A cryptocurrency plant in Central New York can continue operating after a court rejected the state’s effort to shut down the facility, but the debate isn’t over and both sides consider the ruling a victory.
Environmental advocates have been railing against the Greenidge Generation facility for years, alleging the operation works against the state's goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In 2022, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation denied Greenidge’s permit, saying it violated the state’s climate law which kicked off a lengthy legal battle.
This decision comes after a ruling in favor of the DEC was annulled earlier this year, and it essentially sends the matter back to the agency with an order to reconsider the permit under the scope outlined in the decision.
The judge ruled the DEC does have the authority to decline Greenidge’s permit application based on the state’s climate law, but ruled the DEC provided insufficient justification for doing so.
It comes as a separate ruling sent a facility in Tonawanda back to the Public Service Commission for further review.
Greenidge celebrated the ruling last week, telling Spectrum News 1 in a statement that the initial decision by the DEC was “transparent political bias.”
“The Climate Act is a good and well-intended law, but it did not give DEC political appointees and bureaucrats the power to rewrite a statute and unilaterally decide for themselves the value of working-class New Yorkers’ jobs,” the company said.
In a press conference Tuesday, environmental advocates stressed that the ruling is part of a broader push, and was in fact a step in that process.
“For many years now, the Finger Lakes community has been sounding the alarm about the disastrous impacts of this facility on their water, air, and climate and we’re going to continue this push until Greenidge shuts down for good,” said Lisa Perfetto, senior attorney for Earthjustice.
So why are both sides calling this a victory?
Environmental advocates say the ruling upholds the principle that the DEC does have the authority to deny permits based on climate law, and characterize the move to send the case back to the agency as a procedural inconvenience.
“The process goes back to the agency to redo the analysis of whether it can approve the sale of a power plant to a cryptocurrency mining company, and this time the DEC has to keep the CLCPA in mind and follow its instructions,” said Dror Ladin, also a senior attorney for Earthjustice.
Greenidge declared victory on the grounds that the ruling calls out environmental advocates for overreach, arguing its operation has a negligible impact on the state’s overall objective, and the state didn’t prove otherwise.
“DEC wanted a virtue-signaling result: to shut down a facility with no material impact on reaching Climate Law goals and one that offered significant emissions mitigation consistent with Climate Act aims,” the statement continued. “So they tried to short-circuit the process to get to their pre-determined outcome – and they got caught.”
The DEC will now have to reconsider the matter under the parameters set out in the ruling, which Greenidge said they hope will be a “collaborative process”
A spokesperson for the DEC told Spectrum News 1 they couldn't share details on what that process would look like.
"While still reviewing the decision, DEC notes the court once again confirmed DEC’s authority to deny permits, including permit renewals, should a specific application fail to meet the requirements of Section 7(2) of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act," the DEC said in a statement. "As the matter was remanded back to DEC for further administrative proceedings, DEC cannot comment further on pending litigation."