The Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority (ADAFSA), responsible for regulating agriculture in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), has announced a prohibition on utilizing agricultural land for cryptocurrency mining.
Those who violate this ban will incur a fine of 100,000 AED ($27,229), and the ADAFSA will halt municipal services, seize mining equipment, and disconnect the farmland from the electrical grid, as detailed in Tuesday’s announcement.
ADAFSA emphasized that the use of farmland for cryptocurrency mining contradicts the region’s “sustainability” policies and undermines established land use regulations.
“These activities are beyond the scope of permitted economic uses as defined by the authority and are prohibited on agricultural land,” it stated.
The environmental impacts of cryptocurrency mining remain controversial, with critics asserting that it adversely affects ecosystems, while supporters highlight vertically integrated mining processes as a means to reclaim waste energy and funnel excess into utility systems.
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Some studies suggest crypto mining can support environmental efforts
In the competitive landscape of crypto mining, where profit margins are slim, miners are incentivized to find the lowest energy costs to minimize variable overheads.
Renewable energy sources such as hydroelectric, geothermal, or waste energy from industrial methods, like flaring excess energy from gas fields or converting methane from waste, account for over 50% of the energy used in Bitcoin (BTC) mining in 2023.
In August 2024, researchers released a paper titled “An integrated landfill gas-to-energy and Bitcoin mining framework,” discussing how proof-of-work (PoW) mining can transform methane energy into usable energy.
This research focused on landfill-gas-to-energy (LFGTE) systems, which capture methane from landfills to generate electricity, thus preventing this harmful greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere.
These results resonate with previous studies, such as “Bitcoin and the Energy Transition: From Risk to Opportunity,” published in 2023, which claimed that mining could mitigate up to 8% of global emissions by 2030.
In spite of this, opponents argue that mining still poses threats to ecological systems. US lawmakers have made several attempts to urge the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to implement regulations that limit mining activities.
Such measures include efforts to reduce air and water pollution as well as greenhouse gas emissions under existing US regulations, in addition to newer rules aimed at addressing noise pollution from mining operations.
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