Quebec, one of the province and territory of Canada announced on 7th June 2018, that it has suspended approvals of the new digital currency mining projects. This action has been taken in order to facilitate Hydro Quebec, the energy management sector of Quebec, to continue supplying the power to all other provinces. These mining operations are exceeding the short-term and middle-term capacity of Hydro Quebec, which is more than 9000 megawatts.
The provincial administration and Hydro Quebec jointly decided to implement a new framework on the mining operational restrictions in this period of pause. The Government has also decided to categorize the electricity consumers of cryptocurrency mining operations. And a separate block of energy is reserved for them with the power limitation of 500 Megawatts [MWh].
The province also asked the energy firm to determine how much should these digital currency miners be charged to increase the revenue of power producers.
The Energy Minister of Quebec, Pierre Moreau says:
“The new rules established by the province will help them to choose the top companies in cryptocurrency sector.”
This reframing of rules is to make sure that the digital currency industry will help in the expansion of province’s economy mainly in terms of job creation and also the power rates of residents should not go high. The main target of the government is the companies with the best economic spin-offs for Quebec.
The Hydro-Quebec will file an application to province’s energy regulator, which will propose a selection process for the blockchain projects. These projects require a huge amount of energy to run the super-fast microprocessors and air conditioners to cool the computers.
According to various sources, earlier in the month of May, Eric Martel, the CEO of Hydro-Quebec mentioned that the firm had a plan of selling nearly 5TWh of energy to the cryptocurrency industry in the upcoming years.
Éric Filion, the President of Hydro-Québec Distribution says:
“The blockchain sector is a promising sector for Hydro-Québec. But, frameworks are required to make sure that the development of this sector results in maximum spinoffs in Quebec, at the same time avoiding price increases for our customers.”
source: https://ambcrypto.com/quebec-suspends-mining-power-requests-cryptocurrency-sector-flourishing/