Bitcoin Forum

As the hash rate reaches new highs, the estimated environmental impact of the network continues to climb as well.

In brief

Interested to know about this article more?- Go through the link- https://decrypt.co/41622/bitcoins-energy-consumption-grows-now-comparable-to-czech-republic

This old argument again. Increasing hashrate does not necessarily equate to increasing environmental impact.

The most recent report from CoinShares (available here: https://coinshares.com/assets/resources/Research/bitcoin-mining-network-december-2019.pdf) put 73% of bitcoin's electricity consumption as renewable energy, which is over 4 times the global average and one of the leading industries in the world when it comes to renewable energy.

Not only that, but they also found that bitcoin mining is acting as a "buyer of last resort". Essentially, when renewable projects are producing too much electricity that they cannot sell, bitcoin mining is being set up in those areas to buy and use this excess electricity, which would otherwise be simply wasted. Bitcoin mining is therefore channeling more money in to renewable energy and making renewable energy projects more profitable than they otherwise would have been:

Not only renewable but most electric energy sources produce more than is used and cannot store it. This surplus can be used by Bitcoin miners without any environmental impact.

Some people even go as far as using old power plants for Bitcoin mining. Places that otherwise would have been shut down and abandoned.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/russian-businessman-buys-power-stations-for-crypto-mining

This is really not as big of an issue as people make it out to be. Oil companies hurt environment every single day, multitudes of what bitcoin does, and they get support from governments to create more energy and still hurt the world even more thanks to that, yet here we are talking about something high tech.

If you really want to make sure that world is not going worse due to need for energy source, just talk with your representatives about cutting support towards oil companies, regulate them a lot heavier, and instead give that same support towards renewable energy sources. Believe me if the world suddenly starts to only have solar and hydro and wind energy and nothing else ever (not even a single cent made from anything else) the world will be a much better place, with or without bitcoin miners.

It doesn't even equate to increasing power usage. As technology progresses mining hardware does get more powerful and efficient over time.

Also it wouldn't make any sense for miners to spend more money on electricity at a block reward of 6.25 BTC @ USD 10.5k than a year ago at a block reward of 12.5 BTC @ .... well I'll be damned: USD 10.5k. Miners now have half the money to spend on their power consumption than just a year ago. Accordingly the Bitcoin network will currently use only half the power it did just a year ago (give or take and ignoring changes in electricity prices).

Well as hashes progresses so is the technology.  The power consumption to reach a certain hashes on previous year is much greater than the electricity needed to reach that same amount of hashes today.  Most of the miner made today have a better energy conservation technology than its previous predecessors.  You can check the  Bitcoin energy consumption  history chart in this site (https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/) and you will be amazed that regardless of spike in hashes, the power consumption is way lower than the power consumption way back 2018.

You don't even need to go as big as oil companies to get a ridiculous comparison. The amount of energy which is simply wasted from people leaving their TVs, sound systems, games consoles, etc. on standby in the US alone is still more than the entire bitcoin network. Compare bitcoin to cash, which needs to be printed, circulated, transported in armored vans, replaced, destroyed, build and run banks, ATMs, cash registers, etc., and the difference in energy use is several orders of magnitude. Why aren't these article writers encouraging more people to abandon cash since it is so inefficient and bad for the environment?

A very good point. The Antminer S1, with 180GH per second for 360 watts of power consumption, was giving 0.5GH per joule of energy. The Antminer S19 Pro, with 110TH for 3250 watts of power consumption, is giving 33.8GH per joule of energy, making it approximately 68 times more efficient.

kolbalish, please don't share such stupid articles that are either paid propaganda against Bitcoin, or are written by people who have no idea what they are writing. So much has been written over the years about how crypto mining is destroying our planet, and all of this has been refuted so many times that it is really ridiculous to even raise the issue.

o_e_l_e_o is posted in one thread that Bitcoin mining was using in total some 0.2% of total electricity produced in the world, and if we add to that that more than 50% is from renewable sources, who normally can say that Bitcoin mining will have some impact on the climate and the environment - which by the way has already been so destroyed that it would take at least 100 years to recover, if the whole world completely switch to renewable energy sources.

