Why green bitcoin mining has become a trend?

[Husires]

According to what I know, bitcoin mining needs energy, whether that energy is from the sun, coal, fossil fuels and others, mining needs energy, so using renewable energies will not give you an additional advantage or more profits. Why do some miners leave or use solar energy?
Does anyone have statistics or percentages of the extent of solar energy use, and is all this fuss because of Tesla, or is it media reports trying to gain more views?

The council revealed that it collected sustainable energy information from over 32% of the current global bitcoin network for its survey. The results showed that the members of the BMC and participants in the survey are currently utilizing electricity with a 67% sustainable power mix.

“Based on this data it is estimated that the global mining industry’s sustainable electricity mix had grown to approximately 56%, during Q2 2021, making it one of the most sustainable industries globally," BMC said in a release.

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[o_e_l_e_o]

so using renewable energies will not give you an additional advantage or more profits.

Because renewable energy can be cheaper.

Electricity is expensive to store. Imagine a giant wind farm. During the day, it churns out electricity which homes and business use to power lighting, AC, computers, TVs, kitchen appliances, etc. During the night, it churns out just as much electricity, but the demand is now tiny. They spend lots of money to build batteries to store some of this excess, but it's not enough. A lot goes to waste. Along comes a bitcoin miner and says "I'll move a bunch of my mining equipment here if you sell me your excess electricity cheaply." This is electricity which is being wasted and earning the renewable energy company nothing, so selling it at any price is good for them.

Why do some miners leave or use solar energy?

Because it is very easy to run your own solar panels. Buy some panels, hook them up to your mining equipment, off you go. No ongoing raw material requirement, no moving parts, very little maintenance or upkeep, very little ongoing costs.

[pinggoki]

It is much more sustainable, although of course not as cheap as mining using non-renewable energy sources. The issue with its cost is not permanent however as the more people and institutions that are into renewable energy resources, the more will people they implement them as part of their everyday lives and in turn, this upstart in usage will drop the price down, possibly cheaper than non-renewable variations. And of course most importantly, the renewable energy sources are much more safer for its users and are not polluting the environment. So there's a big plus on that.

[Saidasun]

Its the way the world is going because of political pressure to have everything as clean and friendly to the environment as possible. I think its a way of trying to profit of the fear of global warming. Bitcoin is no different and while it can be cheaper and it is probably better for miners to use not many are currently using it but the reason its trending so much right now is because Elon Musk & Tesla put out a statement that they would be dropping support of Bitcoin because of the issues with Bitcoin Miners using too much energy and not investing in green energy.

[franky1]

majority of chinese mining FARMS have been 'green' since 2014(set up in hydro areas from the start)
majority of chinese and other countries residential hobby home miners have been fossil

the fun facts is most altcoins of small hashpower are home hobby miners wasting fossil

moderate to majority of western FARMS are fossil

asic farms have not ever tried to set up in solar area's due to.. obviously night.
asic farms have not ever tried to set up in windfarm area's. due to.. obviously still-air
asics farms have preferred hydro due to.. obviously. constant water-flow

the sudden press news about Green mining is not some new idea
its about 50% propaganda anti china/hate messaging
50% blame the home hobby miners. and attempt to remove home hobby for more industrial elite groups via raising investment to set up industrial farms in the west in regions of renewable hydro

[hatshepsut93]

Because the enviromental FUD became quite strong recently, ever since journalists started making headlines like "Bitcoin uses more energy than country X", public perception has started shifting to negative. When I saw people on reddit mention Bitcoin in unrelated conversations, the most common sentiment was "what is Bitcoin, what is it useful for?", today it's "Bitcoin is really bad for environment". So some miners want to publicly announce that they are swithing to green to combat this FUD, hopefully increasing the price of BTC.

[Upgrade00]

It is much more sustainable, although of course not as cheap as mining using non-renewable energy sources.

But it actually is cheaper to use renewable sources, with it being more sustainable. Solar was declared to be the cheapest form of electricity last year and these renewable sources are constantly improving as you mentioned and could get cheaper in the future.
To make it even cheaper, Bitcoin miners can get it for a discount as some make use of excess power which would normally have gone to waste.

