Debunking the "Bitcoin is an environmental disaster" argument

[BlackHatCoiner]

If they truly care about the environment as they claim they do, then we need to start from top of the list, because PoW is the least thing that consumes energy.

Exactly. It's clear that they're not banning it due to humanism or for the sake of the climate change, because they should have also behaved similarly to a gazillion other things. Their intention is to have more control over the people; the environmental disaster argument is just an alibi.

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[fillippone]

Banning any human activity because it burns "too much energy" is statist nonsense.
Who decides what is "too much" energy?
Bitcoin mining consumes "too much energy"? What about "Christmas lights?", or Iron smelting? and what if this iron is used to produce arms to be sent to Ukraine?  Yes? No? And if the arms are sent to Russia?


This is utter nonsense.
These are all considerations built on the most efficient information transmitting mechanism: prices.

Also, the idea that POW is polluting is quickly losing steam.

Genesis Digital Assets Announces New Bitcoin Mining Farm in Sweden Powered by 100% Clean Energy

The new data center expects to have up to 100 MW megawatts online by 2024. The
energy used by the new farm comes from 100% clean energy sources.

As per my understanding is the one of using hydro plants to power the miners, similarly to what APLS Blockchain is doing in Italy:

ALPS BLOCKCHAIN: mining in Italy from 100% renewable energy

[qwertyup23]

If they truly care about the environment as they claim they do, then we need to start from top of the list, because PoW is the least thing that consumes energy.

Exactly. It's clear that they're not banning it due to humanism or for the sake of the climate change, because they should have also behaved similarly to a gazillion other things. Their intention is to have more control over the people; the environmental disaster argument is just an alibi.

I think it is also more on the aspect of being entirely bias about cryptocurrencies. People that are somehow close-minded tend to believe stuff that are against cryptocurrencies even if there are other aspect or things that are way more harmful to the environment. They tend to believe their own biases even if actual proof and facts are showed to the contrary- which is somehow sad given the full potential of BTC in our day-to-day transactions.

[Lucius]

Of course, it’s nonsense, it’s clear to anyone who knows the basics of math and knows how to read all the objective studies that have analyzed the impact of total Bitcoin mining on energy consumption and any kind of environmental pollution. I don't know if the people who are persistently pushing this agenda are stupid or it's just a job for which they are well paid, but to anyone with a little common sense, everything can be crystal clear in less than 15 minutes.

If memory serves me right, Sweden is the one that asked the EU to ban crypto mining, and I'm just wondering what their comment will be on the news about a mining farm that will use only renewable energy sources. Maybe now the agenda will be redirected in the direction of creating electronic waste, and we had a claim a few months ago that crypto mining generates as much waste as the Netherlands or something similar.

I can only repeat once again, if someone wants to solve problems with greenhouse gases and pollution in general, let them start from the top of the pyramid, and not from the bottom where Bitcoin is definitely in that regard.

[fillippone]

If memory serves me right, Sweden is the one that asked the EU to ban crypto mining, and I'm just wondering what their comment will be on the news about a mining farm that will use only renewable energy sources.

I do remember that headline, but it wasn't "Sweden", it was only a proposal to the UE parliament.

Sweden is Calling for EU to Ban Cryptocurrency Mining to Meet Climate Goals

The two financial and environmental regulators wrote in an open letter urging for an EU-wide ban on “proof of work” cryptocurrency mining, which is a system used to mint a number of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Ether.

Of course, that was enough to feed an endless feed of clickbait.

You are right: it's not Bitcoin's task to solve the global warming problem. This is one of the most debated issues here on this thread: bitcoin already is the most efficient way of consuming electricity, and it even incentivizes to recover wasted energy (on-field gas burning as opposed to flaring, geothermal generation, hydropower).

[BlackHatCoiner]

I don't know if the people who are persistently pushing this agenda are stupid or it's just a job for which they are well paid

Probably the latter affect the former. People who dislike Bitcoin for some reason will get advantage of this environmental impact. In fact, few propagandists found some really attractive titles. For instance, "One Bitcoin transaction costs millions of dollars!" which is false broadly; the transaction cost isn't inextricably linked with the computational power that is required to solve a block. Another catchy phrase is "Bitcoin: Wasting more energy than <insert_small_country>".

