A simple proposal for an environmental-friendly regulation for Bitcoin mining

[BlackHatCoiner]

I wouldn't engage in whataboutism, it's quite pointless because using whataboutism could suggest we have no real arguments.

And I don't engage with eco-propaganda, that's why I sounded a whatabout. We already have a long list of arguments and that's just one of the many threads in bitcointalk. It is already well-known that there's a significant usage of renewable sources for generating bitcoins.

The only ones who aren't convinced yet, are either those who have no idea how the system works (see cleanupbitcoin.com) or those who want to diminish decentralization.


Bitcoin and regulation don't go together. We're perpetually seeing this with carbon footprint awareness and with the KYC & AML nonsense.

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[franky1]

Bitcoin has proven to help in reducing CO2 emissions. Gazprom Neft[1], in West Siberia, mines bitcoin instead of flaring the unwanted gas to the atmosphere.

SERIOUSLY? this is your defensive proof of bitcoin going green
you really need to do some research because yet again your defense can be ripped apart in seconds and become meaningless and then be used as a counter statement to suggest bitcoin is not green

firstly that particular gas is flared because its not pure..
this small trial you linked is no different. they do not purify the dirty gas to then mine with.. and "flaring" is the burning of dirty gas..
mining with this same gas is also burning the same dirty gas. so again there is no change to what gets pushed out into the atmosphere.
also this is a small trial of one small gas plant. and not a prime example of any significant change to the % of cleaner energy production aimed towards bitcoin mining. nor is it any change to even 0.00XX% of the CO2 levels of the atmosphere

EMPHASIS of the article you linked:

at one of its Siberian drilling sites.

Media sites covering the cryptocurrency industry reported that a small Russian mining operation

its like you want to use a small example of a 0.001% to suggest it proves the 60%+ you are not talking about.
why use this example at all. especially without doing the research on if they even cleaned up the exhaust..
here is a hint. its the same dirty gas being burned. cleaning the gas is too expensive.. thats the whole point of flaring it rather then letting it through the pipeline

your basically using the silly argument of (analogy time)
telling a native indian that white people hunting buffalo for sport(poaching), wasting the carcass has been solved because you witnessed one hunter take the skin off and use it as a rain coat..
pretending that using just the skin somehow makes the wasted meat and bone not part of the argument. and also that your one small example is a example of the whole practice of buffalo slaughter

ignoring how smarter people for years chose to domesticate some buffalo and breed them, humanely slaughter them, where by every ounce of meat and bone and skin enters the food and fashion industry using the meat and skin 100% more productively and humanely thus not requiring the need to rely on the acts of the wasteful poachers

what you have failed to announce which would be a stronger debate is these things:
A. even since 2014, the majority of large mining farms have chosen to set up asic warehouse farming in regions with hydroplants. thus even from the start of the asic revolution from GPU, bitcoin has been going green.
far more hashpower is green due to these choices than the silly small example you are choosing to announce instead,

B. also comparing to other algo's of POW which are more cpu/GPU based mining. those have less control on the source/location of electric for mining. because they are more hobby miners in residential area's of impoverished countries that have less choice. meaning that there are many other crap coins that are more dirty than bitcoin

C. also unlike those other PoW dirty/crap coins. bitcoin has put significant investment into the efficiency of hashpower. meaning more security of the network and utility of electric makes every watt of electricity used for bitcoin more valuable.
imagine say 10 PC's doing CPU/GPU mining at 350w each (3.5kw) in residential area's with no control of power source.
VS a single bitcoin ASIC of 3.5kw(same as 10 pc's) in a hydroplant region.
same power amount. but bitcoin gives:
100% renewable
10,000,000% more hashing security

if you had the choice between
a coin that has 1ghash for 3.5kw of fossil fuel
a coin that has 110thash for 3.5kw of renewable..
which would you say is better

D. also many of these large farms also do large contracts with power plants to use up their 'excess' power that is 'wasted' ((unused)far more then the flared example)
yep even the solar and hydro industry has "waste" electric that goes unused.. but atleast its clean
so by using this energy is like the same as using the flared. but using CLEAN energy that would have gone to waste
where by this funding can help speed up the power industry to get extra income to invest into building more renewable plants
adding an emphasis to this. far more contracts exist for this excess hydro energy use than your silly flare use example.

