Debunking the "Bitcoin is an environmental disaster" argument

[stompix]

I guess the only, big, problem with geothermal is that you cannot decide where to put such plants, but it's linked to your territory. So while some countries are full of geothermal activity and energy, some others might be struggling with this form of energy.

Yeah, geothermal has a rather limited area, but all types do to an extent, there are areas where solar is just useless, and efficiency on average of 3hours per day like the one in Germany causes more problems than it solves and it works only because of the government pumping more and more money into it. And despite all this eco-friendly trend, Germany has the highest electric costs in the world per kWh. Indeed some countries don't have an acre of land where this would be feasible but there are a lot of areas where there is not a single plant, like all of Canada! And others could build a lot more, like, well...Italy  , it's not like we're going to solve the problem of the world with it alone but it's cheaper and far more reliable, running 24/7 and a perfect grid balancer.

I know pretty well that no matter how much drilling is done in Salvador they can draw a maximum of 600-900 MW and that will not be able to feed even 10% of all the miners but it's a start in the good direction, mining with solar and wind is a fairytale, and if we cut pollution when there are only 3 options left, nuclear, geothermal, and hydro.

Now that I think, this whole Salvador thing is starting to look too good to be true 

[1714242874]

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[1714242874]

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[fillippone]

In a previous post, I wrote that geothermal plants cannot be placed everywhere.

This argument works also in the opposite directions: often geothermal plants are in remote regions, where electricity would need bit infrastructures to be moved where it actually is needed. And often those infrastructures are costly to build and maintain.
So, often these resources are simply ignored and not used.

El Salvador plans bitcoin mining using geothermal energy



Well, bitcoin mining easily can change that.
Bitcoin as a battery, do you remember?

[stompix]

Well, bitcoin mining easily can change that.
Bitcoin as a battery, do you remember?

I don't know if this one is targeted at me but no, geothermal or coal or wind I won't ever agree with that theory of bitcoin mining acting as a battery.
That theory is so far-fetched that even me filling my car with gas I'm becoming a battery! A battery works by taking energy when you have a surplus or at least available energy and deploying when you have none, and mining will never act like this, mining is a 24/7 action that drains power even at peak consumption hours.

And I already know the rebuttal, but we have energy that can be harvested in places we can't build anything other than bitcoin mining farms.
Well, ever thought of not investing all that money in producing energy in places when you don't have a need for it?
Nobody is building solar panels in the Ténéré and demands people to consume it!

The bottom line, no, that is pure propaganda material, and one more thing:

Bitcoin’s battery is ready to buy 24/7/365 when the price is right, and turning up and down as needed, and participating via direct power purchase agreements as well as via demand response programs.

Tell this to any miner and he will walk away laughing!
In a race where you have to ROI as fast as you can and hopefully while your gear is still in warranty so you don't end with a burned hashboard before you managed to get at least your investment back, turning on and off miners is just silly..

While I am certainly an optimistic tech VC and not an expert on energy infrastructure, these are not just hand-wavy rosy ideas

Sums everything up!

[fillippone]

Well, bitcoin mining easily can change that.
Bitcoin as a battery, do you remember?

I don't know if this one is targeted at me but no, geothermal or coal or wind I won't ever agree with that theory of bitcoin mining acting as a battery.

<...>

While I am certainly an optimistic tech VC and not an expert on energy infrastructure, these are not just hand-wavy rosy ideas

Sums everything up!

Sorry, it wasn't meant to be targeted at you. I am not yet obsessed with personal opinion to sneakily reference anyone in my pots.
And, even if we don't agree, I think you explained your ideas very clearly and logically.

 

[stompix]

Sorry, it wasn't meant to be targeted at you.

I didn't mean like a personal attack or something, god no!
More like here, you go, fresh material, let's dissect this one!

Bitcoin as a battery, do you remember?

I felt like you're reminding me of it because we had a discussion about it in the past on this topic, that's why and nothing more. Sometimes I really hate when I use the worse of the worse wording for something, and like in Murphy's laws, guess what, I only do with people with whom I always had nice conversations around here.

