OSLO, Nov. 21 (Xinhua) -- Data centres in Norway that produce crypto currencies will lose the right to the government's power subsidy and the benefit of discounted full electricity bill from New Year on, newspaper Aftenposten reported Wednesday.
Today, those factories with a capacity of more than 0.5 megawatts pay 0.48 ore (0.0056 U.S. dollars) per kilowatt hour, instead of 16.58 ore.
The subsidy will stop in the aftermath of budget negotiations between the government and the Christian Party, the report said.
Recently, voices have been raised in Norwegian public against the fee relief for the so-called "bitcoin factories" that are blamed to use a lot of energy and generate large greenhouse gas emissions on a global level.
Norwegian IT interest organization calls the government's decision "shocking," as it was made "without discussion, consultation or dialogue with the industry."
"Norway scores high on rankings of political stability and predictable framework conditions, but now the government is playing a gambling role with this credibility," Roger Schjerva, chief economist of ICT, was quoted in a press release.
"We still need to supply power to these centres within the Nordic power market. (With this decision,) We simply say no to income and work in many municipalities in Norway. We can only hope that politicians understand that computing that requires energy is one of the things we will be living in future," Schjerva added.
