I ran into some eye-opening articles and studies on the aspect of bitcoin that I don't often see (or have ever seen, on that note) discussed here on this forum - the carbon footprint of bitcoin and exactly what it's contributing to the world's ever-increasing problem with climate change.

I clicked my way onto a straightforward and relatively accurate, real-time graph provided by Digiconomist[1] where a bunch of laid out numbers are presented. I'll list the key ones out for now, but I encourage you to visit it yourself and maybe even look into the calculations and accuracy of the tool[2].

Currently, our estimated annual electricity consumption is 54.6 TWh. That's massive when you compare it to Israel's 2015 total energy consumption, 52.86 TWh. Each transaction you make with bitcoin? That's 13.6 US households that could have been powered for a day, and a potential additional 191.17 kg of CO₂ carbon footprint. EACH. TRANSACTION. Bitcoin itself is amounting for 0.24% of the world's electricity, which is staggering that we're even approaching 1% to begin with. This consumption is potentially resulting in 25,935 kt of CO₂ annually (although a portion of the power is coming from renewable sources, which reduces this number).

Sure, renewable energies are an option and there is plenty of cheap hydropower especially in regions in China, but most of the mining is coal-powered[3] and the fact that we're increasing the stress on the increasing need for sustainable practices - or, rather, the magnitude of the stress itself - is staggering.

I doubt sharing this will make much of an impact, but I want to hear your thoughts. Was I the only one too busy waving around enthusiastic posters about the ~possibilities of bitcoin~ or is there any among the community who's similarly surprised? Are there any movements or practices already being conducted within our ecosystem that's being initiated to counteract this increasing load on the environment around us?

Note: I did self-moderate this thread in case replies get spammy, but feel free to voice whatever opinions you have on this, regardless of how extreme they be. Let's hear both sides up.

Note 2: This is not me arguing against bitcoin itself, of course. This is me trying to raise discussion on things that are already going on the ecosystem that is counteracting this as well as potential ideas, so let's try to keep discussions pointed there.

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[1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
[2] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption#assumptions
[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01625-x

Of course, now the equipment for the production of renewable energy sources is getting cheaper every year and it becomes more profitable to install them in private farms. Therefore, I do not think that we have a serious problem with the consumption of electricity for mining Bitcoin.
I agree that this problem is more contrived than it deserves to be discussed.

Yes, Bitcoin use a massive amount of electricity but have you compared that with the carbon footprint of the current financial system? I am not just talking about the cost per transaction via their centralized database now.

I am talking about the total cost of their operation, which includes... < All the electricity used to power ATM's world wide and also all the electricity used to power things like air-conditioning in offices and computers and CCTV systems and security systems and also fuel being burned to transport cash and lastly the pollution and energy used to create money from the raw products to the final product in the form of cash and coins. >

We will eliminate most of that, if Crypto currencies can replace Fiat currencies. 

Not only that, there are still many people in many countries who have never felt the presence of electricity in their daily lives but still many projects are trying to raise funds to fund their cryptocurrency mining projects.

But what can we do, a large electric power consumption is needed to power the blockchain network. But I still believe in this technology and as time goes by, this technology will also continue to evolve with various changes such as consensus mechanisms, etc. These changes are expected to reduce electricity power consumption while increasing blockchain capabilities.

*Let every individual in this world be able to feel electricity and let's save our environment.

firstly bitcoins annual consumption is NOT 54.6

heres some math
using 2018's main asic of s9. which is 14thash for 1.3kwh
(there are more efficient asics now but lets use the LESS than efficient, just to prove the point)

at bitcoins PEAK it got to 62exahash. note: PEAK not constant
so 62exa / 14thash = 4,428,571 asics
4428571.428571429 *1.3khw = 5757142.857142857kwh
=5757.143mwh
=5.757gwh

so at the very peak bitcoin was using 5.757ghw each hour
now if that peak was a constant 62exa hash every hour of every day for a year
=50432.57142857143gwh a year
=50.432twh/year

thats 50twh AT PEAK.
but we all know that bitcoin right now is not using 62exahash right now
but w all know that bitcoins hashrate went down to 36exa in december
we all know that bitcoins hashrate was as low as 27exahash this time last year

which puts the YEARLY consumption between 22twh to 50twh
having exported a year of exahash data and using the math of the less than most efficient asics available now but most popular for 2018 to be fair.
and actually doing the math
we get
34332.86065gwh a year
=34.333 twh a year NOT 54.6twh

next. large amount of hashrate is powered via renewable energy. so feel free to cut the co₂ number down by more than half of what the topic post wrote.

