[Q/A] Can Bitcoin And Eco-friendliness Go Together?

[NotATether]

Disclaimer: Eco-friendliness does not imply low power consumption. Cloud computing data centers use huge power sources to power their operations to which if pressure from green activists was diverted to shutting down would also take down most of the top 1000 websites with them. So any posts spreading rumors about "the upcoming winter killing miners and cryptocurrencies" will be summarily deleted by myself, thanks.

See the supplementary article on my blog about what miners can do to combat climate change here: Bitcoin Being Energy Efficient?

Two very significant events happened recently which prompted me to start this topic:

- Ethereum's transition to Proof-of-Stake was completed yesterday
- Congress wants to make a law to ban Proof-of-work mining algorithms (as with most partisan efforts in the US of A, this is largely a farce and abortive effort, more at danger to be forgotten by both parties should a more political conflict emerge - that it all I will talk about them in this post)

Some of the more non-technical people or perhaps policy makers reading this board are probably shaking their heads, with all the aversion to Proof of Stake shown here:

"Will Bitcoin ever become environmentally friendly?"

Yes, Bitcoin can become environmentally friendly in a way that doesn't require a change to its Proof of Work model. It should be known that Bitcoin mining is fully capable of harnessing the power of all kinds of renewable energy, and in fact, many mining farms are already using them.

The environmental cleanliness question is largely the miners' problem and there's nothing the devs can do about it - since any such solution would require taking power away from miners and giving that power to other, significantly less centralized entities (it is nobody's desire except perhaps for the trolls at r/Buttcoin to see Bitcoin suffer a 51% attack).

"Will miners keep contributing to make increasing larger pollution?"

Regarding the waste products of electricity generation from various renewable and non-renewable sources. Miners can help lower the carbon footprint by using renewable energy as I mentioned above, and also by using the waste products of other fuel processes, such as methane, as a source for electricity.

Like I said, it depends on the miners to design innovative electricity generation methods that use different types of green fuel sources, particularly those which utilize the waste products of fossil fuel generation. This is a non-technical problem domain however, and developers can not enforce any rules for this on the network.

"Is bitcoin going to do anything about the Congressional proposal to ban Proof-of-Work algorithms?"

No. Once again, this is not a developer problem. Also, the merge took a few years from start to finish to be fully carried out. Trying to rush the process in a timespan of a few months will split the network into many pieces.

"Why not just run it on a handful of computers?"

Because doing that will make it vulnerable to a 51% attack (one person or group with more than half of the total hash power can mine whatever transactions they want, censor, or defraud people). It's important to note that new cryptocurrencies cannot start out with the Proof of Stake model because it is easy for anyone to get a majority supply of coins during that phase. What usually happens after this is the coins become worthless because the entire supply of coins constantly get transferred between thieves.


Self-moderated against spam. Do not post irrelevant, trolling remarks in this topic (see the top of this post for specific details). Discussion is of course welcome.

[franky1]

options

power companies made to limit a industries power usage to X% of local power plants power capacity (if it has excess), per business location

meaning farms are not exahash size asic farms, but X petahash size asic farms per location. this can help decentralise bitcoin mining.
instead of having "mega" asic farms it has more distributed mini asic farms where they are separately managed in lots of locations per state, thus distributing the electrical demand over different towns grid circuits instead of some mega asic farm location syphoning alot of power to one location


locations that are in are in area's that support high percentage green energy.
when new renewable power plants start. they have not built just enough production for todays demands. they have built capacity in consideration to future demands. whereby usually they are producing more power but not able to have enough residents/businesses to pay for the electric produced.
this excess can be sold to new industry entering the location. thus giving more income to power companies to then upgrade/expand new renewable plants in other locations sooner by paying off the build costs of the first plants earlier


by asic farms re-locating away from fossil powered locations. where demand on fossil is decreased. less fossil is used and thus if the demand declines below the state/counties renewable capacity they can switch off the fossil plant

[un_rank]

"Will Bitcoin ever become environmentally friendly?"

