Energy consumption in Texas is expected to rise up to 500% due to Bitcoin mining.

Over the last several months, many Texan politicians have shown support for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. In October, The Texas Ethics Commission proposed a new rule that permits government officials and politicians to accept Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrency contributions.

And after that, U.S Senator Ted Cruz issued support for Bitcoin, and even went ahead to introduce legislation to support Bitcoin mining and repeal some harmful infrastructure bill provisions.

While Texas may be known as a free state, and thus flocked to by Bitcoin mining firms, it’s slowly starting to backfire on the state.

The main grid operator, ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) released a report confirming that Bitcoin mining has used up to 1000MW of electricity this year alone.

ERCOT has predicted that BTC mining will likely see a five-fold increment in electricity consumption in the state and that demand could increase as much as fivefold by 2023 and has planned an additional 3,000 to 5,000 MW.

“The impact of Bitcoin mining is only going to increase peak demand, so it increases stress on the grid,” said Ben Hertz-Shargel, global head of Grid Edge, a division of energy consultant Wood Mackenzie. “In times of scarcity, like in February of this year, Bitcoin mining could have an unhelpful contribution to netload.”

Why Texas?

As we all remember, since the beginning of 2021, China has steadily increased restrictions on cryptocurrencies, and as a consequence — eliminated them completely. This has already happened with the mining of Bitcoin (BTC), among others, which has been completely banned. China has so far been known for mining the largest amount of tokens, however, with the complete ban on crypto mining, this business has stopped completely. Miners had to move somewhere where cryptocurrency mining is not banned and where electricity is cheap. Their choice just happened to be Texas.