by the way, pepsi lease out their logo'd refrigerators to fastfood restaurants and the electric utility to just keep pepsi cool. far exceeds keeping bitcoin secure.

so here is a question. for a beverage that just ends up being body temperature urine eventually. vs bitcoin which is an immutable international currency. which is wasting more electric

Interesting numbers, OP.

There was another study which was shared on the forum just a few days ago, published by the University of Cambridge, which you can find here: https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/research/centres/alternative-finance/downloads/2018-12-ccaf-2nd-global-cryptoasset-benchmarking.pdf. I would draw your attention to pages 81 onwards. Their raw numbers seem to agree with yours - they estimate between 52 and 111 TWh is used by mining the top 6 currencies, with bitcoin accounting for 75% of that (39 to 83 TWh), putting your figure of 54.6 TWh pretty close to the middle of that range.

Your links quote that as being 0.24% of the world's total electricity consumption, and the study I linked quotes it as less than 0.01% of the world's total energy production. Very interesting how a slight change in wording, which most readers would gloss over, gives such a drastic difference in percentages. Data can be always be manipulated or presented in such ways to give a bias towards what you want to prove.

The report I linked to suggests around 30% of mining energy is renewable, so that would have an effect on the final CO₂ numbers. It's perhaps also worth nothing that the metric of energy consumption/CO₂ production per transaction isn't the most useful, as the amount of energy spent on the bitcoin blockchain is independent of the number of transactions it is processing.

Either way, I'd like to see miners shifting to renewable energy sources. There will always be incentives in place to constrain misallocation of energy, so bitcoin mining does not concern me too much.

I think renewable energies will replace the electricity so it could reduce the mining pollution itself. We have to try to create a source that will be able to use for bitcoin mining which I am sure that already begins since a few years ago. So we need to search another way to continue the mining process, and renewable energies are the only way for us.
Maybe in the future (in the next 2-5 years later, the consumption of electrical power will reduce because at that time, we have another power to replace the electrical and the bitcoin mining continue. I think there are already people who can use a solar panel to mining bitcoin and that person doesn't use any electrical power except for his daily life.

I mean, the centralized nature of banks means that they need much less computing power per transaction - WAY less than what we're using right now.




The means as to which the electricity is produced certainly has and will continue to have a mark on the environment if this mentality is all we've got. Any objections to mere discussion just shows that you're unwilling to make positive changes.


Thanks for the numbers, franky. I agree that "calculating" the electric consumption of bitcoin as a whole is arguably something that is incredibly difficult to do within a simplistic method, and can't be accurately pinpointed.

However, in regards to your Pepsi comment - I believe the best approach would instead be to contrive methods to cut down on the carbon footprint of BOTH, rather than trying to weigh each and eliminate one, which was the purpose of this discussion - I wanted to see if there were any movements against this quite large carbon footprint we're contributing as an ecosystem.


That's an interesting observation; thanks for pointing that out. Wording can be tricky!


I'm sure that the details on enforcing such a rule would be finicky and potentially give rise to some sort of centralization or complaints of such. I wish that application would work, though, because I am all in favor for anything that helps.


That's the same mindset that we've been holding all the way until now - since X is producing way more than we are, why stop? It certainly wouldn't hurt us to take a step back and reevaluate practices that could be changed - whatever they could be - in order to do our fair share of cutting down environmental issues.

I strongly support environment protection and every activity that could help to save our planet and life on it. Still I don't think that there are any precise and relevant data about electricity consumpsion used for Bitcoin mining. Like I said there are no accurate data but I think that the amount of consumption is very small in the overall amount and that really makes no difference. But I would like to hear if someone has different data that could prove me wrong. Still everyone who has the possibility to use renewable sources of electricity for Bitcoin mining should definetely use it.