[JayJuanGee]

many say bitcoin is not environmentally friendly and blah blah blah....
it's just an excuse for those who want to corner it even to eliminate bitcoin from its development....
As we know, bitcoin is indeed one that uses electricity which has a negative impact on the environment, because the amount of fossil fuel used to generate electricity also gives birth to greenhouse gases and air pollution. environmentally friendly and this is not an excuse because one of the most polluting energy contributors such as cars still cannot be overcome even though many countries switch to electric cars, but; this is also not environmentally friendly imagine if the whole world uses electric cars how much electricity usage is used every day....
therefore don't make it an excuse but make it a homework together to find the best solution without stopping the development of more efficient transaction technology... because bitcoin is not a setback but an advancement

I have only gotten up to your post so far in the thread, but I have become motivated to post even if your point has been made by others in the thread dark1234.

In other words, you seem to be making a good point dark1234 in relationship to the incentives that bitcoin creates to be innovative... and for sure there are other posters in this thread making similar points, but it seems to be worthy of emphasis and repetition.

For several years, I have been asserting that I could give few shits about how much energy bitcoin is supposedly causing to be used in the aggregate, because the incentives of bitcoin empower each miner to choose for himself/herself regarding whether and how much to mine bitcoin or to engage in other activities....

So if a miner determines that that there could be ways to make more profits by lowering energy costs, then such miner is going to seek out such lower cost energy - which will likely cause the putting to use of energy that had not been previously used.  Surely, some of the beneficiaries of the lower cost energy are going to become perturbed because the miner would be causing their energy costs to increase.. but still i tis quite likely that benefits outweigh the costs in terms of miners seeking out lower cost energy and thus incentivizing the development and use of lower cost energies... so without intervention, bitcoin already seems to contribute to the causation of decent incentives to both utilize low cost energy and to develop more low cost energy, if possible (or economically justifiable to attempt such ongoing developments of low cost energy).  

So for sure there is a bit of a balancing of interests in terms of both the driving up of low cost energy, but also considerably great likelihood of ongoing development of such low cost usage of energy - which seems to actually be supported by the data (empirical evidence).

Maybe my own punchline is that I could hardly give any ratt's ass regarding the extent to which there are various kinds of clean or dirty energy usages.. because those seem to be side issues in which sometimes bitcoiners or bitcoin miners might end up getting involved if they might get involved in producing energy or selecting between sources of energy.. so in that regard, whether the energy is clean or not does not seem to be central towards whether bitcoin miners might be wanting to purchase energy that might be available in one location versus another.. just confusing regarding blaming bitcoin mining for preexisting situations.. and sure it may well be true that some improvements have been made to the energy grid over the last 50 years so that skies are not as polluted and water is not catching on fire.. so there surely are continued likely ways in which some forms of energy are cleaner than other forms of energy or if some forms of energy need to be coupled with cleaning or filtering technologies to cause them to be less polluting.. if it is truly the case that such forms of energy are more polluting than the benefits that they might otherwise bestow on the energy grid (infrastructure) - which likely varies quite a bit from region to region based on what resources might be naturally available in one area versus another... surely it is less energy (resource) efficient for people to live in a dessert.. or on a flood plain... but they still do.. so sometimes there can be meaningful and reasonable balancing of the varying interests.. which surely is a decent part of the story of bitcoin mining in terms of the individual incentives and whether those incentives might possibly go contrary to the balancing of public concerns.

[noorman0]

-snip-
therefore don't make it an excuse but make it a homework together to find the best solution without stopping the development of more efficient transaction technology...

This will only be homework for supporters of the continuation of bitcoin, not people who continue to blame bitcoin because they have their own homework to do with their business which is more problematic with energy consumption. Especially in the transportation industries, bitcoin is a real competitor not only in energy consumption, but also in its goal of efficiently helping people's multimillion-dollar businesses (without involving transportation services). Because of this, it seems that bitcoin is getting closer and closer to becoming a global alternative currency that will disrupt competitors' businesses (which feel competitive).

I like this part:

because bitcoin is not a setback but an advancement

[Doan9269]

Sometimes I am not against those that says Proof of Work is bad for the environment since due to energy consumption, it’s quite good to know that they do care about the environment, BUT… If they truly care about the environment as they claim they do, then we need to start from top of the list, because PoW is the least thing that consumes energy.

