Bitcoin Forum

I read somewhere recently that each bitcoin transaction costs as much power as an average american house uses in a week.

While I have no trouble believing that, it got me to wondering... How bad is that?

What percentage of the mining is powered by solar/wind/hydroelectric sources? Have such numbers even been gathered?

You'll never get a straightforward figure as no miner will admit to their power sources or costs, however it's known that Chinese miners build mining farms next to underused hydro plants in China. Geothermal is also a limitless source that's being used by a few miners. Washington state in the US is extremely hydro heavy and that's where most US mining takes place.

It would be very difficult to gather that kind of information, because there are so many individual BTC miners with extremely varied electricity rates and sources from all over the world.

However, I would hazard a guess that a lot of BTC miners' electricity is from mains electricity in countries where the rate is low.  A lot of it would also be from sources when the miners can leech it directly from the source (like hydroelectrical power).

Since the mains electricity is a lot easier to judge, you could try basing it on that and then move on to other sources later if you wanted to gather figures.

Ah. Good point. I didn't know that about Washington. What are energy rates there?

It's for reasons like these that mining companies are moving to cold areas with geothermal properties. I'm sure there are ways to be efficient about this, it's just that most industries don't innovate and have held us back green energy wise. :)

Too less. most of the mining operations are carried out by conventional sources. I think merely 1% might have been carried out by such renewable sources out of which most of them do this as other sources are expensive or quite remote in the region. Many experts have shown their concerns on environment regarding bitcoin mining.

Dunno. But they're usually the lowest in the US. That's where John Mcafee set up his mining I believe. And Megabigpower, one of the previous mining monsters, operated there.

It seems to me that no such statistics. But it seems to me that those who are concerned about the large consumption of electricity can reassure. I've never heard that the miners have created a shortage of electricity in some region. The produced electricity cannot be saved. It can only spend. So I think that in this respect bitcoin does not create problems.

At first look it seems that there is a lot of energy needed for one bitcoin transaction but you can have some approximation of some miners who use this type of renewable energy based on their experience. One of them is Nastymining, who is a user of this forum or the research based on Digiconomist
Here I leave you an article that could help you:

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=18321

Bitcoin uses 0.13% of the world electricity consumption, I find this quite low compared to what we are spending on industrial activities. One of the problems with renewable energy is that it's not really predictable and based on this, the percentage of the Bitcoin network powered by such energy source is very low. It's better to rely on countries with cheap electricity than renewable energy


https://image.prntscr.com/image/submZnDtS-iu2SeYOKZnrg.png
https://image.prntscr.com/image/UpRkF_7aTyarj-feu_8W_w.png
from here https://digiconomist.net/

Since the whole mining process is about making money and spending the least possible, farm owners and miners in general are always looking for the cheapest sources of energy.

Most of the mining farms that are setup in China are usually setup in remote places where almost free renewable energy is unused since these places are inhabitable. This includes hydro stations and wind turbines. Some of them even went into setting up a whole solar panel field only for the mining process. (I consider these a bit crazy since setting those up is totally no joke regarding the money spent which basically means much more time to ROI.)

I'm not sure if you can get straight forward figures and numbers. And even if someone does, I don't know how are they supposed to be accurate since there's miners in every part of the world even in places where you think are poor.

But I like to look at it from another perspective. If you actually think that a lot of energy is wasted in the mining process, compare it with all those banks all over the world with millions and millions of branches and employees that take salaries.

I guess it'd be much more efficient if you think about it this way.

The good thing is that market dynamics dictate that the most efficient sources of electricity will displace less efficient sources. Many sizeable hydroelectric power plants in China run well under capacity, and apparently a lot of this excess power is used to power mining farms.

As another example, Washington State (USA) has the cheapest electricity rates in the country. Naturally, that's where a lot of American miners set up their farms. Hydroelectric dams provide over 60 percent of the Washington's energy. It's ranked third in the country for renewable electricity production (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electricity_production_from_renewable_sources).

I don't think there have been formal studies conducted. Bitcoin's electrical consumption is well documented and the issue is well known within the community, but few outside are aware of it. It shouldn't be too hard to determine if you have the resources though, as the largest mining farms count for large percentages of hashing power. That means less entities to interview/study.

Miners seem to be consciously moving to renewable energy though. Renewable energy tends to be cheaper in the long run, so miners are driven to seek it for the price, if not for their ideals. Here is one more example among the others cited in this thread:

https://news.bitcoin.com/japanese-city-cryptocurrency-miners-renewable-energy/

It becomes a need of the time that Bitcoin network's should be run on the renewable energy sources because Mining devices consumes a lot of electricity which is not favorable for the environment and society. So its better to shift bitcoin mining on cheap energy producing sources, also I think it will also dec. mining cost and hence transaction fees will also be decreased.

0.13% of the ENTIRE world's energy consumption? That doesn't sound low at all! That sounds like a huge chunk of the pie for only a single transaction platform.

It would be very difficult to gather that kind of information, because there are so many individual BTC miners with extremely varied electricity rates and sources from all over the world.It's for reasons like these that mining companies are moving to cold areas with geothermal properties. I'm sure there are ways to be efficient about this, it's just that most industries don't innovate and have held us back green energy wise.