[fillippone]

How to answer to a challenging journalist:


https://twitter.com/jasonles_/status/1403453709896478721?s=21

[fillippone]

Bitcoin is the most ESG-compliant industry in the world:




https://twitter.com/documentingbtc/status/1410947786502180875?s=21

[fillippone]

Bitcoin mining council reported a very interesting presentation on how China Ban Impacted mining industry, accelerating the transition toward more sustainable energy sources:

Global Bitcoin Mining Data Review Q2 2021



China Banc is one of the more important events in the mining industry since inception, I qould say. This will determine future scenarios for the industry: in a few months, the time necessary for bigger miners to reallocate all their hash power, we will have a clearer picture of the new situation. I guess we will have less renewable than today, but definitely more than the initial status.

[Lucius]

I agree, the Chinese ban of mining they announced back in 2019 is certainly the biggest thing that happened in 2021 because it will finally break the myth that China controls BTC - and finally there will be (hopefully) more decentralization when it comes to BTC mining.

What’s weird about the whole story is that this whole situation actually shows that Chinese miners have actually used mostly renewable energy, and if I’m not mistaken such green energy sources don’t exist anywhere in the world given that of the top 10 such dams as many as 5 are located in China, while a third of all large hydropower plants are also located in China.

List of largest hydroelectric power stations

[fillippone]

I agree, the Chinese ban of mining they announced back in 2019 is certainly the biggest thing that happened in 2021 because it will finally break the myth that China controls BTC - and finally there will be (hopefully) more decentralization when it comes to BTC mining.

What’s weird about the whole story is that this whole situation actually shows that Chinese miners have actually used mostly renewable energy, and if I’m not mistaken such green energy sources don’t exist anywhere in the world given that of the top 10 such dams as many as 5 are located in China, while a third of all large hydropower plants are also located in China.

List of largest hydroelectric power stations

Well, the point is that the crypto Ban in China has nothing to do with the environment. The party just wanted to regulate an industry it was becoming too powerful and with an orthogonal agenda to theirs.
In fact, the party banned mining because it interacted the wrong way with their CBDC plans. Who would use a digital Yuan, monitored, controlled and tracked by Chinese regulators, if Bitcoin is freely and widely available all over the country?

This is the real reason, masked under the idiotic ESG moratorium of a "polluting industry".

As you point out, the biggest dams are in China. This has to do with the massive costs these structures bear with them. And I am not referring only to financial costs, that make these structures available only for unlimited funded entities (read: Nation states) but also environmental (the creation of a lake where it wasn't supposed to be)  and social (relocation of thousands of people). It this not by chance that in Europe or Northern America these kinds of infrastructures have not being built since a few decades.

Also, their move displaced much investments already completed in China:

Hydropower plants go on sale in China amid mining crackdown and bitcoin slump

• After cryptocurrency mining rig sales, small hydropower stations are now for sale on e-commerce site Xianyu
• Prices of small hydropower stations have dropped amid crackdown, as bitcoin miners head for the exits in China

[oHnK]

This is the real reason, masked under the idiotic ESG moratorium of a "polluting industry".

Yup, I couldn't agree more. I really hope this drama ends soon, because BTC is a viable invention for future financial solutions.  If a lot of people shout that BTC is not environmentally friendly, it's just a rant.  Even gold, which is an investment asset that has been trusted for a long time, also damages the environment.  If you want very real evidence without thinking hard, just look on google "project freeport Indonesia" how mountains turn into ravines just because they want to dredge the existing gold.

[stompix]

Bitcoin is very environmentally friendly and does not require a lot of energy when we compare it with other miners such as Gold miners, oil miners and other miners.

Ok, let's stop all the bitcoin mining for 1 year, how many do you think will die because of that?
Let's stop the oil industry for 1 month! War-z was heaven compared to what will happen.
How about we stop that comparison just for the sake of finding something that consumes more than the bitcoin network?

What’s weird about the whole story is that this whole situation actually shows that Chinese miners have actually used mostly renewable energy, and if I’m not mistaken such green energy sources don’t exist anywhere in the world given that of the top 10 such dams as many as 5 are located in China, while a third of all large hydropower plants are also located in China.

It's called propaganda.
If you look at how the coal and oil mining industry and on the other side the so-called renewable energy are throwing figures around you will have quite the headache as nothing would make sense. Add a bit of data from the nuclear industry and you realize one thing, everyone is lying to protect their interest.
What's bitcoin fault in this? None, it was caught in the middle of a stupid discussion and now everybody is trying to fight for their interest, quite normal after all it's all about money, some go for a reason, some start throwing around figures they know are fake because they know the others can't disprove with them.