Those companies already constituting environmental disaster in energy usage already have their way of settling with the government in through paying of tax and issuing of contracts awards for new projects, this is politics, but in crypto such is not applicable because it is decentralized, and the ones they can easily hook up with are the miners who have specific location and also demand from the country's electricity.

The fact is that bitcoin energy waste is nothing compared to the global energy lost due to inefficiency. secondly research are still ongoing regarding building bitcoin mining equipment with lesser noise and energy consumption such as in GPU and ASICs used in mining rigs.

[fillippone]

After some minor testing we also documented on this thread, one of the big sisters is moving toward making good use of gas instead of flaring it:

ExxonMobil Running Pilot Project to Supply Flared Gas for Bitcoin Mining: Report

Oil giant ExxonMobil (XOM) is running a pilot project to use what would otherwise be wasted gas from its North Dakota oil wells to power bitcoin mining operations, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The excess natural gas would have otherwise been burned off, or flared, because of the lack of pipelines.
The oil company is also looking to supply flared gas to bitcoin miners at other sites around the globe, according to the report.

The original report from Bloomberg is quite interesting: Exxon started with a few tests in North Dakota in partnership with Crusoe Energy (Winklevii have invested in it), but they are now expanding to Alaska, Nigeria, Argentina, Guyabbaa and Germany.

Preventing gas from being vented in the air would have many implications, from the most obvious environmental benefits, to the more subtle effects on oil field profitability,  bitcoin mining operations and also comprehension on the fact that bitcoin mining is not dispacing energy otherwise used for other purposes, but using completely new energy that would be otherwise wasted.

[dark1234]

many say bitcoin is not environmentally friendly and blah blah blah....
it's just an excuse for those who want to corner it even to eliminate bitcoin from its development....
As we know, bitcoin is indeed one that uses electricity which has a negative impact on the environment, because the amount of fossil fuel used to generate electricity also gives birth to greenhouse gases and air pollution. environmentally friendly and this is not an excuse because one of the most polluting energy contributors such as cars still cannot be overcome even though many countries switch to electric cars, but; this is also not environmentally friendly imagine if the whole world uses electric cars how much electricity usage is used every day....
therefore don't make it an excuse but make it a homework together to find the best solution without stopping the development of more efficient transaction technology... because bitcoin is not a setback but an advancement

I have only gotten up to your post so far in the thread, but I have become motivated to post even if your point has been made by others in the thread dark1234.

In other words, you seem to be making a good point dark1234 in relationship to the incentives that bitcoin creates to be innovative... and for sure there are other posters in this thread making similar points, but it seems to be worthy of emphasis and repetition.

For several years, I have been asserting that I could give few shits about how much energy bitcoin is supposedly causing to be used in the aggregate, because the incentives of bitcoin empower each miner to choose for himself/herself regarding whether and how much to mine bitcoin or to engage in other activities....

So if a miner determines that that there could be ways to make more profits by lowering energy costs, then such miner is going to seek out such lower cost energy - which will likely cause the putting to use of energy that had not been previously used.  Surely, some of the beneficiaries of the lower cost energy are going to become perturbed because the miner would be causing their energy costs to increase.. but still i tis quite likely that benefits outweigh the costs in terms of miners seeking out lower cost energy and thus incentivizing the development and use of lower cost energies... so without intervention, bitcoin already seems to contribute to the causation of decent incentives to both utilize low cost energy and to develop more low cost energy, if possible (or economically justifiable to attempt such ongoing developments of low cost energy).  

So for sure there is a bit of a balancing of interests in terms of both the driving up of low cost energy, but also considerably great likelihood of ongoing development of such low cost usage of energy - which seems to actually be supported by the data (empirical evidence).