[Twinkledoe]

Because the enviromental FUD became quite strong recently, ever since journalists started making headlines like "Bitcoin uses more energy than country X", public perception has started shifting to negative. When I saw people on reddit mention Bitcoin in unrelated conversations, the most common sentiment was "what is Bitcoin, what is it useful for?", today it's "Bitcoin is really bad for environment". So some miners want to publicly announce that they are swithing to green to combat this FUD, hopefully increasing the price of BTC.

This is true, the media is over exaggerating things here. Considering that there are many other human activities that are only wasting energy or much more intensive energy users. As bitcoin is relatively new to their grasp, they are finding loopholes on how to find faults on this new technology. This is why miners are now aggressive also in announcing their use of renewable energy sources, for them to stop the FUD surrounding the use of too much energy.

[roosbit]

Because Elon brought it out to the attention of world and it reactive which showed how serous the matter is and for the best interests of mother earth, going green is the only way for a sustainable environment.
Once cryptocurrency mining is all green, big money will start flowing back in  and if this is trending then it's good to see miners are going this direction.

[franky1]

hashpower and reward for mining has ZERO connection with number of transactions in a block
miners that empty mine or full block mine get the same length hash and pass that has to asics
transaction count per block is MEANINGLESS to mining cost and reward.
they all get the same hash length and same 6.25btc reward no matter what
the 'fee total' is not about transaction count either. its about selection and bidding and arbitrary min fee rules set in software

now thats explained
media are not just saying "bitcoin uses country X amount of energy" but also propagandising that "each transaction costs X houses daily energy bill"

this narrative is done by certain groups that want to portray bitcoin as useless and expensive to transactions to sway people into using altnets for their transactions instead.

[vladimirhf]

This is true, the media is over exaggerating things here. Considering that there are many other human activities that are only wasting energy or much more intensive energy users. As bitcoin is relatively new to their grasp, they are finding loopholes on how to find faults on this new technology. This is why miners are now aggressive also in announcing their use of renewable energy sources, for them to stop the FUD surrounding the use of too much energy.

it's not FUD, it's a real problem. I think those who deny this are the same people who deny global warming. Bitcoin protocol has an infinite demand for more and more energy. People like to say that banks spend more energy, but what's the difference in scale? Any honest analysis must consider the scale.

[20kevin20]

it's not FUD, it's a real problem. I think those who deny this are the same people who deny global warming. Bitcoin protocol has an infinite demand for more and more energy. People like to say that banks spend more energy, but what's the difference in scale? Any honest analysis must consider the scale.

It is FUD because you can't compare centralized to decentralized first of all. Centralization requires only a central entity as the main power, while Bitcoin requires everyone to contribute if they want to earn and keep the system up and running while also decentralizing it more and making it more secure at the same time. Comparing decentralized Bitcoin power consumption with what banks consume is useless because if banks were decentralized and each bank had to store their own ledger from zero and each philiale had to verify each and every detail themselves, they'd have to use way more electricity.

This is as useless as comparing BTC power consumption vs how much power is used to mine gold.. we're all going more and more digital generally, like imagine how much consumption has been lately added in the past few years only by "smart scales", " smart watches" etc which are practically useless vs Bitcoin which truly brings something new, innovative and.. ultimately useful!

[Fundamentals Of]

This is not all about the Tesla fuss. This has already been an issue long before Tesla somehow joined the Bitcoin community by accepting Bitcoin and eventually removing it. 

Green mining is much better and cheaper. So it would be beneficial for miners to choose them over other nonrenewable energy sources like coal or fossil fuels.

If you use the sun as your energy source, do you have to pay for it? Of course not. So it should be an additional advantage to your operation. If you use the wind, do you still have to pay for your electricity? Of course not. So that should mean bigger profit.

[ranochigo]

This is as useless as comparing BTC power consumption vs how much power is used to mine gold.. we're all going more and more digital generally, like imagine how much consumption has been lately added in the past few years only by "smart scales", " smart watches" etc which are practically useless vs Bitcoin which truly brings something new, innovative and.. ultimately useful!

Useless? I really doubt you can justify any lifestyle product as being "practically useless". If it is really useless, then there is no reason why anyone would be spending thousands of dollars on them. The electrical usage by those products are often quite negligible as compared to Bitcoin. There is a problem with Bitcoiners; they seem to draw irrelevant examples to justify the huge and frivolous usage of electricity on Bitcoin mining. Common examples includes: Carbon footprint on consumer products, electrical usage by banks, Carbon footprint on transport. Unfortunately, the utility provided by those products far outweigh those using Bitcoin.