Bitcoin is economically larger than the Czech Republic.  Have the people writing these articles stopped to consider the importance of security in maintaining an economy on that scale?

1. Energy could actually be stored in many ways. During hours when electric consumption is low, surplus energy generated is temporarily stored so that it could later be used during peak hours. It may not be stored with 100% efficiency but, yes, it could be stored.

2. There is no such thing as "without any environmental impact." The second law of ecology states, "everything must go somewhere." If an oven toaster is contributing to global warming, then so does a powerful Bitcoin mining rig.

Let's try not to be hardcore fanboys of Bitcoin to the point of losing objectivity and clearing Bitcoin of anything negative. But, of course, it must also be true that Bitcoin mining is now gradually shifting to the use of renewable energy.

Oh my gosh!.... not this again.  ::)

Tell me something... What adds more value to the world... all the electricity spend on kids playing online games with powerful GPUs or powering a decentralized payment system that are global and free to use?

Also, how much electricity does the whole Fiat Banking system use, compared to Bitcoin's total hashing power? (Let's add the electricity used to manufacture coins and electricity used to power CCTV/AirCon in buildings/Light/Coffee machines/Photocopiers and Servers and computers ..... shall we list the rest?)

They should really compare Apples with Apples, when they want to bash Bitcoin's electricity usage.  ;)

But the infrastructure to do that is costly. You might not be able to access the following paper - https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30300-9 - but the bottom line is that storage costs will have to fall by over 90% to be competitive at today's prices. Many facilities do not have enough storage capacity to meet peak production, and electricity is still wasted despite this.

We are also talking about bitcoin incentivizing renewable energy production in areas which were previously uneconomical. These places will not be interested in or able to set up expensive storage facilities when they can instead just sell the electricity directly to miners, and yet without bitcoin, these renewable facilities may not exist at all.

Well, it never is and won't be important when it comes to this type of journalism - some do it because they are paid, others only because they have a low IQ and are not very talented in computing.

Take for example the currently hot topic in most developed countries, of course it is 5G technology that is supposed to revolutionize the IT sector by providing incredible internet speeds, but apart from the fact that the main controversy is over who will implement this technology (USA at all possible ways is trying to get Huawei out of the game), no one is talking about the need to increase base station density, and that such base stations consume at least twice as much energy as 4G.


In addition to the dangerous radiation from base stations that will become even higher, we can count definitely on higher service bills that will result from increased electricity costs - this is just one example that few complain about when it comes to electricity consumption or the impact on human health.

But in the future, electricity consumption for crypto will increase significantly. Is the world ready for this?

The law of supply and demand is in effect. If the world decides it cannot mine Bitcoin because the energy consumption is too high it will not.

Bitcoin doesn't force us to do anything.

It can also be the other way round. The drive to mine BItcoin will be so high that people will build additional power plants. It's not a bad thing. There's so much unused space around the world like Siberia, Alaska, Iceland. Maybe one day we'll have the need to industrialize it.

In what universe? How much actual commerce is taking place? The Bitcoin 'economy' is mainly a bunch of coins being batted around on exchanges or moving to those exchanges.

Maybe it'll eventually deliver benefits in technology and power generation but I think it's a pretty gross and wasteful figure no matter how it's dressed up.

I guess in practice it's difficult to quantify.  But I'd say a fair chunk of the traditional economy is effectively meaningless movements of digital assets too.  If countries couldn't declare their respective finance sector derivatives and debt trading as part of the economy, their figures would be noticeably reduced.

At this stage, it's almost tempting to say in many instances that the meaning of the word "economy" should be changed to "largely digital trades that don't produce anything tangible".

Indeed. But the Czech republic makes thing, imports things, taxes things, pays people and is paid and inside it real ish money is flying around between people constantly too. That's a whole lot more activity than Bitcoin's largely meaningless movements.

If someone were to try and figure out Bitcoin's 'real' transactions it would likely be so hideously embarrassing at the moment that whoever did it would probably bury it. Hopefully the future is a whole lot more frisky.