Maybe my own punchline is that I could hardly give any ratt's ass regarding the extent to which there are various kinds of clean or dirty energy usages.. because those seem to be side issues in which sometimes bitcoiners or bitcoin miners might end up getting involved if they might get involved in producing energy or selecting between sources of energy.. so in that regard, whether the energy is clean or not does not seem to be central towards whether bitcoin miners might be wanting to purchase energy that might be available in one location versus another.. just confusing regarding blaming bitcoin mining for preexisting situations.. and sure it may well be true that some improvements have been made to the energy grid over the last 50 years so that skies are not as polluted and water is not catching on fire.. so there surely are continued likely ways in which some forms of energy are cleaner than other forms of energy or if some forms of energy need to be coupled with cleaning or filtering technologies to cause them to be less polluting.. if it is truly the case that such forms of energy are more polluting than the benefits that they might otherwise bestow on the energy grid (infrastructure) - which likely varies quite a bit from region to region based on what resources might be naturally available in one area versus another... surely it is less energy (resource) efficient for people to live in a dessert.. or on a flood plain... but they still do.. so sometimes there can be meaningful and reasonable balancing of the varying interests.. which surely is a decent part of the story of bitcoin mining in terms of the individual incentives and whether those incentives might possibly go contrary to the balancing of public concerns.

in fact bitcoin mining is carried out by several people who incidentally are financially well-established people who don't want to bother themselves with things that will happen in the future for the sake of a bitcoin coffers in their pockets to get strong and stable energy, without thinking about their children and grandchildren In the future, will they still be able to see the beautiful snow mountain and breathe the fresh air in the morning?
only a few are done by a large-capacity corporate agency which of course may have switched to renewable technology [this is my personal assumption]

   and I myself don't blame them for this because the negative impact of the energy crisis and global warming at this time is not too felt and it is human nature that the ego wants to be rich and richer so this is all a little neglected even though true wealth is a rich heart, wealth that is prosperous and happy when they are grandchildren we can feel it too later

     My hope for now is that miners should be able to switch to looking for energy at a lower cost by utilizing the environmental resources around them, be it sun, water and air/wind, because of course the sustainability of bitcoin's life is in the hands of the miners, and things happen as they are the ban in china, it doesn't happen in their country whose impact will be felt by the miners themselves and the impact also blockchain and crypto users

         WE may not be environmental activists but the environment needs to be cared for

[Daltonik]

Well, some of the big companies are also thinking about the future, including in the issue of environmental issues of mining. For example, Marathon Digital seems to have made a decision to switch from using the energy obtained from burning coal to renewable energy sources and stated that by the end of the year all their 30,000 miners with a capacity of 3.3 EH/s will be moved and become carbon neutral, only the fact is that the coal mine in Montana, which is powered by a power plant (energy from which Marathon Digital is now using for mining) and she, in turn, uses the same coal, and will continue to work.

Marathon Digital to Move Mining Rigs From Coal-Powered Montana Site

[fillippone]

Listening to an interview with Frank E. Holmes, I heard about this HIVE summary of the Bitcoin Mining Council back in October.

I think it is worth posting it here, for those of you who prefer the video format:

HIVE Summarizes Michael Saylor’s Slides from the Bitcoin Mining Council’s Oct. 2021 Presentation

On October 19, 2021, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor welcomed the crypto community to review the third-quarter 2021 survey results from the Bitcoin Mining Council’s data review.

In this video we’ve summarized Saylor’s 30-minute segment into 3 minutes, aiming to touch on some of the “need to know” data points from this captivating briefing. We invite you to watch the full-length presentation by visiting the Bitcoin Mining Council’s YouTube page, or by clicking this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPai5uoN2tg&t=0s

[franky1]

In this video we’ve summarized Saylor’s 30-minute segment into 3 minutes, aiming to touch on some of the “need to know” data points from this captivating briefing. We invite you to watch the full-length presentation by visiting the Bitcoin Mining Council’s YouTube page, or by clicking this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPai5uoN2tg&t=0s

ill watch this. and if i hear the words "guesstimate, assumption, average" im going to stop watching

EDIT.
within the first 6 minutes. im already facepalming for very different reasons.. som im going to stop here

seems they want to confuse the numbers by playing pingpong tennis with the words "energy" and "electricity" by pretending their estimate of electricity is not electricity even though their measure is in wattage(electricity).. now they want to call it "energy" even though they are not using energy terminology like joules

they seem to be trying to dig a bigger hole for themselves.
.
here is the thing. they got the 188TWH completely wrong in the first place yast year.
if they meant 'energy' instead of electricity. they would not be using TWH but instead TJH (joules not watts)

they are then trying to stand by their wrong 188TWH guestimate. by then saying 'electricity' is actually more like 66TWH(bit more accurate and acceptable).. but that means they are trying to save face by saying their 188guess is correct(its not) by then suggesting that bitcoin wastes 64.9% of energy in its electricity conversion.

