so there's a lot that's been made about bitcoin's energy consumption which isn't
surprising considering the general advice is for home miners to not even
try to mine it as the energy cost needed to run gpus means you'd probably never
even make a profit but nonetheless large-scale mining continues and bitcoin
transactions are processed every day which sucks down a lot of power much of
which is coming from polluting sources like coal plants so is bitcoin actually
going to be some kind of monetary messiah or is it really
just killing our planet at first glance the numbers are a little alarming if you
just look at the energy consumption of the bitcoin network alone in late april
2021 it was around 134 terawatt hours
per year that's more than the entire country of sweden or just under half of
the united kingdom and consumption will probably keep rising this might not be
that big of a deal if the energy were coming from clean sources but it's
estimated that 61 percent of bitcoin's energy consumption is from non-renewable
sources at this time which obviously pump lots of carbon into the atmosphere
then you have the fact that a huge proportion of bitcoin mining is done in
china which remains heavily dependent on coal earlier this year a failure of one
coal plant in china cut out the processing power of the entire bitcoin
network by over a third all this carbon had one group of researchers projecting
that bitcoin alone could affect the atmosphere enough to warm the planet by
2 degrees celsius before the year 2050 a
huge amount when talking about global climate so does that mean that we should
be pumping the brakes on bitcoin mining well hold on a second the study we just
mentioned had plenty of detractors who pointed out it made a ton of assumptions
about the actual volume of mining that would take place over the next few
decades and the assumptions about how that mining is done and the resources of
it and everything that may have been wrong but outside of that there's also
an argument to be made that bitcoin mining could actually accelerate the
growth of the renewable energy sector the idea is that miners are seeking the
cheapest forms of electricity available in order to maximize profits remember
how we mentioned that most bitcoin mining utilizes non-renewables well
there's actually a notable major exception during the rainy months in
sichuan china mining activity spikes due to an abundance of cheap hydroelectric
power growing to 50 percent of world bitcoin mining powered almost entirely
by renewables in this vein energy companies might have an incentive to
keep building out renewable infrastructure in rural areas where solar wind and hydropower are usually
more abundant in response to demand from miners large-scale mining operations
often move to rural areas for the low energy costs already making this one way
that bitcoin could help accelerate the transition to cleaner energy
and of course we should think about the carbon footprint of the traditional
banking and financial sectors manufacturing plastic credit cards
processing multiple step interactions printing paper money keeping the lights
on in offices with all those employees how about the branches how about atms
how about the carbon footprint of the the trucks the protected vehicles that
move all have an environmental impact not just in terms of actual materials and
energy used but also the fact that simply having the us dollar as the
world's reserve currency has an environmental cost as part of the reason
it has so much clout globally is that oil prices are given in u.s dollars
thanks to an agreement made with saudi arabia back in the 1970s many of the u.s
dollars saudi arabia received in exchange for oil were reinvested in
american companies who provide equipment for extracting oil as well as stocks and
other large american firms outside the oil industry and while today there are
many other reasons the us dollar is the world's reserve currency oil did help
propel it to that status we're not trying to either praise or condemn any
nation's behavior the point is that the bones of the world economy are already
heavily linked to fossil fuels even without crypto but this doesn't
mean that we should just be ignoring the impact of energy-intensive mining it's
still an issue serious enough that elon musk who is trying to convince the u.s
environmental protection agency to let tesla sell renewable energy credits to
polluting power companies decided that tesla would no longer accept payments in
bitcoin as environmental regulators are currently frowning upon crypto so what's
the answer to the question then well bitcoin and other proof-of-work cryptos
like ethereum 1.0 probably aren't destroying the planet but
the issues they currently pose are something we'll have to reckon with but
until then maybe we should start putting those little calculator style solar
panels on graphics cards i think we can make a dent
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