> It said the pause ordered by the government was in response to "the very real prospect that devoting such a large proportion of the available electrical power supply to one industry would leave less energy for other uses which might result in increased costs to all other residential and industry customers in B.C."
See in Texas how the Bitcoin mining industry negotiated agreements for curtailing and greatly help scaling the grid better... this seems like a way more efficient approach to these offer/demand and scaling issues than "we can't let you buy our product because other people want to buy it".
They get paid not to use power to prevent the grid from collapsing. That's not what I want my tax dollars spent on, and such silliness is why I tend not to look at Texas for good governance.
The keywords are scaling and stability, if you prefer to piss this money away on building plants that will work at 50% capacity for years you essentially pay for the rest of the capacity with no other utility, that's bad governance.
Industry-scale resource usage requires planning and coordination.
One difference from other industries: > Energy Minister Josie Osborne said when the policy was introduced that cryptocurrency mining consumes ... adds “very few jobs” to the local economy.