Clearfield County, PA NatGas Bitcoin Miner Pauses Operations
Bitcoin mining is becoming an important customer for Marcellus/Utica natural gas. Gigantic computer server farms run complex mathematical computations and the result of those computations is a blockchain. When a blockchain is formed, the server farm doing the computations gets compensated with bitcoins, a form of digital money. Bitcoin (the generic term is cryptocurrency) mining uses huge amounts of electricity to run all of those computers. That’s where natural gas comes in. Natgas is used to generate the electricity used to power the computers. A bitcoin “miner” in Clearfield County, PA, recently paused operations at the facility. Why?
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Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s foolish plan to force PA’s coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to begin paying an obscenely high tax on carbon dioxide emissions as part of the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) got blocked on July 1 by PA Commonwealth Court (see 
We finally have some good news to share with respect to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s foolish plan to force PA’s coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to begin paying an obscenely high tax on carbon dioxide emissions as part of the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). After exhausting various attempts to block it, Wolf published a final RGGI regulation in the Pennsylvania Bulletin in April (see
In January 2017 Clean Energy Future (CEF), based in Massachusetts, announced it would build a second Utica gas-fired power plant in Lordstown next to the (then) under construction Lordstown Energy Center (see
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In April MDN told you about a world first when the gas-fired power plant (currently powered by Utica Shale gas) on the banks of the Ohio River in Hannibal (Monroe County), OH, successfully added a 5% mixture of hydrogen to the natural gas it burns (see 

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