I could claim to know that bitcoin burns 80% of coal-generated energy or 90% of pure eolian wind.
Nobody could come up with a claim other than studies that correlate, extrapolate, and mastu...let's leave it like that, data, nobody could come with solid figures to disapprove any of those scenarios because there is simply no data.

As you said, is weird, of course, it is!
Till now everyone was saying all that Chinese hashrate is coming from hydro, 60% of it is clean!
Now miners are moving to Kazakhstan which could barely power 5% of the entire hashrate with all their hydropower they produce in that country and with the rest coming from fossils and suddenly.. we're greener! Of course it's strange because it's impossible!!!!

It's one of the two:
a) either the mix previously was far more polluting with more coal burned in China and they were lying
b) the energy mix was perfectly clean and ....this whole thing is a lie!

And the most annoying thing is the duplicity here, this mini council comes with those numbers, good, we have renewables, etc.
Yet when it comes to press releases, they make this kind of claims:

Once all of Marathon’s purchased miners are delivered and fully deployed, the Company’s mining portfolio will consist of 33,560 state of the art ASIC miners, generating 3.56 EH/s. As a result, the Company will be consuming approximately 100 MWs of power, the maximum amount available at the Company’s data center in Hardin, MT.

1/3 of their hashrate is getting deployed at a datacenter power by coal, yet...they seek renewables. Bs!

[franky1]

Yeah, geothermal has a rather limited area, but all types do to an extent, there are areas where solar is just useless, and efficiency on average of 3hours per day )

thats where solutions come about
if a city requires say 8MW a day (0.33mwh per hour)
but only gets 1MW for 3 hours(0.33mwh per hour)  because the sun doesnt shine for 24 hours to get the full 8MW a day

well the simple solution..
have enough solar to produce 3mwh per hour(10x demand) meaning in 3 hours it has enough for 30hours of city demand(9MW). and have battery storage facility to store the spare 8mw not used in that 3 hour of prime daylight

two ways to achieve this
warehouse centrally the battery store
or
have houses that have their own battery system that take on 8x of its 'need' in the 3 hours. so that the house has the excess for the rest of the day.
(much like cars charge up/fill up on fuel in the morning for use the rest of the week)
if your the type of person that only fills a car enough for one hours use and returns to refill with fuel/charge every hour. shame on you

there is no need in 2020 that people need to be connected to a national grid that only creates and supplies in the same minute of its creation

i personally dont have my computer connected direct to the national grid power supply.
i have a battery backup surge protector box that has 8 hours of battery store. inline between my devices and the wall.
(shameless plug, for once) ive had my belkin protector for 20 years and has lifetime warrenty
that way im always with power
UK doesnt suffer from many brownouts or blackouts so some think its unneeded but i have always had it just incase

ive previously lived in apartments with "night storage" heating. they warmup(charge) the bricks at night and slowly release heat during the day

im surprised new housebuilds dont include atleast battery backup as part of the design

[stompix]

thats where solutions come about
if a city requires say 8MW a day (0.33mwh per hour)
but only gets 1MW for 3 hours(0.33mwh per hour)  because the sun doesnt shine for 24 hours to get the full 8MW a day

well the simple solution..
have enough solar to produce 3mwh per hour. and have battery storage facility to store the spare 7mw not used in that 3 hour of prime daylight

Simple problem, the last "Dunkelflaute" lasted 7 days, just this year the power generation of solar panels dropped to 0.69 TWh in January compared to 2.24 TWh in February which as you can guess it's not that sunny either.
So rather than having 7MW of spare, you will need 56MW.
Good luck with that when doing it for the whole country, and don't forget to send me the bill for all those batteries. 




 

[franky1]

Simple problem, the last "Dunkelflaute" lasted 7 days, just this year the power generation of solar panels dropped to 0.69 TWh in January compared to 2.24 TWh in February which as you can guess it's not that sunny either.
So rather than having 7MW of spare, you will need 56MW.
Good luck with that when doing it for the whole country, and don't forget to send me the bill for all those batteries.  

new build houses cost say $120k... battery backup from belkin is like not even $100
so sell the houses for $120,100..
i dont think house buyers going to cry over a $100 spend when buying a house
..
remember your scenario is "only 3 hours of sunlight"
so yea to cover 24 hours. you need 8x
with some redundancy hense i say 9x

this means in summer that extra 1 produced is going to battery store. and every day for 3 months of summer
so thats then 90*1
so if there is a blackout of 8 per day.. the battery are good for over 11 days based just on the 3 months of last summers excess store

