[csusbpeace] Bitcoin’s Climate Impact Is Worse Than We Thought

From: "raccoon" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ("bigraccoon1")
To: "CSUSBPEACE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <CSUSBPEACE@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2022 14:33:42 -0700

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2022/10/bitcoin-climate-impact-energy-gold-mining-beef/

<https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2022/10/bitcoin-climate-impact-energy-gold-mining-beef/>

Bitcoin’s Climate Impact Is Worse Than We Thought

It isn’t akin to gold mining. More like gas drilling or raising beef, a study
finds.

Getty Images

Bitcoin is less “digital gold” and more “digital beef,” according to a study
that suggests the cryptocurrency has a climate impact greater than that of
gold mining and on the level of natural gas extraction or rearing cattle for
meat.

The research from the University of New Mexico, published in the journal
Scientific Reports <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-18686-8>,
assessed the climate cost of various commodities as a portion of their
overall market cap.

Some, such as coal, cause almost as much damage as the entire value of the
market they support, a 95 percent ratio, according to the analysis. Other
commodities, such as pork production, generate huge climate impacts in
absolute terms but only because the market is so massive.

Bitcoin, however, lies in between the two. According to the economists, the
climate damage of producing the digital currency has averaged 35 percent of
its market value over the past five years, peaking at 82 percent in 2020.

That is comparable to beef, which causes harm equal to 33 percent of its
market, or natural gas, which hits 46 percent. And it is far in excess of
gold, the commodity that the cryptocurrency’s backers most compare it to,
which has a climate impact of just 4 percent of its market value, thanks to
its enormous overall value dwarfing the large environmental impact of its
extraction.

The digital currency’s disproportionate harm to the climate comes from its
reliance on a computing process to verify transactions called “proof-of-work
mining,” which requires huge electricity expenditures to participate
<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/29/bitcoin-reduce-energy-consumption-climate-groups>,
rewarding those who carry it out with the chance to win some new Bitcoin.

On more than one day of 20 in the period the researchers examined, the
climate damage from these “Bitcoin miners” exceeded the value of the coins
produced, overwhelmingly due to that electricity consumption.

Some have argued that renewables could cover this demand but the authors
wrote that the climate damage for each dollar of value created was 10 times
worse for Bitcoin than for wind and solar generation—representing “a set of
red flags for any consideration as a sustainable sector.”

This past week, a different study on the climate impacts of Bitcoin found the
proportion of fossil generation used to power proof of work was far higher
than that claimed by advocates.

Cambridge University’s Bitcoin electricity consumption index has long tracked
the estimated power use of the Bitcoin network, but an update launched this
month adds a new dataset to the estimates: a “mining map.” This shows the
geographical distribution of Bitcoin miners.

Combining that data with previous studies on regional differences in
electricity generation, the researchers were able to estimate the proportion
of generation which is renewable.

“The results show that fossil fuels account for almost two-thirds of the
total electricity mix (62.4 percent) and sustainable energy sources 37.6
percent (of which 26.3 percent are renewables and 11.3 percent nuclear),”
wrote Cambridge’s Alexander Neumueller.

“The findings thus noticeably deviate from industry findings that estimate
the share of sustainable energy sources in Bitcoin’s electricity mix to be
59.5 percent.”

However, even though the generation mix is still carbon-intensive, the
overall emissions of Bitcoin have fallen in the past 12 months because of the
sharp decline in the value of the cryptocurrency
<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/29/crypto-crisis-digital-currencies-boom-collapse-bitcoin-terra>.

Prices for Bitcoin, and therefore the anticipated payouts to miners, have
fallen by two-thirds, sending some out of business and leading others to cut
their activities, in the process cutting emissions by about 14 percent
compared with 2021, the researchers estimate.

Those emissions are comparable to those of countries such as Nepal or Central
African Republic, the Cambridge team says.

[csusbpeace] Bitcoin’s Climate Impact Is Worse Than We Thought

Other related posts: