Cryptomining Moratorium

In 2022, Pythia teamed up with Earthjustice and Seneca Lake Guardian, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving and protecting the health of New York’s Finger Lakes and surrounding communities. Communities and the environment in upstate New York are threatened by the recent surge of “cryptomining” in the area,  an extremely energy-intensive industry that had repurposed a fossil fuel burning power plant that had previously been shuttered. We built a broad coalition of stakeholders, from local community members to national environmental activists, to bring attention to an issue that had otherwise flown beneath the radar. Piercing through New York’s ever-changing news cycle, we established enough momentum for the New York State Legislature to pass a first-in-the-nation moratorium on cryptomining.  Additionally, our advocacy work directly led to the denial of a specific power plant allocated to this greenhouse gas emitting purpose — Greenidge Generation — its application to renew its permit.  These precedent-setting wins have sent a major signal that economic growth does not need to sacrifice environmental health, and as other states look to follow suit, we are expanding our work nationally.