It's pretty easy to quantify. Czechia has 10 million people, and Bitcoin has maybe 30 millions users by generous estimates. Now, witch Czechia, all that electric energy goes to support the lives of those 10 millions people, and with Bitcoin it's, let's be honest, just a speculative investment that people hodl or trade, and actual consumer transactions are only a small amount of that.

So, the argument should be not that Bitcoin is more important, but that energy consumption of both Bitcoin and Czech Republic isn't that big on a global scale, so there's really nothing to worry about here. It's just a little piece of trivia rather than some eye-opening fact that should point out how "inefficient" Bitcoin is.

Although Bitcoin hash rate continues to grow and it is a very good thing for Bitcoin to be stronger, Bitcoin energy consumption rate is not so good. It continually increases and this problem must be solved until it is too late. Maybe, alternative energy sources could be found instead of using electricity.   

Bitcoin's high energy consumption means that a lot of miners all over the world are securing the Blockchain against external attacks. Rather than being something bad for the environment, it's actually good since it maintains Bitcoin a censorship-resistant cryptocurrency for the world. While many praise PoS' energy efficiency, it's often less secure than the traditional PoW consensus used by Bitcoin today. The high energy consumption is rather a feature than a bug, in my own opinion. I think that as adoption for Bitcoin grows, its hashrate and energy consumption will grow too. There's nothing we can do about this since that's the way Nakamoto Consensus (PoW) works.

Nonetheless, PoW is not perfect. I believe that there's still room for improvement. Developers could work on a solution to reduce Bitcoin's energy consumption without reducing Blockchain security. If that's successfully achieved, then our world would be much greener. For once, I've stumbled into a project named "Bitcoin LE" which aims to reduce Bitcoin's energy footprint in the mining process. If it works as intended, Bitcoin Core developers could adopt BLE's technology in order to make PoW an environmentally-friendly consensus algorithm. As long as Bitcoin maintains its resiliency against external attacks, there should be nothing to worry about. Just my thoughts ;D

True but it is obvious those that are making those arguments are doing so in bad faith, they know about all of this but they still put those arguments forward knowing that most people are not going to care enough to investigate the issue and realize their half-truths, this creates a negative opinion about bitcoin especially in all of those that are concerned about the well being of the planet making them to refuse to adopt it and even to boycott bitcoin.

Exactly. Naysayers have always been against Bitcoin one way or another. The ends don't justify the means. Bitcoin's energy consumption is put to a good cause. If it wasn't by the large number of miners supporting the Bitcoin blockchain, the network would've been extremely vulnerable against 51% attacks. The high energy consumption is rather a feature than a bug of PoW consensus. Despite PoS and DPoS' energy efficiency, they're not as secure as PoW. What matters here is security/decentralization/censorship-resistance above anything else. Of course, I'm not discarding the fact that there's room for improvement (in terms of energy consumption). PoW could be improved to a point where it consumes less energy while retaining the same level of security. Everything will depend on both software developers and ASIC hardware manufacturers. They'd need to work together in order to reduce Bitcoin's energy footprint for a cleaner world. With or without improvements, Bitcoin's energy consumption will be high as long as there is a plethora of miners supporting it. There's nothing we can do about this.

All in all, there's no need to worry about Bitcoin's current mining state. It tells us that it's more alive and healthy than ever. As more miners join the network, energy consumption will rise like skyrocket. If this keeps up, we can expect Bitcoin's energy consumption to become comparable to the whole wide world. Once that happens, Bitcoin will become truly impenetrable against external attacks. Just my thoughts ;D

That's a lot of energy for sure. but that only proves how big is this project. Is important to have in mind the fact that miners are more efficient each time, and they consume less energy for each THz, but the growth of the network is something that will not stop.

The PoS would be a solution but only if things get really complex for bitcoin, I feel like it would be the last option.