Yes, it can, and is to an extent already.
Are there industries which are worse off in how environmentally unfriendly they are, and yet are not a subject of public criticism? Yes.

The above question shows bitcoin going green would not bring a lasting solution to the social criticism it gets. Going 100% green is a huge task for any industry and not usually set as a standard, but there is an exception here as bitcoin is not a conventional industry like many others, and with those, the government would take a sort of passive approach towards their environmental effects.

Bitcoin can and is going green, but I doubt it can ever go as green those who envy and wish to exert some sort of control on the network.

"Is bitcoin going to do anything about the Congressional proposal to ban Proof-of-Work algorithms?"

Devs cannot do anything, but the community can.
Announcing the efforts of miners to keeping the environment safe and reducing carbon emissions, would show mining activities is not as bad as it is reported to be. The major issue with this, is how most media houses prefer to report unsettling news about bitcoin, for more engagements.

- Jay -

[Charles-Tim]

Some people do not care about the great amount of electricity all other industries are using to power their continuing functionality and profit making. Even if bitcoin is not existing, and there is still continuous deforestation (in which plants that take in carbon dioxide are reducing in population across the world) and release of green house gases into the atmosphere by vehicles and industries, there would be global warming and more thawing of permafrost.

I am always surprised that some people are just bitcoin critics but do not know the truth about what is actually happening. Is electricity even only the cause of global warming? No. It even also depends on how the electricity is generated. There are clean/green energy generation from wind, solar, nuclear and well constructed hydroelectric power plants.

This is still this year Coinshare research about bitcoin mining and to what extent it is deteriorating the environment in relation to release of green house gases when compared to other human activities:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5383881.msg59129918#msg59129918
The bitcoin mining network CoinShares research

This was the conclussion:

Conclusion

In the grand scheme of things, the carbon emissions emitted by electricity providers supplying the Bitcoin mining network are inconsequential. At 0.08 % of global CO2 emissions, removing the entire mining network from global demand—and thereby depriving hundreds of millions of people of their only hope for a fair and accessible form of money—would not amount to anything more than a rounding error.

"Will Bitcoin ever become environmentally friendly?"

Yes, it can, and is to an extent already.

Yes, before China banned bitcon, over 75% of the electricity used to mine bitcoin worldwide are from clean energy. Likely it reduced after the ban, but reduced to 50%, 60% or less as Kazakhsta and miners from countries that started to mine or increase the mining hashrate likely generate more from fossil fuel. But after, miners have proposed and some are working on converting fuel waste to energy, even one petroleum company giant in USA is working on this to make it possible in some countries that have crude oil refineries, and here is another one.

[coolcoinz]

I'm more concerned that we're succumbing to this eco terrorism that seems to imply that we're some kind of destroyers of the environment. That bitcoiners are irresponsible and are wasting energy mining something that doesn't do anything and doesn't help the world in any way.

What is eco terrorism? The idea that we should ban everything that produces greenhouse gases. We should somehow make people buy those inefficient and expensive electric cars, just because they don't burn fuel. We should make countries shut down their coal burning industry and build inefficient and expensive wind generators, and so on.
I think that "eco" industry is a big scam and countries that participated in it for many years like Germany are already experiencing the effects of their actions. A few months ago the EU was trying to enforce a ban on gasoline and diesel engines, but  Germany opposed this. We're talking about a country that used to vote for sanctions against EU members with high CO2 emissions.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/germany-rejects-eu-plan-ban-new-fossil-fuel-cars-2035-2022-06-21/

[NotATether]

I wrote a blog post that explains the problem with the practicality with Proof of Stake, why Bitcoin will never switch to PoS, and how Bitcoin miners can slow and even reverse climate change. Read it here: Bitcoin Being Energy Efficient? (no ads, they were not profitable so I got rid of them. I might just introduce a tip address instead.)

