- The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) has decided to suspend its survey of crypto miners’ energy consumption temporarily.
- The decision comes following Riot Platforms and the Texas Blockchain Council’s lawsuit against the department’s scrutiny.
- The court ordered EIA to temporarily suspend the probe, claiming the move to be arbitrary and capricious.
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA), a statistical wing of the Department of Energy, has agreed to suspend its investigation into crypto miners’ energy consumption temporarily. The decision followed a lawsuit filed by Riot Platforms and the Texas Blockchain Council against the department’s scrutiny.
EIA announced the department’s decision to suspend the survey via an X post. The department assured that they will not “utilize any data received from any party responding to Form EIA-862.” They added,
EIA will not enforce any requirement to file Form EIA-862 nor seek or impose any fines, penalties, or other adverse consequences based on a failure to respond to the survey through March 22, 2024.
Last month, EIA initiated a survey of select US crypto mining companies’ use of electricity. While the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) legalized the probe as an “emergency collection of data request,” EIA Administrator Joe DeCarolis commented,
We intend to continue to analyze and write about the energy implications of cryptocurrency mining activities in the United States. We will specifically focus on how the energy demand for cryptocurrency mining is evolving, identify geographic areas of high growth, and quantify the sources of electricity used to meet cryptocurrency mining demand.
However, the prominent miner Riot Platforms and the industry association Texas Blockchain Council challenged EIA’s move, criticizing the survey as a “sloppy government process” and a case of “invasive government data collection.” They added that the urgent pretext used to collect required data is “contrived.”
In response to the lawsuit, the court ordered EIA to temporarily suspend the investigation. The judge ruled that the EIA’s statements were “arbitrary, capricious, [or] an abuse of discretion.” The court added, “The court believes that plaintiffs are likely to succeed in showing that the facts alleged by defendants to support an emergency request fall far short of justifying such an action.”
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