The Missoula County Board of Commissioners in Montana, U.s., has extended its greenish regulations for cryptocurrency miners, which are designed to control the energy consumption of the industry in the canton.

The regulations, which require crypto miners to ready up their operations only in lite industrial and heavy industrial districts, and but after they have been reviewed and canonical equally a conditional utilise, are now extended until April iii, 2022.

County authorities initially adopted the rules a year ago, with a view "to protect the public health, safety, morals, and full general welfare of canton residents."

For the sake of the planet

The regulations are part of a city-county resolution aimed at transitioning to 100% usage of clean free energy by 2030. As such, the county lath is considering proposing it equally permanent zoning, local news outlet The Missoulian reported on March 27.

The board has non made changes to the rules, which means that miners will even so need to exclusively use renewable energy, too as ensure that all electronic waste material generated will be handled past a relevant recycling firm.

Government approved the extensions after a public hearing during a commissioners meeting, where only one citizen spoke out and compared crypto mining operations to the coronavirus outbreak, saying:

"Merely as coronavirus, it's a prolonged consequence where if we don't human action immediately to lower our demand for electricity and innovate renewable electricity, our planet is going to be degraded tragically in the time to come. Information technology is an emergency. It's just not one that we can perceive on an hour-to-hour basis like the virus."

The regulations, however, will not utilise to crypto mining facilities existing before April 4, 2022.

Eco-friendly developments in crypto mining

Some crypto industry players have already developed eco-friendly crypto mining solutions, with German Bitcoin (BTC) mining infrastructure house Northern Bitcoin AG completing tests for its new air-cooled mining container final yr. The firm operates mining hardware that uses renewable energy sources and aims to attain optimal efficiency and sustainability.

In January, researchers at Ireland's Economic and Social Research Plant proposed that using a blockchain-based "frontwards trading system" tin provide a more constructive incentive for the smart management of renewable energy consumption. The proposed mechanism includes the employ of smart contracts to automate free energy control, trading and management within a distributed framework.