yep 188-66=122TWH wasted = 64.9% wasted

which. when they quote that world energy to electricity conversion is only a waste of 50k out of 150k meaning only 33% wasted .. they are again stupidly saying bitcoins energy to electricity conversion is twice as worse as other industry conversion

..
seriously, they should just get their heads out of their asses and just admit their number last year of 188TWH was diabolically wrong.. (real numbers are more like 40twh-70twh) rather then suggest that their exaggerated number is a 'energy' number and is real, which represents a high waste of energy..

..
yep the 'committee of mining' love to use 'guesstimate, assumption, average' in their math. but then instead of admitting that their guesses were widely wrong. they prefer to say that bitcoin uses/wastes more then it actually does, and that their maths is perfect..

sorry. but that 188TWH number was completely wrong on multiple levels.
even on 5year old outdated inefficient asic tech, the math, if all old gen asics were used in 2021 the network never even got close to 188TWH, let alone on the numbers if the network in 2021 was using 2021 efficient asic's

in short.. they got that 188TWH completely wrong, and they wasted alot of video speaking time trying to justify their very bad guess.. while also trying to make bitcoin look bad subtly by suggesting their math was good and bitcoin wastes more then average in conversion.. (facepalm)

[Dunamisx]

Well, some of the big companies are also thinking about the future, including in the issue of environmental issues of mining.

The exploration of the natural resources such as gold and petroleum has higher implication to the environment from carbon emission, governments tend to overlook this aspects because they overseas the affairs, lots of conglomerate production companies also impose such environmental threat but yet government see not to that all because they pay tax but bitcoin contribute nothing as compared to what the above mentioned pollute to devastate the environment, yet bitcoin faces more sanction than them all.

My hope for now is that miners should be able to switch to looking for energy at a lower cost by utilizing the environmental resources around them, be it sun, water and air/wind, because of course the sustainability of bitcoin's life is in the hands of the miners, 

Currently much research has been ongoing on the effective use of renewable energy source for mining and secondly in the case of another solution coming from Exxon Mobil which plan to use waste energy from petroleum resources for use in bitcoin mining is another development that bitcoin has come to solve part of the created problems on energy waste and it hazards on the environment.

[fillippone]

Currently much research has been ongoing on the effective use of renewable energy source for mining and secondly in the case of another solution coming from Exxon Mobil which plan to use waste energy from petroleum resources for use in bitcoin mining is another development that bitcoin has come to solve part of the created problems on energy waste and it hazards on the environment.

The announcement during the Bitcoin Conference of the agreement between Blocks, Blockstream and Tesla, I think, goes in this direction:

BLOCKSTREAM, BLOCK TO LEVERAGE TESLA EQUIPMENT FOR RENEWABLE BITCOIN MINING OPERATION

Taking the dedicated mining stage at Bitcoin 2022, Blockstream CEO Adam Back announced that his company, in partnership with Jack Dorsey’s Block, Inc., will be leveraging Tesla energy equipment for a $12 million bitcoin mining facility.

“The Tesla Solar PV array and Tesla Megapack will power Blockstream and Block’s open-source, solar and battery-powered Bitcoin mining facility,” according to a slide shared by Back during the presentation. “[The facility is] projected [to produce] 3.8 MW solar renewable power, 30 PH/s hashrate.”

Using solar arrays to power a Mining farm looks like an absolute novelty and maybe an overkill, something more like a marketing stunt than a real, economic oriented project.
Time will tell.

[JohnBitCo]

If they truly care about the environment as they claim they do, then we need to start from top of the list, because PoW is the least thing that consumes energy.

Exactly. It's clear that they're not banning it due to humanism or for the sake of the climate change, because they should have also behaved similarly to a gazillion other things. Their intention is to have more control over the people; the environmental disaster argument is just an alibi.

Government have tried to ban crypto currencies but everytime they have failed to do so. Now they have come up with a new excuse that bitcoin is polluting the enviroment because bitcoin is based on proof of work which consumes a lot of energy for generating bitcoins.

