin miners who will be required to respond with their energy usage details as part of an emergency data collection authorized by the Office of Management and Budget on January 26.
Digital currency miners have come under scrutiny in recent years for their electricity-sucking operations, and for the impact their activity has on power grids and carbon emissions.
The EIA’s survey will focus on how the demand for power for cryptocurrency mining is changing, and will also identify parts of the country where mining growth is concentrated and the power sources used for the operations.
“We do think it is a significant source of demand that is worthy of our efforts to quantify it,” Glenn McGrath of the EIA told Reuters. “However, until we can demonstrate the activity with better data, we too have more questions than answers.”
The EIA, which compiles data on vast swaths of U.S. energy production and use, has received requests from various sectors to begin quantifying cryptocurrency mining energy use and hopes to have more information to share in a few months, McGrath said.
The Rocky Mountain Institute, a non-profit group based in Colorado, focused on the transition to clean energy, estimated last year that bitcoin globally consumes 127 terawatt hours (TWh) per year, which is more than used by the entire country of Norway.
(Reporting by Laila Kearney in New York, Deep Vakil and Ashitha Shivaprasad in Bengaluru; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and David Evans)