The Texas State Senate Business and Commerce Committee is taking steps to address concerns about what it says is the unregistered electric load usage by virtual currency mining facilities. It shared that it has studied blockchain and virtual currencies and their impact on various industries, like banking, business, and electricity.

Additionally, it has assessed the electricity market in Texas, focusing on issues like weather preparedness, transmission planning, maintenance scheduling, and the natural gas supply chain.

Sharing its findings during a hearing, the committee expressed that the load from virtual currency mining could grow by an additional 37 gigawatts. At the time of writing, there is no requirement for large flexible loads to register with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which makes it difficult to accurately project grid management — which the committee believes threatens overall grid reliability.

As a result, it proposed and recently approved bill C.S.S.B 1751 by unanimous vote, which if made into law would see the benefits of crypto mining in the Lone Star State dampened.

In the past, miners like Riot Blockchain have been awarded millions of USD for halting operations during events of extreme weather or stress on the Texas power grid system, which operates independently from the rest of the U.S.

Key provisions of the bill would include any large flexible loads larger than 10 megawatts to be classified as utility-scale usage and require registration with ERCOT.

What has miners concerned however is the slashing of various benefits, under the new bill virtual currency miners would be barred from tax abatements and restricted from participating in demand response programs.

In a bill analysis published on April 4, the committee stated that “given that large-scale growth in virtual currency mining is already projected to occur in the state, taxpayer-funded incentives are not necessary to subsidize growth of this industry.”

Lastly, the bill prohibits governing bodies of taxing units from entering into agreements to exempt from taxation a portion of the value of real property on which a virtual currency mining facility is located or is planned to be located during the term of the agreement, or tangible personal property that is located or is planned to be located on the real property during that term.

Despite making its way out of the Senate committee, the bill still has five stages to go through before it would effectively become law and has already received significant pushback from opposing parties like Satoshi Action Fund CEO Dennis Porter and Pierre Rochard, the VP of Research at Riot Platforms.

In other news, Cash App’s Bob Lee was a “force of nature,” taken too soon by tragedy.