Before anyone makes excuses along the lines of "it's renewable from remote dams", that energy could could have always been used for something more productive. If it weren't for Bitcoin, they would be incentivized to build a datacenter there, build a smelting plant there, or even just build the transmission lines to get it to the grid.<p>Using renewable energy for Bitcoin takes that renewable energy out of the supply. How much coal is being burned in China because electricity pours into Bitcoin miners instead of onto a grid?
I'll just leave this other side of the story: <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/study-over-74-of-bitcoin-mining-is-powered-by-renewable-energy" rel="nofollow">https://cointelegraph.com/news/study-over-74-of-bitcoin-mini...</a>
It's a tradeoff, like every technology. Streaming video infrastructure and consumption probably creates more CO2 than all crypto put together.<p>People who don't like the underlying premise of Bitcoin (a currency outside of government control) will tend to highlight the negatives, while people who like the premise of Bitcoin will support the positives. Narratives such as the one presented in this article are an attempt to sway the undecided/uninterested to the "anti-Bitcoin" side. Indeed, the conclusion of the article suggests "regulating" cryptocurrency as a method of controlling emissions, exposing this as another attempt to block the spread of cryptocurrency.
Here is the link to the original study:
<a href="https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30255-7" rel="nofollow">https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30255-7</a><p>I was part of the peer-review process on this study. High quality research, although they made a last minute edit that IMHO lead them to overestimate CO2 emissions by 50% (15 vs 22 MtCO2/yr): <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/1139439068570193921" rel="nofollow">https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/113943906857019392...</a>
What makes me so sad is that bitcoin is an algorithmic solution to a well-defined problem. I can imagine some lucky genius might one day solve the exact same problem better. But the damage is done.<p>The whole planet is suffering for an algorithm that is not being improved quickly enough.<p>I want to show the suffering here. Imagine all the arithmetic that was done in Roman numerals, because it was the state of the art. I can really feel the burden of this algorithn. Maybe there is something better.
In case you were wondering what the carbon footprints of the top cities were: <a href="http://citycarbonfootprints.info/" rel="nofollow">http://citycarbonfootprints.info/</a><p><pre><code> Urban Cluster Footprint(Mt CO2)
Seoul 276.1 ±51.8
Guangzhou 272 ±46.2
New York 233.5 ±75.4
Hong Kong SAR 208.5 ±37.8
Los Angeles 196.4 ±43.7
Shanghai 181.0 ±44.6
Country of Singapore 161.1 ±34.1
Chicago 152.9 ±37.2
Tokyo / Yokohama 132.8 ±21.4
Riyadh 118.8 ±26.4
Dubai 110.8 ±31.0
Wuxi 110.4 ±25.8
Johannesburg 105.2 ±19.9
Tehran 104.4 ±28.2
Moscow 99.5 ±22.5
London 98.9 ±21.8
Benha 87.2 ±15.6
Beijing 83.7 ±19.1
Jakarta 83.7 ±15.6
Al - Ahmadi 80.6 ±19.3
Miami 80.3 ±21.9
Samut Prakan 80.0 ±17.9
Paris 78.0 ±25.5
Dallas 76.9 ±16.0
Tianjin 71.4 ±20.4
Istanbul 70.9 ±16.0
Detroit 70.6 ±15.4
Philadelphia 70.2 ±19.5
San Jose 70.0 ±19.7
</code></pre>
Hamburg is ranked #129 at 18Mt. By these numbers, Bitcoin's 22Mt is closer to Kansas City at #106. Kansas City and larger cities sum up to 5001.3 MT.
I am tired of people of coming up with these nonsense comparison. Bitcoin co2 emissions is the same as Hamburg. It uses more electricity than Las vegas etc. Have they accounted for the amount co2 the food that 1.8 million people in hamburg consume.
To secure an international currency this is exceptionally efficient. Compare it to the economic and energy costs of protecting a fiat currency with an army or allying with a country that has an army.