basically. flaring gas does not make the exhaust of that gas any better. instead it just 'uses' that gas for a purpose.
thus its still 'waste' as in 'dirty' just not 'waste' as in 'unused'
but then actually using that dirty gas. is not causing any significant financial benefit to then have power companies get enough extra income to then invest into converting to more renewable means of power production
..
in short. by thinking the argument can be settled by the use of a petty small 'flare' example that has been unresearched. you have actually probably opened the argument up even more to make bitcoin look bad by you ignoring the major green activities bitcoin has actually done on large scale

[so98nn]

This kind of regulation would have at least three effects which would help combat climate change:

1) it solves the problem of miners competing with households for renewable electricity, as this wouldn't be allowed anymore (they can only mine connected to the grid as long as there is no renewables' scarcity, i.e. they can use "surplus" electricity),
2) provide a strong incentive for economies of scale in the renewable generation and storage industry,
3) provide a strong incentive to move to places where renewable energy is abundant (Sahara desert, some regions in South America like Patagonia, Brazil and the Altiplano, North American desert regions, Scandinavia/Iceland)

This solves nothing because there is twisted plot here.

So if miners need to switch to a green energy grid then we will need to invest into lands, power wind fields, ocean mills, solar panel. For large corporation who has thousands of miners running, I am way doubtful that it will full-fill the need in very short area.

The electricity generated with the renewable sources is not steady and it highly depends on atmospheres and climate change.

There would be catastrophic failure to the network if big rigs keep rebooting due to power shortages all around the globe.


Secondly, why are we forcing bitcoin mining in the direction of renewable energy tariffs again?

Fuel prices are soaring up, and there is new craze of Electrical vehicles these days. Its not in buzz right now but somehow it will be in demand.

This means there would be Electrical Stations all around the national grid eating huge energy. Well I love the idea that Cars will be environmental friendly but is the electricity coming from those station is entirely  coming from renewable energy plants? I dont think so?

If this is really a concerns, then I am pretty sure they should be focused too.

[BlackHatCoiner]

SERIOUSLY? this is your defensive proof of bitcoin going green

No. It's a defensive proof that it's potentially green.

mining with this same gas is also burning the same dirty gas. so again there is no change to what gets pushed out into the atmosphere.

There is, because if they flared the gas, they would have to use electricity if they wanted to mine. They wouldn't do this in the first place, but now they're converting their waste to money. Isn't less waste beneficial?

what you have failed to announce which would be a stronger debate is these things:

Sure, I know I haven't mentioned almost anything and thanks for bringing these up. However, it's my turn to say that this is whataboutism:

B. also comparing to other algo's of POW which are more cpu/GPU based mining. those have less control on the source/location of electric for mining. because they are more hobby miners in residential area's of impoverished countries that have less choice. meaning that there are many other crap coins that are more dirty than bitcoin

[hatshepsut93]

How are miners that are forced to buy more expensive electricity or pay some fees for using dirty electricity are going to successfully compete against miners who use cheap fossil fuels? A more sensible approach is to just tax miners and use that money to combat climate change directly, but taxing miners can be a bit tricky, because they don't make any profit until they sell their coins, so there's a potential for some loopholes.

[stompix]

If this happens, I doubt these countries will stay behind and not enact a similar regulation. You cited China which has already banned mining, and India has considered ultra-hard anti-Bitcoin regulation.

Add Russia which has tons of oil it can't sell, Nigeria has the same problem, Indonesia which is the biggest coal exporter...
Plenty on the list, it doesn't have to be India and China and it doesn't have to be energy produced there, just like the eco-friendly batteries or other products Europe imports.

Let's do a two in one here:

Exactly. That's why perhaps regulation is needed and market forces are still not strong enough. A further 30-50% cost decrease for renewable energy could make regulation unnecessary, but it's perhaps too slow.

If that would "kill" mining in Europe, it would mean that renewable mining is not profitable at all. I'm in doubt if that is true. Renewable energy can be quite cheap when it's available in large numbers and that's where it's especially available in a surplus.

Renewables are profitable only with subsidies. /end
It's just like me claiming my Easter expenses were zero since we used my wife's cc card all day. 

