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by JKCalhoun
1021 days ago
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For high energy processes like aluminum recycling, extraction, I suspect the transportation energy is in the noise. And if matters only that this "energy consumer" be on the grid, I suspect there are plenty of convenient multimodal transport hubs in the state of Texas where an aluminum recycling plant could go up to save on transport costs. |
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This is not the case. The actual physical, geographical location matters, because energy transmission over long distances (like from the middle of a desert in far West TX to major population centers like Dallas or Houston many hundreds of miles away) has significant (on the scale of electricity prices) costs.
Don't forget either that when I talk about transportation costs, I'm not simply referring to energy consumption, but also carbon emissions. In the future it may be different, but as of right now, the semi trucks carrying those aluminum cans into a desert in west TX (and carrying the refined aluminum out of a desert in west TX) are spewing (literal) tons of greenhouse gasses, particulate matter pollutants, etc into the atmosphere. This would be a small fraction of the GHG/emissions IF the primary energy consumption device in question (btc miners, aluminum recycling plant) was running primarily on GHG itself, but the entire point here is that's NOT the case - those BTC mining plants are in places with high shares of renewable energy where electricity costs get extremely low during periods of high production and low demand.