EIA Quickly Suspends Crypto Mining Survey Following a Lawsuit 

• The US Power Data Administration (EIA) has determined to droop its survey of crypto miners’ vitality consumption quickly.
• The choice comes following Riot Platforms and the Texas Blockchain Council’s lawsuit in opposition to the division’s scrutiny.
• The courtroom ordered EIA to quickly droop the probe, claiming the transfer to be arbitrary and capricious.

The US Power Data Administration (EIA), a statistical wing of the Division of Power, has agreed to droop its investigation into crypto miners’ vitality consumption quickly. The choice adopted a lawsuit filed by Riot Platforms and the Texas Blockchain Council in opposition to the division’s scrutiny.

 EIA introduced the division’s choice to droop the survey through an X publish. The division assured that they won’t “make the most of any information acquired from any get together responding to Kind EIA-862.” They added,

EIA won’t implement any requirement to file Kind EIA-862 nor search or impose any fines, penalties, or different opposed penalties based mostly on a failure to answer the survey by means of March 22, 2024.

Final month, EIA initiated a survey of choose US crypto mining corporations’ use of electrical energy. Whereas the Workplace of Administration and Funds (OMB) legalized the probe as an “emergency assortment of knowledge request,” EIA Administrator Joe DeCarolis commented,

We intend to proceed to investigate and write in regards to the vitality implications of cryptocurrency mining actions in the USA. We are going to particularly concentrate on how the vitality demand for cryptocurrency mining is evolving, determine geographic areas of excessive development, and quantify the sources of electrical energy used to satisfy cryptocurrency mining demand.

Nonetheless, the outstanding miner Riot Platforms and the business affiliation Texas Blockchain Council challenged EIA’s transfer, criticizing the survey as a “sloppy authorities course of” and a case of “invasive authorities information assortment.” They added that the pressing pretext used to gather required information is “contrived.”

In response to the lawsuit, the courtroom ordered EIA to quickly droop the investigation. The decide dominated that the EIA’s statements had been “arbitrary, capricious, [or] an abuse of discretion.” The courtroom added, “The courtroom believes that plaintiffs are doubtless to reach exhibiting that the info alleged by defendants to assist an emergency request fall far in need of justifying such an motion.”