This narrative is going to fail to as this is totally a lame excuse. The factories and industries produces much more waste and consume much more energy as compare to this bitcoin.

[stompix]

Taking the dedicated mining stage at Bitcoin 2022, Blockstream CEO Adam Back announced that his company, in partnership with Jack Dorsey’s Block, Inc., will be leveraging Tesla energy equipment for a $12 million bitcoin mining facility.

“The Tesla Solar PV array and Tesla Megapack will power Blockstream and Block’s open-source, solar and battery-powered Bitcoin mining facility,” according to a slide shared by Back during the presentation. “[The facility is] projected [to produce] 3.8 MW solar renewable power, 30 PH/s hashrate.”

Using solar arrays to power a Mining farm looks like an absolute novelty and maybe an overkill, something more like a marketing stunt than a real, economic oriented project.
Time will tell.

Of course it's a marketing stunt, if they would be going full solar and batteries they would be bankrupt the next day without government subsidies. Just look at the numbers, 3.8 MW and 30PH/s and a 12 megawatt-hours (MWh) Tesla Megapack.
That's enough storage capacity to power 150 S19 for 24hours and a hashrate equivalent of 300 S19.

Meanwhile:
https://blog.blockstream.com/en-blockstream-purchase-25m-usd-of-bitcoin-mining-hardware-from-microbt/
They've bought 2000 if not (3000 with a discount) miners at least in one single batch and are having a capacity of 300MW in total, now they have 1% ..solar!  

This is just like those companies claiming to be carbon neutral because they've donated enough money for 100 000 trees.

I can't wait to see how Mara will spin around the story since they claim they will magically close their coal power plants and how in the name of god when they were signing those things for the Bitcoin Mining council they've forgotten 10% of the hash rate int he US at that time was coming from their own dirty but damn cheap coal.

The whole green stuff should be put on pause right now, especially since everyone with a brain can see what's happening in Europe when you don't have enough fossil fuel and you're simply too stupid to allow nuclear energy. But no, let's let the madness continue till we're all going to have 30 minutes of light a day from on our bio-hamsters generators. Of course, feeding them will be quite the task since we're going to have to cut grass without hurting the grass also and only with a study on the number of insects and their species per square cm affected by this.

[Artemis3]

If they truly care about the environment as they claim they do, then we need to start from top of the list, because PoW is the least thing that consumes energy.

Exactly. It's clear that they're not banning it due to humanism or for the sake of the climate change, because they should have also behaved similarly to a gazillion other things. Their intention is to have more control over the people; the environmental disaster argument is just an alibi.

Government have tried to ban crypto currencies but every-time they have failed to do so. Now they have come up with a new excuse that bitcoin is polluting the environment because bitcoin is based on proof of work which consumes a lot of energy for generating bitcoins.

This narrative is going to fail to as this is totally a lame excuse. The factories and industries produces much more waste and consume much more energy as compare to this bitcoin.

There is a private entity behind this recent FUD campaign, that guy from Ripple tossing 5 million USD which "magically" purchased the likes of Greenpeace, Wikimedia and Mozilla into their lies campaign... Of course they have interests to bad mouth the only competitor they can't buy out of the market... But what else could you expect from people heavily associated with banksters?

Of course Bitcoin will carry on, there is nothing those over-funded losers can do to stop it. But their actions are hostile to this community. If someone doesn't talk about Bitcoin but goes with words like "blockchain" or "crypto", you know what side they are in, and probably under who's wallet...

[LUCKMCFLY]

Sometimes the sentence that Bitcoin is an environmental disaster, is something that alarms and attracts attention, but come on, we cannot forget that the environmental disaster has been taking place throughout the history of humanity, bombs, nuclear disasters, malpractice in many things it is something that we cannot forget, since 2009 when all this so beautiful of the BTC era began, some began with the problems, now that the clean energy, that the dirty energy, please, the BTC, Miners do not have the blame for the world disaster that has been left in our hands, what we have inherited is a number of environmental problems thanks to government decisions, and in fact for me the whole problem comes from there of geo-political problems and senseless wars, but for BTC or for the miners, please... it's like something almost unacceptable, it's like saying that the biggest crimes in the world are now more thanks to btc.