You mean environmental pollution. Okay, look at the thermoelectric plants, the nuclear power plants, the clothing factories, the leather shoes, the big cattle farms, or anything that can be compared.
Miners make Bitcoin and it's valuable, everyone loves Bitcoin.
The miners aren't annoying people at all, and as a result, the waste from those factories affects the environment and other people.

This actually concerns me. Has any one thought about what will happen, in case the Bitcoin prices increase by 10x to $100,000 per coin? If that happens, then the mining hash rate will increase proportionally and 10% of all the electricity produced in the world will be used for Bitcoin mining. What will happen if the exchange rates hit $250,000? Or $1,000,000? This is not a viable scenario and we need to think about it.

I believe we haven't recognized the other potential breakthroughs of Proof of Work yet, and how it could build a new platform for a world energy market.

yes, but hashing the block headers is a big part of the investment proposition. it's a basic part of the

you can't have Bitcoin without hashing the block headers to get the next block, it would be trivial to create fake blockchains to confuse the network



it's impossible to know, and quite frankly none of anyone else's business even if it was possible to discover. further, Bitcoin is designed to make it difficult to know



that's because you don't (fully) understand why people are mining Bitcoin

It's amazing that some people don't understand these complete basics: hashing the blocks (which uses energy) makes Bitcoin safe from attack, without it, it wouldn't work at all, any amateur computer admin could create as many versions of the ledger as they liked, and no-one would know which one was the honest one ::)


Satoshi didn't come up with this part of the design to annoy people, but it seems to be doing that anyway (to people who don't get it, at least)

The solution for mining rigs (large scale rigs) in the case of reducing their environmental impact is by moving it closer to the source. We are in the future, most countries are starting to go for green energy which means that the energy output will improve without a significant or faint impact to the environment. The article only talks about the output of the network but do not point what source they are using (i.e. Nuclear, coal, solar, wind, geothermal etc). This is a pretty small problem if you simply take a stepback.

Environmentally unfriendly hydrocarbon based bitcoin miners are usually subsidized by local governments in exchange for creating regional jobs. Bitcoin mining being a flexible industry with high mobility leans towards it tapping surplus and renewable sources of electricity which are cheaper than coal, oil and other sources of power considered environmentally damaging. The main exception being regions like venezuela with "free electricity" and little in the way of economic or job opportunities. Green sources of power with a lower carbon footprint are the path of least resistance for bitcoin mining ops which generates impetus for them being the industry norm.

A high percentage of bitcoin miners tapping surplus sources of electricity, which are cheaper. Could imply little or no new power plant construction to fulfill growing demand. Which is another key point to consider.

Many people in the forum have not realized how the POW aspect in Bitcoin is the MOST IMPORTANT part of "blockchain technology".

It's POW that solved the Byzantine Generals' problem, it's POW that makes Bitcoin decentralized and therefore censorship-resistant. It's the missing piece of Szabo and others' attempts in making a stateless digital currency.

This is almost like the case of NASA's funding. A lot of people deem the billions of dollars spent on space exploration as a waste since it doesn't directly benefit the people when in fact NASA's annual budget ($22+ billion) is too small compared that that of U.S. Defense (686+ billion). 

Compared to other power-guzzlers out there, bitcoin miners spend an almost negligible amount of energy. Seriously, it shouldn't make the headline.

In my opinion, electricity is not such a problematic issue now. Every year we use more and more energy obtained from alternative sources. The production of solar panels is growing and it is constantly being improved and cheaper. Europe and many other states have even embarked on a policy of rejecting traditional energy sources such as oil and gas, which pollute the environment. Therefore, I am very optimistic about the opportunities in the energy sector.

When haters don't have anything to blame about it then they come up with such an idiotic debates. So no one in this world wasting electricity for no reason?

Lot of rich people uses air conditioning in all over their home even to their garages which shouldn't have any use at all? What about banks they are using electricity and also damaging environment and also occupied lot of spaces in the busy cities.

For "them", it should. Because they do not understand how ground-breaking POW actually is as the foundation of BITCOIN as a stateless, decentralized, censorship-resistant cryptocurrency.

Everyone promoting "blockchain technology" missed the point.

