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This story is published in partnership with Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization covering climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.
GRANBURY — About 150 angry residents gathered at a conference center here Monday for a public meeting organized by the state Department of Environmental Quality to discuss Constellation Energy’s proposal to build a new 300-megawatt power plant next to two existing plants next to residential areas.
But the power plant isn’t the only thing causing controversy. Marathon Digital, a Florida-based cryptocurrency company, operates a 300-megawatt bitcoin mining facility on Constellation Energy’s property. For months, residents have complained about the constant noise from thousands of fans that cool Marathon’s computers that process bitcoin transactions.
The relentless low-frequency sound waves are causing sleep deprivation, and residents believe they may also be to blame for a number of unexplained health issues that have been occurring since the bitcoin mine opened in 2022.
At the meeting, representatives from Constellation, two of the company’s environmental consultants and five officials from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality answered questions for about 50 minutes and then heard dozens of official comments from residents of Granbury and nearby towns.
“This is crazy. You moved in on us, we didn’t move in on you,” Nick Browning said, looking straight at the Constellation Energy representative. Browning, 81, has lived for more than 30 years, about 800 feet from the site where Constellation Energy began building its power plant in the early 2000s.
Constellation plans to build eight new natural gas-powered turbines to generate electricity. The company has applied for air release permits to emit more than 796,000 additional tons of carbon dioxide per year. The EPA estimates that to sequester that amount of carbon dioxide, it would take about 12 million trees planted and grown for 10 years.
The permit also proposes increased on-site emissions of many other pollutants, including particulate matter, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds.
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The mere presence of the crowd, mostly white older and middle-aged Texans, several of whom were dressed in Trump attire, demonstrated the opposition that fossil fuel plants can face across the political spectrum, especially when combined with Bitcoin mining, which comes with its associated noise pollution. The community, united by concerns about how rising air pollutants and noise pollution could affect their health, also expressed distrust for the process itself, believing the meeting was a sham and that the permit would be approved.
“What I’m hearing is, if the government is OK with it, the public has no choice but to comply,” said Jim Brown of Granbury.
Texas leads the nation in mining Bitcoin, the largest and best-known cryptocurrency. First conceived in 2008 as an electronic payment system that cuts out middlemen such as banks and credit card companies, Bitcoin transactions are managed by a decentralized network of Bitcoin users.
Currently worth about $57,500, Bitcoin can be purchased for dollars on Bitcoin exchanges such as Coinbase. To buy something with Bitcoin, the buyer sends the currency from their digital wallet to the seller’s digital wallet.
Each transaction is assigned a unique random identifying code by a computer algorithm. To verify a transaction, this code must be guessed. Bitcoin is “mined” by companies like Marathon Digital, who operate powerful computers day and night to run an endless stream of random numbers to find or guess the correct code. For each successfully guessed transaction, Bitcoin miners receive a fee for helping maintain the network and keep it secure.
As Bitcoin mining grows and consumes vast amounts of electricity, it also increases overall demand on the Texas power grid. As part of an effort to make the grid more reliable, the Texas Legislature passed the Texas Energy Fund, a loan program designed to help bring more gas-fired power plants online.
Voters approved the program for the 2023 state election, and last month Constellation Energy’s expansion, known as Wolf Hollow III, was included among more than a dozen selected projects that could receive taxpayer-funded financing if a deal is reached.
Constellation Energy said in a statement that electricity from the new plants “will not be permitted to be used directly for industrial loads” such as Bitcoin. The company said it is “sensitive” to noise issues and has no plans at this time to expand Bitcoin mining.
However, Jackie Sawicki, founding member of the Texas Coalition Against Crypto Mining, told Inside Climate News that even if the new generation of mining doesn’t directly power bitcoin, Wolf Hollow III will replace the energy capacity that Wolf Hollow II set aside for bitcoin, as both the mine and the new power plant have 300 megawatts of capacity.
Sawicki said the Texas Energy Fund is “another handout” to the fossil fuel industry and, more specifically, to bitcoin mining companies “who are trying to get into our power grid.”
Shannon Wolf, Republican district chair for Hood County, where Granbury is located, said at the meeting that she voted for the ballot measure to create the Texas Energy Fund, but she said she doesn’t support Wolf Hollow III being built in an area “surrounded by ranches and farms and churches and elementary schools.”
“I’m concerned about what’s going to happen with these contaminants,” Wolf said.
Another point of contention at the public meeting was how often Wolf Hollow III will be operated. The company said the plant is designed as a peaker, running only when needed to meet electricity demand. Constellation said the new plant will be limited to operating about 40 percent of the year.
“It’s not clear who will be overseeing it,” Adrienne Shelley, Texas director of the nonprofit group Public Citizen, said at the conference.
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality officials said a decision has not yet been made on whether to grant a permit for the new plant. Residents closest to the project site can request a contentious docket hearing, a process in which an independent administrative judge hears community concerns and issues a recommendation on whether a permit should be granted.
Neighbors worry the expansion will worsen their health. Karen Pearson, who lives across the highway from the Constellation site, said her whole family, including her father, Nick Browning, suffers from high blood pressure and hearing loss. Her mother, Victoria Browning, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in July, a year after her health began to deteriorate, but she was confused when doctors said it wasn’t a tumor.
Pearson believes the problem is environmental. “It’s about taking back our health and quality of life,” she says. “This isn’t just happening to us. It’s happening to a lot of other people here.”