Let's take for example the above-mentioned Ouarzazate plant 510 MW,  $3.9 billion.
Watts Bar Nuclear Plant nuclear plant, 2332 MW  $12 billion.

On paper, the nuclear plant has a bit of advantage, nearly 5 times the capacity with just 3 times the cost.
But the devil is in the details:
Annual net output   13,650 GWh vs 1.430 GWh.
And suddenly you need to spend 39 billion to achieve the same electrical output as a 12 billion nuclear plant + batteries costs.

Should we do the math on how much Germany spent on solar panels that haven't seen the sun for 6 days in January and had a zero energy output?

If renewables would be cheaper we wouldn't have to subsidize them while taxing fossil.
If renewables would be cheaper, I wouldn't have to quote myself this over and over again:

But renewable mining in Texas is already a large (and obviously competitive) electricity source for mining.

I've been asking for proof of a large farm using only renewables for years, I've seen only claims and no factual data, do you have that?

I don't know on which facts this opinion is based

In Sri Lanka, Organic Farming Went Catastrophically Wrong
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farming-crisis/

Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised in his 2019 election campaign to transition the country’s farmers 10. Last April, Rajapaksa’s government made good on that promise, imposing a nationwide ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and ordering the country’s 2 million farmers to go organic.
The result was brutal and swift. Against claims that organic methods can produce comparable yields to conventional farming, domestic rice production fell 20 percent in just the first six months. Sri Lanka, long  in rice production, has been forced to import $450 million worth of rice even as domestic prices for this staple of the national diet surged by around 50%

Two years later
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/sri-lanka-crisis-sri-lanka-parliament-speaker-warns-crisis-risking-starvation-2866042

The argument from de Vries goes like this: if the rice of BTC is lower, less mining would be done because it's less profitable and therefore, there would be less pollution.
It's technically somehown true: Yes, if the price of BTC would be lower, in theory, less mining would be done as miners need to be profitable to pay for electricity bills, staff, equipment.

However, his argument is pointless because it doesn't make mining more ecological.

He is perfectly right, if the price goes down less energy is spent, Bitcoin can perfectly work with 100 exahash, consuming 50% of the energy used now. And it's not "somehow" true, it's the reality, proven numerous times if we look at the charts of the price and hash rate.
For example at 10k is highly likely I will shut down my miners for 60$ a month, it's just not worth it, I'm better off offering that energy for people to charge their cars at my door.

[franky1]

I've been asking for proof of a large farm using only renewables for years, I've seen only claims and no factual data, do you have that?

you need to do alot more research..
you must have forgot the YEARS of many many examples of large asic farms mining in hydro electric regions.
how about the icelandic geo-thermals.. oh you forgot them too.. ?

here is a big hint
forget wasting time research solar.. its just not economically sound. never has been
the ROI of solar is decades. but the lifecycle of an asic needing solar is 2 years. meaning with the hashrate competition you are upgrading asics and needing more energy to power more asics to match new hashrate before you even broke even on the first round of investment in solar. and it will always be the case.

im not sure why in 2022.. being 8 years after ASICS started mining farms. your still even trying to bring solar into the conversation as an option....
asic farms learned in 2014 that hydro and geothermal were the way forward

so dont waste another second thinking about solar. as it seems to have been a entire waste of years of your life..
instead spend those years you wasted on volcanic, geothermal and hydro power.. thats where you may learn some stuff

[thecodebear]

I'd just like to see some basic regulation making every large mining company have to report their percentages for energy use. I'm pretty sure if you're running a big operation you can get this data and figure it out. Require them to post it on their website and include their quarterly energy use breakdown in quarterly financial reports. Something like that.

That way it is all transparent. Of course there needs to be the ability to explain whether or not they use wasted energy even fossil fuels as well. Like some mining operations use fossil fuels but like at the actual power plant and they just use excess wasted energy when there is excess and they don't use energy when the grid needs the full resources of the power plant. So I guess that sort of thing could be added to the energy breakdown as well.