[o_e_l_e_o]

Bitcoin mining is uniquely placed to facilitate and enhance the move towards 100% renewable energy.

With standard electricity production, such as via burning coal or natural gas, supply can be adjusted to meet demand. More demand on the network? Burn more stuff. Less demand on the network? Burn less stuff. Straightforward.

With renewable electricity production, this is not possible. How do you create more wind for turbines or decrease the amount of sunlight hitting your solar panels? You can't. So you need to do something known as demand response. Demand response means changing the amount of consumption, rather than the amount of production. So whenever the power companies have a low amount of production with a high amount of demand, they can pay customers to reduce their electricity consumption. Bitcoin miners are well placed in such a scenario to be able to immediately reduce their electricity consumption without any lasting effects on future operations, and so provide a good demand response buffer for the network. This is already happening in places like Texas.

And then look at the flip side as well. When demand is low, with traditional electricity production then the power company scales down their operations. Again, they can't do that with renewables. So instead they generate a bunch of electricity which goes to waste, they have to dump, and they don't get paid for. Instead, bitcoin mining comes along and can immediately ramp up its consumption to utilize this otherwise completely wasted energy. The miners are happy since they get cheap green energy, and the green energy company is happy since they make money on electricity which would otherwise be completely wasted and earn them not a single cent.

And so not only does bitcoin mining facilitate a robust renewable energy network, but it even incentivizes production of new renewable generation. I'm not going to build a big solar panel system if I know that the local grid will only utilize ~50% of the energy I produce and the other ~50% is going to be completely wasted and earn me nothing. It won't be profitable. But if I know that at times of low demand there are bitcoin miners who will scoop up every last kWh I produce and I'll get paid for 100% of the energy I produce, then that becomes a much more attractive investment. Bitcoin mining is fairly unique in that it can be located anywhere there is electricity being produced - right next to a solar farm in the middle of nowhere is just fine - whereas most other industries need a lot of surrounding infrastructure (transport, water, waste/sewage, etc).

[NotATether]

And so not only does bitcoin mining facilitate a robust renewable energy network, but it even incentivizes production of new renewable generation. I'm not going to build a big solar panel system if I know that the local grid will only utilize ~50% of the energy I produce and the other ~50% is going to be completely wasted and earn me nothing. It won't be profitable. But if I know that at times of low demand there are bitcoin miners who will scoop up every last kWh I produce and I'll get paid for 100% of the energy I produce, then that becomes a much more attractive investment. Bitcoin mining is fairly unique in that it can be located anywhere there is electricity being produced - right next to solar farm in the middle of nowhere is just fine - whereas most other industries need a lot of surrounding infrastructure (transport, water, waste/sewage, etc).

Absolutely agree. Why aren't more politicians being told this?

Somebody needs to tell the Blockchain Association to make this their main talking point, and then have miners talk to utilities to actually make this happen.


I accidentally deleted the above post, so there's probably a deleted post counter now; but I'm dead serious about the no trolling rule. I will rule this thread with an iron fist. 

[DaveF]

All it really requires is a bit more planning. There are a lot of locations with a SURPLUS of green energy. Rivers don't stop flowing when there is no need for more power.
Nuclear plants don't shut off at night when demand is down and so on. Geo-thermal and so on. Although most power grids are interconnected not all are and places do exist that can tun on green. Add in some of the new large battery storage options and it 100% can be done. It will cost more to start BUT, if everyone is operating under the same costs then it's still a level competition.

But, I also think it would help if miner manufacturers started producing smaller lower power miners that can be run on home solar and the like without rewiring your enter house.
Smaller, quieter, less power draw. Same efficiency more or less but not screaming fans making anything but the best wiring glow. My condo is 100% solar / green electric power. But I can't put a full power miner in here.

I will rule this thread with an iron fist. 

