Crypto operations suck water, but Canadian governments aren't monitoring how much

Written By Peter Allan
A technician monitors a bank of computers at the Bitfarms technology lab in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, Canada

A technician monitors a bank of computers at the Bitfarms technology lab in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, Canada, on Thursday, July 26, 2018. Photo by James MacDonald / Canada's National Observer

By   Brishti Basu

The amount of water it takes to mine cryptocurrency in Canada is on the rise, with little regulatory oversight and no disclosure requirements to track the operations’ consumption levels.

In Kelowna, B.C., that means a data centre primarily drawing power for crypto mining is expanding with no specific need to disclose its water use from electricity generation and computer server cooling.

The last known estimate was that crypto miners use about 127 billion litres per year — enough to meet the needs of more than a million Canadian households.

But this number is three years old, and while it tracks the water footprint of generating electricity for these mines to run, it does not include the amount of water used to cool these facilities.

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Peter Allan
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