Once these big mining operations energy breakdowns are all required to be public, then just have a basic regulatory economic incentive to gradually push them towards renewables and already produced wasted energy. Like have a percentage of their mining that needs to be renewable or wasted energy and if they are below that they get dinged on taxes or have to pay fees toward renewable energy production or something like that. Or do it the other way where is they are over the percentage they get tax breaks. And have it so every couple of years that goal percentage of renewable + wasted energy goes up a bit, to gradually help guide even mining owners who don't give a damn about the environment toward clean energy.

Bitcoin mining is a hugely beneficial thing for humanity, but there needs to be some basic regulation that'll help change the optics of mining that the average non-bitcoiner has about it since there is a very strong negative narrative by uninformed people, which is nearly everyone. Transparency is important, because if US mining companies, for example, could say hey we collectively use 60% renewable energy and 20% wasted already produced energy, while the US as a whole only uses 30% renewables that would be an indisputible positive narrative for Bitcoin mining that even the staunchest or most uninformed critics couldn't argue against.

The main other thing I can think of in terms of regulation is that local counties and such should put in place basic noise/distance and energy use restrictions on mining farms. Because they more relevant critique of mining farms that I see is that mining farms will set up shop in some town and produce a lot of noise near residential or commerical areas and cause the price of energy for residents to go up. Local municipalities should just implement their own regulations on noise and energy use, limiting a mining operation that is just running on-grid like a normal energy user to a certain amount of energy that won't affect residents energy cost, or charging mining operations a higher cost of energy to offset the price effects of any energy supply shortage they might create. Of course a small local tax could be part of this as well to make sure the mining operation is benefiting the local area economically considering mining operations don't require many jobs. This way towns that decide they don't want Bitcoin mining can implement strict regulations and they just won't benefit from that business, while towns that want to enjoy the economic benefits of mining can have less restrictive regulations that still protect the residents from the negatives and they will attract mining operations.


Bitcoin mining already incentives cheap, wasted, stranged, and therefore often renewable energy use. But the negative narratives and occasionally actual negative effects of bitcoin mining are what gets all the play among the media and the masses. A little bit of smart economic incentive regulation to nudge things further to renewables and wasted energy, along with transparency, would go a long way to clearing up the negative narratives around Bitcoin mining. The main problem with mining are the negative, usually false, narratives that permeate the public consciousness.

[stompix]

how about the icelandic geo-thermals.. oh you forgot them too.. ?

Iceland's total geothermal capacity is 755 MW.
Only one of the facilities Maraha has at Hardin is 110 MW and the one in Texa is 300 MW.

Iceland's total production from geothermal is 6,010 GWh, so in best case scenario they could host 150k s9j or roughly 7% of the total hashrate (for now) and only if they shut all the other industries on the island.

Now since you're such a know it all, can you please present some facts and data about how much of the current hashrate is in Iceland?

[d5000]

Add Russia which has tons of oil it can't sell, Nigeria has the same problem, Indonesia which is the biggest coal exporter...

In the case of Russia you're right but this problem should be temporary (at least I hope so). But countries with a weak power grid like Nigeria wouldn't be very happy with a sudden "invasion" of miners. They could require them to work off-grid but if they use fossil fuel (which would not make much sense anyway cost-wise) and emissions are too high, there would for sure be protests and populist governments in these situations tend to ban or restrict it. Indonesia seems to be Bitcoin-friendly for now but that could also change in such a case. Both Nigeria and Indonesia are densely populated so excessive pollution by "Bitcoin factories" for sure wouldn't be very popular.

Maybe there will be some "regulatory islands" in the world but it will probably be not significant enough to counter the incentives for renewables-based mining if most bigger countries adopt an "miners must go CO2-neutral" policy.

Renewables are profitable only with subsidies.

That was the case until a couple of years ago, so it still applies to the Ouarzazate plant which was begun in 2013. But the tendency goes into the opposite direction. From 2013 to now the prices for solar energy fell by more than half according to this source and this wikipedia article shows (with many other sources/graphs) that they're increasingly competitive.

If renewables would be cheaper we wouldn't have to subsidize them while taxing fossil.

There were already cases in some countries where an unexpected (and un-subsidiarized) renewable energy boom was responded with taxation, like in Spain in the early 2010s.

