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A Coal Power Plant is Being Reopened For Blockchain Mining (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Sure, you could mine bitcoin on that old PC in your garage, or you could use a whole power station to do it. That's the idea behind the Blockchain Application Centre -- an Aussie tech initiative that will see one of the country's now-shuttered coal-fired power plants reopened to provide cheap power for blockchain applications. It's the work of Australian tech company IOT Group, which has partnered with local power company Hunter Energy on the project. According to The Age, Hunter Energy will recommission the Redbank power station in the Hunter Valley, two hours drive north of Sydney. Once the power plant is reopened (expected to be completed within 12 months), it will offer wholesale or "pre-grid" power prices to blockchain companies, allowing them to do things like mining cryptocurrencies, without having to pay retail power prices.
It's too bad Australia seems to be run by fossils these days though, so that won't happen.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Are not coal plants heavily regulated for filters? It may release more CO2, but that isn't "polluting the hell" out of anything.
Today's filters do a good job of straining out particulates, but you still have gases. Not just the ever-popular CO2, but NOx and SO2, the stuff that creates smog in the Grand Canyon from Arizona's last remaining coal plant.