Hardin County approves two crypto mining sites

Hardin County, in north central Iowa, has approved two new cryptocurrency mining sites.

The county’s Zoning Adjustment Board on Jan. 24 signed two conditional use permits allowing the MiningStore, headquartered in North Carolina, to install mining sites next to two electrical substations owned by Midland Power Cooperative.

Each permit requires MiningStore to install noise-buffering material on the fences around the sites, provide $75,000 surety bonds for future decommissioning and seek new permits each time the leases are renewed. MiningStore also must post emergency contact information on a prominent location at the Eldora site.

MiningStore, which opened its flagship bitcoin-mining site in Grundy County in 2019, had originally requested rezoning of the parcels in Hardin County’s Eldora and Union townships from agricultural to manufacturing, but the county decided a conditional use permit would be sufficient.

CEO JP Baric, 25, of North Carolina, spoke with the Hardin County Board of Supervisors in January.

Each site will include three modular structures stacked with computers that run round the clock to solve math problems that create new blocks of bitcoin, the most common form of cryptocurrency worldwide. As each new block of bitcoin is solved, mining operations like this get a payout.

Cryptocurrency mining has raised concerns in Iowa and elsewhere because of how much electricity it uses. The White House reported in August the global electricity use for crypto mining was between 120 billion and 240 billion kilowatt-hours per year, which is more than the total annual electricity use of some countries including Argentina and Australia. This surge in demand is happening as the world is trying to reduce electricity consumption because of climate change.

Each of the Hardin County sites would use 5 megawatts, the equivalent to powering 4,000 to 9,000 homes, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

But supporters of crypto mining say they are adding resilience to the power grid by using surplus wind and solar energy that’s often wasted if utilities don’t have battery storage. At times of peak energy needs, the mining sites would halt operations, giving the utility more capacity for other customers.

A 2022 survey of bitcoin mining companies found improved energy efficiency across the system, in part, because of newer computers, according to a January report from the Bitcoin Mining Council, which represents 50 bitcoin mining companies, including MiningStore.

The speed or power of transactions, or “hash rate,” went up 45 percent, while energy use went up 25 percent, the group reported.

Midland Power Cooperative, which will be supplying electricity to the new Hardin County crypto sites, gets at least 46 percent of its power from coal, according to its website.

MiningStore also has a site in Marshall County, near St. Anthony.

The Black Hawk County Board of Supervisors in August decided against rezoning to allow a crypto farm, citing noise and energy use. Grundy County also voted down a second location proposed by MiningStore.

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