You may be right that the equation "renewables are cheaper than fossil" is still not true in a large part of the world, but the tendency goes clearly into this direction, see above. But until this point has been reached (I expect it to take ~5 years more), if you want miners to be climate-friendly you have to provide them additional incentives. (Small miners don't matter, the proposal is for large-scale operations)

One can of course ignore the problem, or wait for it to resolve. But that would mean to empower the fraction which thinks that a Bitcoin ban is needed (and those that abuse that argument).

And we've already discussed the California graph in another thread. I'm still not convinced.

if the price goes down less energy is spent, Bitcoin can perfectly work with 100 exahash, consuming 50% of the energy used now.

Agree somewhat here, but a tighter profit calculation would also prevent miners to go for renewable energy, as long as they're still more expensive than fossil fuels. So a ban followed by a price crash could actually punish those miners who have invested in ecologically-friendly electricity. Less energy would be used for mining, but the proportion of "dirty" energy would be higher. And I agree with 1miau that a price crash won't necessarily happen after a PoW ban. Bitcoin could even still be traded in Europe, in the form of wBTC-like tokens on PoS blockchains.

So if miners need to switch to a green energy grid then we will need to invest into lands, power wind fields, ocean mills, solar panel. For large corporation who has thousands of miners running, I am way doubtful that it will full-fill the need in very short area. The electricity generated with the renewable sources is not steady and it highly depends on atmospheres and climate change.

They don't need to buy all the infrastructure in the same region. Unless miners aren't the primary electricity consumer of a region there should be no scarcity problem.

There would be catastrophic failure to the network if big rigs keep rebooting due to power shortages all around the globe.

Are you referring to the bitcoin network? That wouldn't matter at all, difficulty would become a bit lower only if miners mine a bit less (the nodes that matter for the BTC network are mining pools, not miners themselves).

If you referred to electricity networks (which would be a problem) then thats what I targeted with the second part of the OP proposal - miners would have to mine in a way power grids aren't affected. It's like with a large factory: they must have an adequate connection.

Secondly, why are we forcing bitcoin mining in the direction of renewable energy tariffs again?

Because renewable tariffs provide incentives for the expansion of renewable power plants.

The only ones who aren't convinced yet, are either those who have no idea how the system works (see cleanupbitcoin.com) or those who want to diminish decentralization.

Agree in your stance against cleanupbitcoin.com, but not on your conclusion. A transition to a "almost 100%" proportion of renewables would have only advantages (also that you're robbing the anti-decentralization folks one of their arguments) and I don't see where it should be favouring centralization.

You can't really begin to compare the highly efficient and expensive fuel used in an airplane like Boeing 747 with the lowest quality dirt cheap gasoil with a lot of impurities used here. Not to mention that the plane would emit CO2 while this is emitting SO2 which is worse.

The kind of fuel doesn't change much (I'd argue that the burning process in a stationary engine should be more efficient than in an aircraft), the point is that the aircraft provides a service to 300-500 persons a day, while the power plant provides a basic, everyday service for around one million people. It's comparing apples with oranges, such a big plant (as all factories etc.) will always consume some fossil fuels.

@thecodebear, @1miau: Agree with your proposals. These would be a bit less harsh than the one outlined in the OP, and that would be probably better. I also am thinking about opt-in models, with reduced taxes or cheaper electricity in exchange for going 100%-renewable (and shutting down in power shortage situations).

It's not that I'm wanting to lobby for the OP proposal exclusively. What I want to achieve is a discussion which could lead in to proposals which could be presented to e.g. the EU authorities as an alternative for a PoW ban. I consider PoW an outstanding achievement of Bitcoin and all alternatives until now have severe shortcomings. That's the reason for this thread and I'm quite happy with the development of the discussion, even if many don't agree with me here

[stompix]

Renewables are profitable only with subsidies.

That was the case until a couple of years ago, so it still applies to the Ouarzazate plant which was begun in 2013. But the tendency goes into the opposite direction. From 2013 to now the prices for solar energy fell by more than half according to this source and this wikipedia article shows (with many other sources/graphs) that they're increasingly competitive.

I'm still not convinced. Smiley

How about we talk numbers?
Ouarzazate produced 1470 Ghw a year, let's make it 40 years with no operational costs, that's  58 Twh, or 58 billion kWh for a price of $3.9 billion. How much does it make in cents/kwh? 

