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