Bitcoin Mining Company Quietly Seeks to Restart Coal Fired Power Units Along Potomac River
WASHINGTON — As part of a bid to take over ownership of Morgantown Power, Bitcoin mining company TeraWulf will activate two shuttered coal generation units at the site just downriver from Washington, D.C., according to revelations revealed today by Public Citizen in a filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
In an interview with CNBC in February, TeraWulf CEO Paul Prager revealed the company planned to “repower” the two coal units retired in 2022.
TeraWulf’s initial filing with FERC last month focused on the transfer of four oil generation units at the Morgantown Power site. Adjacent to the four oil facilities are two recently retired coal power plants. While the FERC application did not mention any plan to restart the coal facilities, Public Citizen’s discovery of TeraWulf’s CEO detailing plans to restart the coal units to help power a planned data center should be considered a material omission in the application, according to Public Citizen.
According to Public Citizen’s filing with FERC, the community around Morgantown Power has been left in the dark about the proposed transfer in ownership , with the purchasing company TeraWulf failing to engage local residents with a public meeting.
“TeraWulf is a cryptocurrency miner seeking to cash in on the AI data center craze, with no recent experience operating power plants,” said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program. “Its plan to buy four old oil-fueled power plants to power a data center should be controversial enough, but it is a scandal now that we’ve revealed their larger plan: revive two ancient, retired coal power plants to supply a planned data center on the Potomac River. The community around Morgantown deserves clarity on TeraWulf’s plans, and clear, binding commitments to deal with the pollution those plans could cause.”
After the coal fired units were mothballed in 2022, the legacy of coal ash from the coal fired units has created longstanding environmental justice issues for the surrounding community.
According to the filing, transferring the power station to TeraWulf created significant harm to the public interest, and should require the company to disclose its plans to the public in a community forum where it answers questions about the project.
“The community surrounding these power plants are in the top three percent of Maryland communities experiencing environmental injustice,” said Slocum. “Residents living nearby to Morgantown Power face a greater overall environmental and social burden than 97.76% of communities across Maryland. Not only do residents face unjust pollution burdens from the continued operation of the four operational oil-fired generators onsite, but they are threatened by the possibility of significantly increased pollution levels should TeraWulf restart the two retired coal units.”
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