Sorry, iron fist has been canceled.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/iron-fist-canceled-2-seasons-at-netflix-1152134/

-Dave

[franky1]

I wrote a blog post that explains the problem with the practicality with Proof of Stake, why Bitcoin will never switch to PoS, and how Bitcoin miners can slow and even reverse climate change. Read it here: Bitcoin Being Energy Efficient? (no ads, they were not profitable so I got rid of them. I might just introduce a tip address instead.)

be careful
dont be too quick to stroke people to sleep that bitcoin is "too big to fail" that a switch over to PoS is impossible

knowing the 2 mandate tricks of Eth to switch to PoS
1. mandate that a deadline point be made where by difficulty wont follow the blocktime rules but instead just periodically increase and only increase until unmanageable to solve blocks via PoW mining.
2 mandate that on such date PoS validators take over the block confirm process.

now how to push it into happening in bitcoin.. well again look to history. 2 tactics
its not about needing users agreement of user node..s its about the economic nodes of exchanges and merchants to treat a forked coin as the master chain..
the NY agreement of many exchanges in 2017 done this by treating the UAHF mandated activation fork that created a split where there was a segwit flagging chain as the master chain to follow. where the other split became the offshoot altcoin

and ofcourse the code itself to enforce the mandate and the rejection of those not flagging for the mandate.. that was blockstream sponsored devs.

looking at the past both the NY agreement of economic nodes and the code to support the mandated upgrade were both sponsored by DCG.

now imagine if government regulators pushed that scheme to happen in 2017 whereby the mandated upgrade was not segwit but PoS
where by large businesses had to comply under law/regulation, rather than sponsorship/bribe/payment.

dont turn this into a debate about the 2017 events of taking sides.. think about this as protocol risk of events repeating by a malicious actor(regulators) pulling the mandate grenade

[o_e_l_e_o]

Smaller, quieter, less power draw. Same efficiency more or less but not screaming fans making anything but the best wiring glow. My condo is 100% solar / green electric power. But I can't put a full power miner in here.

Now there's a neat idea. Most states (and probably most countries?) have a set up where if you are generating your own electricity at home, then any excess you produce and cannot use/store is sold back to the grid. Depending on your net metering tariff, you will probably be more profitable using that excess electricity to mine bitcoin than you will be by selling it back to the grid. And that can tie in brilliantly with the demand response system I outlined above. Sudden surge in demand for extra electricity? Then the grid operator can up the rates at which they will buy your electricity from you, making it more profitable for you to stop mining bitcoin and start selling your electricity to the grid.

A network of homes all producing their own renewable energy and with a small bitcoin miner to act as a demand response back up. Amazing decentralization for bitcoin, optimal profits for the home owners flipping between mining bitcoin and selling their excess, and a robust 100% renewable electricity grid with a huge reserve capacity it can draw on when required. Win-win-win.

[348Judah]

I remember writing a topic concerning bitcoin miners and the new introduced data center from eco to leverage on when i saw the updates online some few months with the topic Bitcoin Miners Can Leverage on ECOS Data Center but what gives more concern in this is that are they truly giving out the best and expected change to lit up the challenges in mining industry? take a look at this:

Eco-friendliness does not imply low power consumption

Yes this is true about the entire scenario, but in addition to that, could an average miner be able to afford the cost for their services after careful considerations? Also, i believe it would have been more appreciated if ECOS centered on green energy to be more environmental friendly.

Armenia patronizes the blockchain/mining sector and has allowed the creation of FEZ with unique conditions such as 0% income tax and 0% VAT, 0% import and export duties, 0% property and real estate taxes for the next 25 years, which allows our partners to receive maximum revenue on capital.https://bitcoinist.com/a-new-country-for-bitcoin-mining-officially-opens-its-doors/amp/

And to me, i believe that miners are not going to enjoy anything free than having more hectic cost on the overhead cost of mining after receiving their reward just on the utility of the ECOS facilities, the above statement only work in favour of ECOS and not the miners, news can be misleading it not carefully studied.