..
ok let me translate that to your latest numbers
the assumption of needing say, in your case the monthly demand is 2.24TWh
which is <0.0031twh per hour
lets imagine in summer there is 8 hours of good prime light
so needing 0.01twh per hour in summer (to be 3x demand to cover instant use and 2x evening and night portions of day)
i know your thinking 'but that would be a dilemma in winter..'
so have 0.0093twh per hour for 8 hours in summer(0.0744 produced)
=0.0031 instant consumed
  0.0031 stored for the 4hours morning and 4 hours afternoon offpeak
  0.0031 stored for the 8hours of night

and store the 0.065twh excess each day for redundancy
so that in the 3 months of summer its storing 5.859TWh (2 months excess for winter)

[stompix]

the assumption of needing say, in your case the monthly demand is 2.24TWh

Never said that. I said that in February those panels managed to get only 2.24. In July they got 8twh.
So you see that the figure is not 1/8 of the capacity is more like 1/16 

new build houses cost say $120k... battery backup from belkin is like not even $100
so sell the houses for $120,100..

Franky, we're talking about a country with 500Twh a year, a country that went dark for 7 days, you're talking about charging phones.
Let's suppose I power up my oven, rated 3300W how long will your 100$ battery last, would it be enough to at least defrost a pizza?
How many of those charges would be needed to power up aluminum plant?

remember your scenario is "only 3 hours of sunlight"

It's 3 hours peak sun median, all the summer power will need to stockpile all that energy till winter, it's not one period of blackout and then 3 hours, it's 3 hours median a year, with more in the summer and less in the winter. Got it?
All you need is to build 100 times the needed capacity of solar panels, again send me the bill, already Germany is paying 30cents/kwh, no need to make it cheaper, let's add more costs.

[franky1]

sorry but you are debunking yourself

you said january had 0.6X(with blackouts for a week) and february had 2.x(no blackouts)
so the assumption is normal demand per month without blackout experience would be 2.X

however now
you said its only 3 hours per day throughout the year.. debunked because u said febuary was more then january and now you are saying june is more then february..
kinda impossible to have more in february and even more in just in its only ever 3hours of sunlight
(where do you live... arctic circle?? dark side of the moon)
 
if your going to use a scenario.. stick with it

.. so i was guessing that winter had like 3 hours. and summer had like 8hours
so try to make up your mind.

dont hide stats to make half a case requiring people to guess.. and then cry that they got numbers wrong because you suddenly now want to reveal numbers
,,
anyway if you want to knitpick the exact numbers fine.. be anal
i was trying to play into your small scope of numbers.. purely for conversation..

but disregarding the numbers...the point is.. and the context is this
HAVE MORE CAPACITY THAN DEMAND,. STORE THE EXCESS

as for comparing my belkin surgeprotector+battery backup from 20 years ago as a reason to think things wont work

i guess you are missing the evolutions of battery tech..
yes my 20 . ill highlight TWENTY YEAR OLD backup is good for a fridge, freezer, PC, laptop, cordless phone, wifimodem for 8 hours
so no its not the silly lil phone chargers you pretend it to be
and for under $100 more i could have enough for other household applience of convenience
so not really breaking the bank to save off brownouts

but recent battery backups. like the tesla home charger system are not expensive and can be integrated and priced in with a new build house, oh and they have more capacity than my silly outdated backup

so lets take this example
if i included all meal cooking. deskfans, ventilation, heating, lighting (all normal use stuff) IT devices. kettle kitchen appliences i could consume 2kwh a day myself
so just a tesla powerwall would be good for 7 days
much more then my 8 hours of essentials

so here is the thing
national grids wont have to store all excess power centrally. it can divvy out 7 days excess to peoples own powerwalls and then only need to store the remaining days it captured in summer

and if you think its impossible
well countries spend hundreds of billions making dams to store multiple months of excess winter water for use in summer months
so flip the scenario
they can spend hundreds of billions on storing summer electrical energy for winter

[fillippone]

and if you think its impossible
well countries spend hundreds of billions making dams to store multiple months of excess winter water for use in summer months
so flip the scenario
they can spend hundreds of billions on storing summer electrical energy for winter

This is something that need good planning and implementation over decades.
Today I am reading California want his citizen to switch off air conditioning during afternoons to “help the grid”, or the EU willing to ban fossil fuels car sales from 2030. Wondering where they will source all that energy….

