The Canadian province of Manitoba has prolonged a moratorium on new requests to the government-owned Manitoba Hydro company for electrical service for cryptocurrency operations. British Columbia (BC) had an identical suspension of service in place and has chosen a special but additionally restrictive path ahead.
The Manitoba pause extension applies to crypto miners’ newrequests and “requests for electrical service which haven’t resulted within the execution of an settlement to assemble infrastructure.”
In November 2022, the provincial authorities paused electrical connections to crypto-mining operations for 18 months. Now the pause will final via April 30, 2026. At the moment, the province plans to arrange a long-term answer, it said in an announcement, including:
“Manitoba Hydro continues to anticipate unprecedented demand for electrical energy from new or increasing cryptocurrency operations. That demand has the potential to drastically enhance our whole electrical load.”
In 2022, then-CEO of Manitoba Hydro Jay Grewal mentioned, “If we linked each cryptocurrency operator who’s proven curiosity within the final 16 months, we’d enhance our whole electrical load by 4,600 megawatts.” The group’s whole capability on the time was 6,100 megawatts.
Hydro-Québec proposed reducing electricity provision to crypto operations quickly in November 2022. New Brunswick banned the supply of electrical energy to new crypto operations in November 2023.
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In December 2022, British Columbia introduced it will stop making connections to new crypto miners for 18 months. That call impacted 21 initiatives. On April 11, the BC authorities mentioned it had launched amendments to its Utilities Fee Act to manage electrical energy service to cryptocurrency miners. Provincial Vitality Minister Josie Osborne said:
“We’re working with BC Hydro to make sure we’ve the electrical energy we want […] and that features regulating electrical energy service for energy-intensive cryptocurrency miners that create only a few native jobs.”
The brand new amendments would make it attainable for the BC authorities to ban, limit or regulate service to crypto miners. BC has a few of the lowest industrial and industrial electrical energy charges in North America.