Or let's go for solar panels, average low in the US (cheaper than Europe) get's you $2.75 per watt.
So a 10 KW panel is 27k, which with the average sun in Europe will get you 18Mwh, fast forward 30 years 547Mwh, you're not going to like it when it goes to cents/kwh .

As for your link..

Costs for solar and wind power technologies also continued to fall year-on-year. Electricity costs from utility-scale solar PV fell 13% in 2019, reaching a global average of 6.8 cents (USD 0.068) per kilowatt-hour (kWh).

At those costs, the entire BMC would be bankrupt .

Then again, if green energy is so cheap how comes that after burning half a trillion Germany still has such prices and still imports energy from Denmark and Norway whenever there are two days without sun and it's still dependent on gas turbines and coal?

Hydro, that's quite reliable, wind, it can be too but it's pretty restrictive, solar is a joke,  nuclear beats the crap out of every single other form.
 

[d5000]

@stompix: The entire point of the thread is that renewables are still (in many regions) not the cheapest option. So again, miners need additional incentives to change to 100% renewables. But if current tendencies continue, then this will be the case in 5 years or less. So the goal would be to get miners to operate now as if costs were from 2027.

6.8 ct/kWh is indeed a likely correct solar production cost for 2019 (the LCOE calculation includes capital costs and fuel costs, the latter are low in renewable plants as fuel is only needed for auxiliary machinery). But this was three years ago; if we continue with the tendency of 13% price fall per year, then we have 5.91 cents for 2020, 5.15 cents for 2021 and 4.48 for 2022. And this would be the global average, not the price in the "best" regions. The Lazard study from 2020 mentioned in the second link even claimed <4 ct, but that may be too optimistic; these costs may be appropiate for places like Mexico but not for Europe.

Ouarzazate has also the advantage that it's mostly a CSP plant and produces some energy also at nighttime due to molten salt storage. So one can say it's a higher quality electricity than that coming from PV panels or wind turbines with a more uneven production which justifies a higher cost. A more modern CSP plant, Cerro Dominador in Chile (inaugurated in 2021), has already a better efficiency: it costed 1 billion USD for a production of 950 MWh/year. With operation costs and assuming 40 years of operation we're getting values slightly over 4 ct/kWh.

[stompix]

@stompix: The entire point of the thread is that renewables are still (in many regions) not the cheapest option. So again, miners need additional incentives to change to 100% renewables. But if current tendencies continue, then this will be the case in 5 years or less. So the goal would be to get miners to operate now as if costs were from 2027.

And I'm telling you what's going to happen.
Nobody is going to give subsidies to miners in this energy crisis and no miner will be able to compete with others with unsubsidized green energy.

The outcome will be as simple as the first days of covid when you had to either pay 5 euros for a mask or cut your t-shirt to make one, except that now you're going to have to pay some African warlord or some Asian dictator another fee on top of your bitcoin tx fee so you can get your transaction confirmed, a ViaBtc accelerator mandatory and not free.

But this was three years ago; if we continue with the tendency of 13% price fall per year, then we have 5.91 cents for 2020, 5.15 cents for 2021 and 4.48 for 2022.

And by 2050 we will get paid to burn electricity, right? 

Ouarzazate has also the advantage that it's mostly a CSP plant and produces some energy also at nighttime due to molten salt storage.

When a 100MW plant produces 380Gwh a year and has storage capabilities for 7 hours, there are 9 hours a day missing from the scheme! 

A more modern CSP plant, Cerro Dominador in Chile (inaugurated in 2021), has already a better efficiency: it costed 1 billion USD for a production of 950 MWh/year. With operation costs and assuming 40 years of operation we're getting values slightly over 4 ct/kWh.

One of those numbers is definitely wrong.
Also: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-energy-solar-idUKKBN1X9132

But two years later, Abengoa came close to bankruptcy and was forced to sell Cerro Dominador, slowing construction of the plant as new buyers were sought. The delay was costly.
By the time the plant was resurrected last year with funding from banks, the Chilean state and U.S. private equity firm EIG Global Energy Partners, it was no longer competitive, or particularly sustainable.

So 1 billion and then it had to be bailed out by the state. What a surprise.

[d5000]

Nobody is going to give subsidies to miners in this energy crisis and no miner will be able to compete with others with unsubsidized green energy.