It only makes the "headlines" because crypto "news" sites like CoinIdol, CoinTelegraph, Decrypt, etc., have repeatedly shown that they are click bait trash and will write any old nonsense to get views and money, without doing any research whatsoever and regardless of whether or not it is true. I honestly cannot fathom why people continue to visit these sites.

Streaming online pornography creates as much carbon dioxide as Belgium.
Console gaming creates as much carbon dioxide as Denmark, and PC gaming as much as Taiwan. (Just playing the games, never mind the carbon dioxide from manufacturing and distributing PCs/consoles/games.)
Devices being left on standby creates as much carbon dioxide as the Philippines.

All of these are far higher than bitcoin, but we don't see any headlines saying that if you don't stop masturbating you are going to kill the planet. But sure, lets focus on bitcoin and its 0.05% contribution to global CO₂ production. ::)

Having a decentralized energy market/ energy routing system (smart grid) where anyone could buy or sell energy to a specific consumer or producer, no matter if he lives in my neighborhood or at the other end of the world. That would incentivise anyone who is capable to produce and sell energy.

last year bitcoin hastrate was at 100exa .. using tech that was the s9 that was 80j/th
this year its 140exa using tech thats the s19 which is 30j/th

simple math
100e * 80j =8000
140e * 30j=3600

so we are using less energy than last year by more then 50%
enjoy

p.s this halving of the electric cost has made it still profitable to mine at a now halved bitcoin reward which is why the price of bitcoin has not doubled in price since the halving. because there is no need to force the price up if its profitable at existant levels

Bitcoin need more green energy to be more innovative

I know right? The same people criticizing Bitcoin's energy consumption, are the same wasting energy like crazy in the mainstream world. The most naysayers about Bitcoin are banks as the cryptocurrency presents a threat to the current monetary system. Anyone can say what they like about Bitcoin. But at the end of the day, facts are what really matters. If it wasn't by Bitcoin's "huge" energy consumption, we wouldn't have sound money that's resilient, decentralized, and censorship-resistant. Miners consume energy in order to make the Bitcoin network secure against 51% attacks. When you sum all the miners around the world, you get a big chunk of energy being consumed by the digital currency. This is normal since it's the way PoW works. On the other hand, the PoS consensus mechanism is energy efficient but not as secure as PoW itself. That's why Bitcoin has stayed with PoW consensus since its inception.

The more miners join the network, the greater Bitcoin's energy consumption will be. I wouldn't worry about this since our energy is being put to good use. As long as everything remains as is, Bitcoin will be impenetrable (sort of) against 51% attacks. Just my opinion :)

It's relative. Like so many others posting above have said. You can't compare a bear to a fish when it comes to climbing trees now can you? That's pretty much the same comparison here. I wonder how much electricity we use to make just one cup of coffee in the morning? Worrying about the effect bitcoin has on the environment is like trying to pick up dog poop with a poop scoop when just around the corner is a huge shit storm tornado.
It's a drop in the ocean. Falling asleep with the TV on uses more electricity.

Anyway, fiat needs energy too. Where do you think it comes from? People have to make it and distribute it and have a network of computers for it to work online. With crypto you can distribute directly to the miners the instance it is created.

It's not quite that simple. Such a calculation would only be true if all miners upgraded all their mining rigs every time a new model was released, which is obviously not the case. The majority of mining is not done on the most latest tech, and most miners will continue to run their older models until they are no longer profitable.

However, for the time being, the principle holds true - miners are become more efficient faster than the hashrate is increasing, so over time, electricity requirement is decreasing rather than increasing. How long this will continue to be true for is impossible to say, as it depends both on the advancement of ASICs as well as the changing hashrate. However, even if electricity requirements do start increasing, over the next decade or so I would expect the carbon footprint of bitcoin to continue to decrease as the minority of miners who are not yet using renewable sources make the switch.

Let those that criticize the "wasteful" energy consumption be. They simply misunderstood two points.

- Electricity generated, but not used, is what's truly wasted.
- It's POW, not blockchain, that makes a stateless, censorship-resistant cryptocurrency possible.