Greenidge plans new bitcoin operation in recently shuttered South Carolina printing plant that laid off 400 workers

Greenidge Technology Holdings Inc. has declared programs to start its 2nd bitcoin mining operation afterwards this 12 months or in early 2022 at a lately shuttered printing plant in Spartanburg, S.C.

GGH’s mum or dad business, Atlas Holdings, acquired the sunbelt plant in December as element of its order of LSC Communications Inc., a bankrupt e-book and magazine corporation. Atlas shut down the Spartanburg plant and laid off its 401 employees in February.

In a press release, GGH explained the plant is able of drawing 80 megawatts of power, two-thirds of which is created from nuclear energy or other zero-carbon resources.

“The site’s current electrical infrastructure ought to enable us to begin out details mining buildout pretty much right away,” said Jeff Kirt, CEO of GGH.

The business now operates a bitcoin mining operation at Greenidge Era, its purely natural gas-fueled ability plant on Seneca Lake in Dresden, which attracts about 19 MW of electricity. GGH said it ideas to expand Greenidge’s bitcoin operation to 85 MW by following year and to open up other bitcoin mining operations.

Finger Lakes environmental teams have warned that a quadrupling of power era at the Dresden plant would lead to its greenhouse fuel emissions to soar just as it is searching for to renew its state air permits.

The point out Department of Environmental Conservation has pledged to keep a general public listening to on the air permit and to review the renewal application with an eye on the state’s tricky new air emission requirements. The present-day air allow expires in September.

In March, GGH announced designs to go community by way of a reverse merger with aid.com, a publicly-traded business services enterprise that will develop into a GGH subsidiary when the deal closes later on this yr. GGH has explained it ideas to operate 500 MW of bitcoin mining services by 2025. Greenidge was the initially step in that buildout. Spartanburg is the next.

GGH explained it will lease a part of the retired South Carolina printing plant from LSC Communications. The two companies are units of Atlas Holdings, a non-public fairness enterprise based in Greenwich, CT.

When it acquired LSC in a personal bankruptcy sale in December, Atlas explained the corporation as the nation’s most significant producer of textbooks and a primary distributor of magazines and catalogues.

“Atlas is the perfect suit as LSC’s new associate,” Timothy J. Fazio, co-founder and running spouse of Atlas reported at the time. “Our roots are in paper – the investment that launched Atlas much more than two a long time back was the invest in of a one paper mill in Indiana. Due to the fact then, our team has made deep sector know-how in printing, paper and adjacent industries these types of as packaging and paper receipts and labels.”

Times soon after the sale, LSC advised the U.S. Department of Labor it prepared to near the Spartanburg plant and lay off its 401 personnel on Feb. 18.

Five years in the past, the previous R.R. Donnelley plant experienced been one particular of more than 50 LSC Communications amenities with 14,000 staff. The corporation shuttered other printing vegetation in Virginia, Kentucky and Illinois previous 12 months right before providing out to Atlas.

Whilst expressing disappointment about the area plant closing, Spartanburg County Councilman David Britt, chairman of the county’s economic progress committee, informed the Spartanburg Herald-Journal he was optimistic about the area’s extensive-time period prospects.

“Our economic advancement group has, for the earlier 25 a long time, recruited superb companies that will fill this hole in the street seamlessly,” Britt stated.

GGH acknowledged the area’s “business-welcoming local climate.”

In March, the South Carolina point out Senate passed a resolution that urged  South Carolinians to “join in encouraging the advertising of blockchain technology.”

In its press launch, GGH said it intended to work the South Carolina bitcoin procedure as “fully carbon neutral.” The corporation mentioned about two-thirds of the grid electrical energy made use of would come from “zero-carbon resources such as nuclear energy.” The remainder of its carbon footprint would be included by buying carbon offsets, it claimed.

GGH has made a similar dedication to carbon neutrality at its Greenidge plant, even even though New York’s 2019 Local weather Management and Group Safety Act does not let carbon offsets to implement to the electric technology business.

GGH did not make clear the terms less than which it would attain two-thirds of its 80 MW electrical use from “zero-carbon resources.”

Nuclear manufactured up 58.1 per cent of power generated in South Carolina in 2019, even though natural fuel, coal and oil developed a merged 38.8 percent.

Having said that, not all electrical power made in South Carolina stays in the condition. When comparing the pro rata share of strength really made use of in South Carolina, nuclear was 36.6 % of the blend, when normal fuel, coal and oil were being a merged 59.1 per cent. In fact, coal was 28. per cent.

But a point out or neighborhood incentive bundle utilised as an economic improvement instrument to draw in financial investment may possibly involve a special energy allocation tilted towards “zero-carbon resources.”

GGH’s shift into South Carolina will come as bitcoin miners flee a regulatory crackdown in China for the United States, in particular Texas and other southern states.

On Thursday, Blockware announced ideas to expand its bitcoin mining functions in Paducah, KY.

A person recent research uncovered the U.S. to be the “most crypto-welcoming” region in the planet, based mostly on a comparison of several regulatory metrics.

In the meantime, as Chinese bitcoin miners have gone off-line, the problem of solving bitcoin puzzles has gotten substantially less difficult for people miners who have remained in business enterprise. That bodes very well for energetic miners’ revenue margins.

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