[DaveF]

Smaller, quieter, less power draw. Same efficiency more or less but not screaming fans making anything but the best wiring glow. My condo is 100% solar / green electric power. But I can't put a full power miner in here.

Now there's a neat idea. Most states (and probably most countries?) have a set up where if you are generating your own electricity at home, then any excess you produce and cannot use/store is sold back to the grid. Depending on your net metering tariff, you will probably be more profitable using that excess electricity to mine bitcoin than you will be by selling it back to the grid. And that can tie in brilliantly with the demand response system I outlined above. Sudden surge in demand for extra electricity? Then the grid operator can up the rates at which they will buy your electricity from you, making it more profitable for you to stop mining bitcoin and start selling your electricity to the grid.

A network of homes all producing their own renewable energy and with a small bitcoin miner to act as a demand response back up. Amazing decentralization for bitcoin, optimal profits for the home owners flipping between mining bitcoin and selling their excess, and a robust 100% renewable electricity grid with a huge reserve capacity it can draw on when required. Win-win-win.

That would require a bit of back end programming that on the fly would be figuring the price of BTC vs hasrate vs power used and so on.
There is also the potential for alternative use of miners. I have a few old ones that have been under-clocked and more or less are space heaters.

philipma1957 started a thread about what he did a few years ago: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5160194.0

More things like that.

I dislike liquid cooling for a bunch of reasons, but on a semi-industrial scale it might not be the worst, generate hot water for some functions in buildings where regular heating might not be the best way to do things.

-Dave

[o_e_l_e_o]

That would require a bit of back end programming that on the fly would be figuring the price of BTC vs hasrate vs power used and so on.

Should be easy enough to do. With digital meters which send readings directly to the energy company, then the energy company could equally send updates on the price they will pay for electricity back to the meter. A small additional bit of programming to pull the current bitcoin hashrate and current bitcoin price from internet, and it is easy to work out the profitability of mining versus selling. And the user can of course set the limits they like, as some may wish to continue mining for the long term gains even if selling would be more profitable in the short term.

[franky1]

That would require a bit of back end programming that on the fly would be figuring the price of BTC vs hasrate vs power used and so on.

Should be easy enough to do. With digital meters which send readings directly to the energy company, then the energy company could equally send updates on the price they will pay for electricity back to the meter. A small additional bit of programming to pull the current bitcoin hashrate and current bitcoin price from internet, and it is easy to work out the profitability of mining versus selling. And the user can of course set the limits they like, as some may wish to continue mining for the long term gains even if selling would be more profitable in the short term.

many countries already have rated electric. no need to have smart meters that talk to energy suppliers every minute..
EG household bills. first 1kwh used per day at Xrate, 2-4kwh at Y rate
and power companies just send them a bill at the end of the month
via a monthly reading

as for hashes and mining.. many smart homes already have WIFI lighting. heck i can change my lighting from blue, white red by using a tablet. yep small devices including a light bulb have wifi and can accept commands and do functions.
a light bulb socket can accept electric. and in the bulb can be basically a USB miner dongle size device using part of the electric from the socket, whilst also lighting the room and send the hashes through wifi..
the technology already exists, it just needs to be put together.

lightbulb mining is easy. so 'heater' mining is easier

[hatshepsut93]

People say that Bitcoin mining incentivizes green energy, but isn't it incentivizing all energy? Miners are looking for the cheapest electricity possible, if in some location it is generated by fossil fuels, it's not their problem. There were reports that in some places mining resulted in re-opening of a previously closed coal power plant.

I personally don't feel the need to argue that Bitcoin is not contributing to global warming or pollution. Bitcoin is not perfect, nothing is, it's just one of its downsides. It's not big enough to cause any significant problems for the world.

[Charles-Tim]

People say that Bitcoin mining incentivizes green energy, but isn't it incentivizing all energy? Miners are looking for the cheapest electricity possible, if in some location it is generated by fossil fuels, it's not their problem. There were reports that in some places mining resulted in re-opening of a previously closed coal power plant.

