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This issue is not going away. In fact it is starting to get in the way of adoption.

Bitcoin will lead a revolution in cheap efficient energy. Whoever has the cheapest energy gets all the coin!

We're gonna burn more energy! So what, we pay for it! Fuck transport, saunas, mars-travels, flights to global warming conventions, barbequeues... the energy is better spent on hashing

I like this part:

"Apocalyptic headlines that bitcoin would consume all of the world’s energy by 2020 echo back to warnings from the late 1990s about the internet and its growing appetite for energy, including one Forbes article in 1999 that predicted that “[…]half of the electric grid will be powering the digital-Internet economy within the next decade”.

From IEA, International Energy Agency

Also see https://www.theepochtimes.com/bitcoin-mining-and-the-beauty-of-capitalism_2725263.html.

Can we mail this to every newspaper that reported apocalyptic headlines about Bitcoin’s impact on global warming? We need some of these guys to make some corrections...

This should go mainstream.

I find it a little strange so much attention is focused on energy use when PoW is an intrinsically costly process, regardless of whether energy makes up a significant part of that cost. Like, more power efficient chips might reduce energy use in mining, but it won't reduce the total cost of mining because the cost is where the security comes from.

The question i have for people is, how much mining cost is enough to be reasonably sure the system is secure? Is spending $100,000 per block (almost $20 million per day) enough now? What about if bitcoin became the dominant world currency? How much would be enough then? Remember that at some point transaction fees will become the majority of the mining reward, and so higher security in the form of higher mining rewards will translate directly to higher fees.

I really wish there was some in-depth analysis available by how much the banking sector uses throughout the world. That would put an end to the age old argument that bitcoin is worse for the planet than banking!

https://cbeci.org/comparisons/

Globally, one analysis estimates that the bitcoin is powered by at least 74% renewable electricity as of June 2019. Another analysis of data from 93 mining facilities (representing 1.7 GW, or about a third of global mining capacity) estimates that 76% of the identified energy mix includes renewables.

Based on these analyses and data from IPO filings of hardware manufacturers and insights on mining facility operations and pool compositions, bitcoin mining is likely responsible for 10‑20 Mt CO2 per year, or 0.03-0.06% of global energy-related CO2 emissions.

and lets see how much banks worldwide use, including the building of massives skyscrapers and thousands of people commuting every day to these buildings, maintenance and so on

Pretty fair article actually.

0.1-0.3% of global electricity use

Not to say that's a huge amount, but that's still a huge amount for something that 99/100 people don't know about.

(2nd time)

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Andreas M. Antonopoulos Transcript

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Bitcoin Energy use is damaging the Climate ??

Andreas. . . So, I think this premise misunderstands both the function and the operation of the system.

For one thing there is a vast difference between energy production and energy consumption.

The idea that energy consumption is damaging to the climate is not accurate from a scientific perspective.

If you use a solar panel to consume the energy of the Sun that is already hitting almost every square centimetre of the surface of this planet, which is an ominous amount of energy that goes unrehearsed, that doesn't damage climate.

In fact if you use the energy from a solar panel, or from geothermal energy, from wind or from hydro energy and you use that to mine Bitcoin what it does is, allows you to create a smoother return on investment on the infrastructure that you invested in Alternative Energy (AE). Which increases the investment in AE thereby decreasing the economic cost of for example, solar panels, wind turbines and so forth while further increasing that infrastructure build.

Because Bitcoin is location independent;

• It doesn't have to be near population centres that product the most carbon dioxide,
• It doesn't have to be connected to traditional or classical, hydrocarbon based energy.

In fact it's connected to the least expensive and the least transportable, generally that is AE, that is produced at a time of least demand (usually waste energy) and/or produced to far from locations of demand due to lack of distribution networks.

From an economic perspective therefore Bitcoin stimulates the development of AE the way no other system does, and at the same time people that make this argument fail to see that economic activity in itself requires a system of value and payments,

traditional we do that with two infrastructures;

• We do it with cash, it costs Billions of dollars to print, destroy, circulate, clean, remove, transport physical cash from place to place.
• Also digitally in the centres of Banks and Credit Cards those take enormous amounts of energy to house employees who work on the systems, the computer systems themselves, fraud checking. (process and systems that are replaced by Bitcoin)

So we've got to look at what this replaces, it replaces something that is already very very energy intensive, but that energy use is hidden, and it replaces it from energy intensive hidden energy use that happens in the centre of our cites where it produces the great carbon dioxide footprint and it removes it to the most remote areas and to the most alternative and renewable forms of energy.

In the end this is a more environmentally friendly technology than our traditional payments.

Once you understand it from that perspective this should be the choice of environmentalists.

https://bitcoincopodcast.com/andreas-antonopoulos-2019/

A bit of a tangent, but does anyone else find the "puzzle" explanation of mining lacking? As an analogy, "roll a d20 until you get a 20" isn't what I would consider to be a puzzle.

I think of mining as literally attaching energy to transactions, and this attached energy is what secures them. The merkle root number going into each new block couldn't exist without the transactions making up that new block. You're not just spending energy on random numbers.

This is also why I don't see bitcoin mining as wasting energy. You're not wasting it, you're spending it on security. It doesn't seem surprising to me that security would cost energy. In the same vein that cars don't waste energy because "all they do is translate you from one position to another".

What is missing: mining is driving renewable innovation and paying for otherwise unused overcapacity which funds more renewables. There are miners using excess natural gas as carbon capture as they can put machines anywhere - even in gas fields. This is driving innovation not creating CO2!

Please provide the report on how much banking industry consume as well. I bet it will be 10x more than Bitcoin.

Keep this report handy for when anything related to bitcoin reaches r/all and the trolls start complaining that bitcoin is destroying the planet.

Another classic example of misinformation perpetuated by the “perceived” threat of an alternative financial system. Hmmm. Any guesses as to why?

A strange feeling to see an accurate, data-led report from outside the bitcoinosphere.

Key points I've found so far....

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Around 75% of energy consumed by the network is renewable.

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" Sensational predictions about bitcoin consuming the entire world’s electricity – and, by itself, leading our world to beyond 2°C – would appear just that…sensational. "

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"bitcoin mining is likely responsible for 10‑20 Mt CO2 per year, or 0.03-0.06% of global energy-related CO2 emissions."