So there would be no miners left at all?

The outcome will be as simple as the first days of covid when you had to either pay 5 euros for a mask or cut your t-shirt to make one, except that now you're going to have to pay some African warlord or some Asian dictator another fee on top of your bitcoin tx fee so you can get your transaction confirmed, a ViaBtc accelerator mandatory and not free.

As I don't think you don't know how the difficulty mechanism works (I thought I read you was engaged in mining, so you should, but I may be wrong), I guess you mean mining power would concentrate in a couple of authoritarian states. Well, this was already the case, from 2013/14 to 2021. As of now a lot is located in Kazakhstan which is also not really democratic.

About the solar/ CSP/Ouarzazate/Cerro Dominador discussion: I've no problem to discuss the dirty details here, even if this means derailing the thread a bit because I don't think CSP is used massively for mining at this moment. CSP is indeed more expensive than photovoltaics like written in the link you posted. But:

When a 100MW plant produces 380Gwh a year and has storage capabilities for 7 hours, there are 9 hours a day missing from the scheme!  

Maybe, but the important hours PV can't cover are generally the 18/19-22/23h timeframe where people are returning home from work and eating. This is the main disadvantage of PV solar, and CSP can jump in here, being more reliable for this timeframe than wind (at least in sunny countries). After 23h electricity consumption is usually much lower.

And by 2050 we will get paid to burn electricity, right?  

Probably yes, during midday in many regions electricity prices will be near-zero or negative, like it occurs already in stormy conditions in countries with many wind turbines. That's not bad, as it can be used for hydrogen production etc. (we've already discussed that elsewhere ...)

(Edit: Yeah, I know what you wanted to say probably is that the price decrease can't last forever. Here I even agree partially. But currently we're still in a falling tendency in the case of wind and solar, while the price for other generation methods like coal and nuclear are stagnant or even follow inflation.)

But two years later, Abengoa came close to bankruptcy and was forced to sell Cerro Dominador, slowing construction of the plant as new buyers were sought. The delay was costly.

Abengoa didn't come close to bankruptcy due to Cerro Dominador but due to problems in Spain.

[stompix]

Nobody is going to give subsidies to miners in this energy crisis and no miner will be able to compete with others with unsubsidized green energy.

So there would be no miners left at all?

In the west no, you will have just as many as plastic straw makers 

As I don't think you don't know how the difficulty mechanism works (I thought I read you was engaged in mining, so you should, but I may be wrong), I guess you mean mining power would concentrate in a couple of authoritarian states. Well, this was already the case, from 2013/14 to 2021. As of now a lot is located in Kazakhstan which is also not really democratic.

Of course, I'm not talking about an epoch of block times over 30 minutes or so, I'm talking about the realistic possibility of mining getting far more concentrated in countries and in the hands of people that are not that interested in the concept but the money.

And here we have the slippery slope of totalitarian dictatorship, it's one thing to do business in China, something else in Tadjikistan, and far more "interesting" trying to set up shop in North Korea, and I'm ending this with NK because it fits here perfectly, a country that uses BTC but only for the ruling class interest. Once you have only a few countries left with cheap mining that could bankrupt other mining initiatives, a ton of gear at scrap metal prices, what stops such an individual to gain a majority of the hashrate, what stops his pools from banning tx under x, what stops him from milking everything he can get milked, just as masks at 5 euros.

The security of the network depends right now mainly on the daily reward and the electricity price.
Having the electricity price go up two times means doubling the cost, longer ROI, less attractive as a business, cheaper gear on sale, less hash rate needed to get 51%, not only does it get cheaper to attack it but also the problem of manufacturing the equivalent gear is no longer there.

And risk this in order to label mining as a "green" industry? Fuck no!

Abengoa didn't come close to bankruptcy due to Cerro Dominador but due to problems in Spain.

And the problems in Spain being subsidies being abruptly cut by the state .

I've no problem to discuss the dirty details here, even if this means derailing the thread a bit because I don't think CSP is used massively for mining at this moment.

We could discuss not hydro /geo renewables that are used by miners right now.
There is only one that is in planning, and it's just a publicity stunt, the 3.8 MW "farm" that will power 1% of the gear Blockstream has.