[franky1]

and if you think its impossible
well countries spend hundreds of billions making dams to store multiple months of excess winter water for use in summer months
so flip the scenario
they can spend hundreds of billions on storing summer electrical energy for winter

This is something that need good planning and implementation over decades.
Today I am reading California want his citizen to switch off air conditioning during afternoons to “help the grid”, or the EU willing to ban fossil fuels car sales from 2030. Wondering where they will source all that energy….

well not decades..
.. but then again we are talking about city planners. who if given authority to plan.. would take that long.
but practically it can be done in alot less time.
(see how fast california got all the covid testing and PPE.. .. months not decades)
they can create factories to produce a new product in months.. (vaccines, PPE , test kids, PCR labs)
so anythings possible

im pretty sure it doesnt take a decade to facilitate a new car design or a new washing machine design

..
again it doesnt have to be some super megawarehouse for the nation..
it can be city level battery farms each made concurrently in months
plus also having local factories for power-walls to be built on masse

..
the reason why car manufacturers lobbied politicians for 2030 at the earliest is a deeper conversation involving many aspects like:
current leasing terms being 10years
also making the fabricator machines costs alot. but if they wait out 5+ years for other to design them. they can just rent/lease them. meaning save money transitioning
so its about delaying the transition purely to be capitalistic in cost saving
other deeper things are involved like the whole scheme of 'carbon credits'
if they can sell carbon producing cars now and charge people carbon credits
that money then can form grants to pay for the transition without affecting company profits

yep coal and oil refinaries know there is limited unmined resources left that wont be available in 50 years.
so yea they know they have to transition to renewables by 2070 at the latest
so if they can promote that carbon kills the planet and get consumers to pay carbon tax. that tax can be used as grants to pay for the transition to renewables at no cost to the company..
ingenius right..
pretend coal/oil is evil. when reality is they know they are running out of coal/oil anyway

(hint: the real planet killer of human climate change is the water cycle, not the carbon cycle.. rain forests are called rainforests and not carbon forests for a reason)

[stompix]

sorry but you are debunking yourself

you said january had 0.6X(with blackouts for a week) and february had 2.x(no blackouts)
so the assumption is normal demand per month without blackout experience would be 2.X

however now
you said its only 3 hours per day throughout the year.. debunked because u said febuary was more then january and now you are saying june is more then february..
kinda impossible to have more in february and even more in just in its only ever 3hours of sunlight
(where do you live... arctic circle?? dark side of the moon)
 
if your going to use a scenario.. stick with it

Franky...it's not a damn scenario it's what happened in Germany at the beginning of the year.
It does not claim it's not a possibility, it's reality!

So if you think you can debunk something, try debunking data from the german grid:
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=grouped&interval=month&month=01
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=grouped&interval=month&month=02
https://energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&stacking=grouped&interval=month&month=06

Please tell those morons that they don't have a clue how solar panels work and how much solar exposure Germany gets and according to you the sun definitely needs a citation in court to shine more on the fatherland.

And btw, yeah Germany is at the arctic circle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany#Potential

Germany has about the same solar potential as Alaska, which has an average of 3.08 sun hours/day in Fairbanks.

but recent battery backups. like the tesla home charger system are not expensive and can be integrated and priced in with a new build house, oh and they have more capacity than my silly outdated backup

So from 100$, we went to 6000$ which with good old coal would mean 180 000 kwh, which at  3.381 kWh per household per year means recouping just the battery in 50 years. Send me the bill, please!

Today I am reading California want his citizen to switch off air conditioning during afternoons to “help the grid”, or the EU willing to ban fossil fuels car sales from 2030. Wondering where they will source all that energy….

Yeah, brings a lot of nostalgia from when I was young.
Hot water between 5 and 9, controlled blackouts at around 9 in the morning and 6-7 afternoon when we needed the power to feed the industry, gas pressure in winter so you could cook some fries in about 2 hours because we needed gas for fertilizer to grow those potatoes..

At least I was used to it, for some in the western world it will come as a shock.
Wait till you will only have internet access for browsing between 8 and 22 to save the planet and your smartwatch will only allow you to tap it to show the hour 10 times maximum a day to save power, more is wasteful behavior that shall not be tolerated!