Sam Blum* says Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies require more energy than entire mineral mining industries, creating a massive carbon footprint.
Photo: American Public Power Association
Bitcoin’s environmental impact has never been a secret.
Mining for the digital currency requires tonnes of energy, as powerful computers direct raw computing power at the mathematical process that creates coins.
And to produce that energy, power plants have to spew almost as much carbon as the actual mining industry.
According to a paper published in Nature Sustainability last week, Bitcoin mining is even more detrimental to the environment than scouring the Earth for gold, silver, aluminium and copper.
In order to “mine” Bitcoin, powerful computers have to solve specific, computationally intensive math problems to generate coins.
There are no workarounds, by design, which means loads of computer power delivered by specialised equipment is necessary to generate the scarce digital currency.
Bitcoin, while not the only cryptocurrency that functions on this basic premise, is greedier than most of its crypto counterparts — the sum total of Bitcoin’s electricity consumption slightly trails the entire country of Denmark.
But to see how Bitcoin mining compares to its more literal counterpart, researchers spent 30 months comparing the net energy consumption of mining operations for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Monero with conventional mining.
They found that, with the exception of aluminium, cryptomining consumed more energy than mineral mining to produce an equivalent market value of $1 over that time.
Of course, the way that calculation checks out depends on the (wildly variable) market value of Bitcoin at any given moment.
The findings bolster a hunch that cryptocurrency researchers have maintained for a while: the energy cost of Bitcoin is growing and getting bigger, as the coins’ actual value remains unstable.
The four currencies examined in the study were responsible for 3–15 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over the period in question, with Bitcoin the largest culprit.
Carbon emissions vary by country, according to the study: crypto mining farms in Canada emit the least amount of carbon dioxide, owing to the availability of alternative energy sources in the country.
But China’s crypto operations, on the other hand, emit four times more carbon dioxide emissions than Canada’s, which has prompted scrutiny from regulators.
The issue of energy drain has long been a problem for crypto-miners, who’ve occasionally suggested strange workarounds to circumvent their strain on the grid.
One operation in Australia floated the idea of attaching a server to a traditional coal plant in an effort to power its own crypto operation.
Needless to say, the environment wasn’t at the forefront of the company’s thoughts.
* Sam Blum is an Associate Editor at PopularMechanics.com. He tweets at @Blumnessmonster.
This article first appeared at www.popularmechanics.com.