I personally don't feel the need to argue that Bitcoin is not contributing to global warming or pollution. Bitcoin is not perfect, nothing is, it's just one of its downsides. It's not big enough to cause any significant problems for the world.

This is not an argument. No one is saying otherwise, that bitcoin mining is not emitting carbon.

According to this Coinshare report which you cn see its link above on my post:

Conclusion

In the grand scheme of things, the carbon emissions emitted by electricity providers supplying the Bitcoin mining network are inconsequential. At 0.08 % of global CO2 emissions, removing the entire mining network from global demand—and thereby depriving hundreds of millions of people of their only hope for a fair and accessible form of money—would not amount to anything more than a rounding error.

Bitcoin only contribute little and not an argument. More miners are turning towards the use of clean energy is what this thread is all about.

If it should be an argument, it should be that the world should go against the use of fossil fuels for energy production. Clean energy has be used to mine bitcoin profitably. The ones that releases carbon are also used for household, offices, mining of mineral resources and other industrial activities, but most pressure on bitcoin miners.

What I just hate about this world is that most people do not know the actual truth, but following what others are saying.

[Zlantann]

People say that Bitcoin mining incentivizes green energy, but isn't it incentivizing all energy? Miners are looking for the cheapest electricity possible, if in some location it is generated by fossil fuels, it's not their problem. There were reports that in some places mining resulted in re-opening of a previously closed coal power plant.

In recent times my attention has also been drawn to hydropower dams as a source of green energy because unlike solar and wind energies they can operate for 24 hours without any form of restrictions. There are some groups and individuals advocating for the conversion of some nonpowered to hydropower so that Bitcoin miners could have enough access to power. In the case of the United States out of 90,000 dams, only about 2,200 generate hydroelectric power.

Most of these hydropower dams are old and producing below capacity, hence Bitcoin miners can take advantage of these opportunities and finance some of the projects of transformation and rehabilitating some of these dams to produce the needed electric supply. The project might be expensive now, but the cost of electricity might be cheap in the future.

[o_e_l_e_o]

many countries already have rated electric. no need to have smart meters that talk to energy suppliers every minute..

Sure, but I was talking about the scenario where the energy supplier is buying back excess green energy being produced by individuals. In this scenario, the supplier would be able to broadcast to the meter of opted in customers within the necessary geographic area that they would be paid at premium rates for any electricity they sell back, allowing each individual's system to work out whether it was more profitable to keep mining bitcoin or to shut down their miner(s) and sell the electricity back instead, and then vice versa when the rates drop again. Could all be set up to happen automatically, providing a great reserve of green electricity the grid can draw on during periods of peak demand.

People say that Bitcoin mining incentivizes green energy, but isn't it incentivizing all energy?

It can obviously use all energy, and it will pay for whatever energy happens to be the cheapest. But as I outlined above, it can incentivize green energy in a way that few other industries can, by virtue of bitcoin mining requiring very little additional infrastructure, being entirely mobile, and being able to ramp up and down instantly without any long term negative effects (you can't just power down a whole factory, for example, without incurring significant costs in starting it all back up again in the future).

[so98nn]

At last someone talking about bitcoin and it’s CO2 emission problems in best sensible way. I always shouted this over the forum that there are more petrol and Disele engines, more refrigerators, more cold storage for perishables items in the world than the mining equipment’s which is being pain for government or environmental activists! No bitcoin will never contribute to pollution to that much level as what industries and data centers contribute and contributing since hundreds years now. They literally want it to be banned for the reasons of its pseudo anonymous nature and nothing else. They want bunch of reasons thrown away in the assembly so that they can say no to bitcoin and run their own bank in the traditional ways as they did always. That’s the summary of it. All the Eco friendly talks, CO2 emission and what not is just layer to hide stuff.