Pierce Gentry: Hey Melanie, it's good to see you back in the studio at WUOT.
Melanie Faizer: Nice to be here again.
Gentry: So in your latest report for Knox News, you reveal that the TVA basically enticed this crypto developer – Bitdeer – to Knoxville with the promise of energy discounts through credits. What is Bitdeer, and why did the TVA want them here so badly?
Faizer: So Bitdeer is a cryptocurrency mining company. TVA was giving incentives to not just Bitdeer but a lot of cryptocurrency companies to come to the region. At one point, the then-CEO Jeff Lyash actually told me that he was meeting – I think this was in 2023 or 2024 – with about 300 cryptominers to talk about energy in the region.
And they were making energy incentives pretty attractive to the crypto miners because it's a huge revenue source. We know that data centers – they've said – are taking about 18% of their industrial load. And they're expecting that to double by 2030.
Gentry: Okay, so how much power does it take to run a data center or a crypto mine?
Faizer: It depends on the size. I mean, you can mine crypto from your basement. The crypto mine here in Knoxville is about 86 megawatts. It's hard to measure that in terms of domestic consumption, but you could say tens-of-thousands of homes.
Gentry: Wow. So we must be talking, like, millions of dollars in credits, right?
Faizer: It was millions of dollars of credits to Bitdeer alone. We don't actually know how many crypto mines are in the TVA region. The TVA will say that they don't track that.
Gentry: Interesting. So when did you first stumble upon all of this?
Faizer: This would have been back around 2022 or 2023 when people started talking about the crypto mines that were coming into the region. Of course, in some smaller communities there were complaints about noise and energy consumption and what this was going to do to consumer rates.
I got interested when I started hearing that the TVA was providing incentives and cheaper energy for the crypto mines, mostly because we didn't know how much they were providing and they weren't willing to provide that information.
Gentry: So yeah, you requested those records from the TVA, I believe as far back as 2023, right?
Faizer: That's right. The initial records showed pretty much nothing. They were completely and totally redacted.
Gentry: So a few months later, you made the decision to sue for those records. Did you learn anything surprising from them that you didn't expect?
Faizer: Well, we knew the TVA had given grants. But they did provide incentives that covered about 20% of the crypto mine’s electricity bills over a five year period. The contract amount was for $18 million dollars. Because of the consumption of the crypto mine, that was closer to $21 to $22 million.
Gentry: Wow. So what does the TVA have to say about all this? Are they still forging partnerships with those data centers and crypto mines?
Faizer: So they're not seeking partnerships with them anymore. I don't think they're turning them away, but the data centers are an important part of the energy landscape now. The TVA did announce last year that it's going to develop a separate rate structure for the data centers. So that's a bit of good news for the consumer.
Gentry: Have you looked elsewhere to see what other trends are happening across the country? Or is this a uniquely TVA situation?
Faizer: It's not uniquely TVA. I think these crypto mines are everywhere. We've seen this happen in New York state, where they actually put a moratorium for a time on crypto mining until they could sort of figure out how to regulate.
They're everywhere. We're not the only region with these kinds of data centers and mines here.
Gentry: Melanie Faizer, thank you so much for your reporting.
Faizer: Thanks for having me.
Melanie Faizer is a journalist and professor of practice at the University of Tennessee’s School of Journalism and Media. Her story first appeared in the Knoxville News-Sentinel and can be found here.