The transaction volume and the practical usage of Bitcoin is fairly small, far smaller than your competing payment processors. In this regard, then your marginal utility is already smaller than major payment processors and they are obliged to put an effort into environmental conservation as well. Let's face it, Bitcoin has a great concept behind it but you can't justify the current electrical usage because the adoption of Bitcoin is so low!

It's green washing. Miners feel that they have to explicitly state that they are using renewable or green energy because the media focuses on that too much. However, this isn't a one dimensional issue. What is the opportunity costs of something like this; are people in those regions more reliant on fossil fuels because Bitcoin miners are taking a large proportion of the "green" energy? What is the percentage of the energy being produced being truly "green"? Are they carbon neutral and do they have zero environmental impact? How much E-waste arises from Bitcoin mining alone?

[pooya87]

It is not because of Tesla, Musk just used an old FUD about bitcoin and spread it which started the spark of new FUD about the same old topic (energy consumption of bitcoin mining). As the FUD grew and people including some government stated blaming bitcoin miners they had to do something. Going green or claiming to be green seems to be that decision for some of the miners.

[Kong Hey Pakboy]

Because people are becoming aware of their impact on the environment  and they want to make some impact in the environment by taking care of it in any way that they can. Although this trend is being hindered by big company since a green environment is going to be bad for their businesses so they do anything that they can to make sure that the trend won't be fruitful.

[Kakmakr]

It has become a trend, because Elon Musk tweeted that Bitcoin is using too much electricity that are generated from fossil fuels. Now his agenda for that is simple, because his company produce "Clean energy" solutions ...so by doing that, he is hoping Bitcoin miners might invest some capital into buying some of these solutions. 

The thing is... "clean energy" has been used for many years in the Bitcoin community and large mining farms was strategically placed near renewable energy sources, like large hydro electric power plants. 

[davis196]

so using renewable energies will not give you an additional advantage or more profits.

Because renewable energy can be cheaper.

Electricity is expensive to store. Imagine a giant wind farm. During the day, it churns out electricity which homes and business use to power lighting, AC, computers, TVs, kitchen appliances, etc. During the night, it churns out just as much electricity, but the demand is now tiny. They spend lots of money to build batteries to store some of this excess, but it's not enough. A lot goes to waste. Along comes a bitcoin miner and says "I'll move a bunch of my mining equipment here if you sell me your excess electricity cheaply." This is electricity which is being wasted and earning the renewable energy company nothing, so selling it at any price is good for them.

Why do some miners leave or use solar energy?

Because it is very easy to run your own solar panels. Buy some panels, hook them up to your mining equipment, off you go. No ongoing raw material requirement, no moving parts, very little maintenance or upkeep, very little ongoing costs.

Sorry to say that but renewable energy is still more expensive than conventional energy.Solar panels are very expensive.Wind turbines are still expensive.
The problem with solar and wind energy is that it cannot be sunny and windy 365 days in the year.
The days,when there's no wind and sun,the miners simply won't be working.
I think that many of the crypto miners are running during the night.How can you get solar energy during the night.

[leea-1334]

Not just for mining but for everything. Now I see even websites are saying they are proud to host on zero carbon servers and all that. Very trendy indeed.

I think the idea of green is quite nonsense when it is just green for the sake of green. Not every country is privilege enough to have renewable resources. Think about that.

If everyone is forced to use clean and green, then not everyone is able to enjoy.

[Husires]

Because renewable energy can be cheaper.

Selling it at any price does not mean that it is the cheapest at all, and electricity is not the only factor in mining, there is temperature, location, customs duties, .... etc. Electricity production licenses will encourage miners to change the place if accompanied by more measures, but what happens is that miners build the infrastructure for renewable energies and not exploit the surplus.

It is much more sustainable, although of course not as cheap as mining using non-renewable energy sources.

Who will bear the cost of recycling? Renewable energies have many negative aspects that have not yet been addressed, and the life span of many mining farms is the next havling.

asics farms have preferred hydro due to.. obviously. constant water-flow

This may be a convincing reason, so the news that talks about the use of solar energy are the result of these press reports?

It's green washing. Miners feel that they have to explicitly state that they are using renewable or green energy because the media focuses on that too much.

Is this reason enough to use renewable energies? What will it benefit them if the media attacks them or stops it?