Bitcoin can compete with beef or crude oil in environmental impact | Smart news

Bitcoin mining is notoriously energy-intensive, but new research suggests it could contribute as much to climate change as the beef or crude oil industry, according to one estimate. In a study published Thursday in Scientific reportsresearchers compared the approximate environmental cost of mining the digital currency with the impact of other industries and countries.

“Within the general public, I think a lot of people are still just struggling with what Bitcoin is,” said Benjamin Jones, an environmental economist at the University of New Mexico and co-author of the study. Popular scienceis Miyo McGinn. “But we have to be aware of the huge impact it has on the environment. It’s very harmful.”

Bitcoin mining is the process by which new currency enters circulation and transactions are verified. This process requires specialized computers that solve complex mathematical problems. The first miner to solve a given problem wins a predetermined amount of the digital coins, writes New Scientistis Corryn Wetzel. The miners with the most powerful computers can make more guesses, so they can solve a problem faster and increase their chance of winning.

“Because it’s worth a lot of money, you have a lot of people participating in this guessing game,” Jones says New Scientist. “It uses a lot of electricity, and most of that electricity comes from fossil fuels.”

To calculate the impact of mining, the researchers looked at the number of bitcoins mined daily between 2016 and 2021. They considered the amount and type of energy the miners used, as well as their locations to estimate the emissions per coin, per New Scientist.

Using the social cost of carbon, a common metric to measure the economic damage caused by the greenhouse gas, the researchers calculated the climate cost of Bitcoin. On average, they found that for every dollar of bitcoin value produced, the process resulted in 35 cents in global climate damage – or 35 percent of market value. In comparison, the beef’s climate damage clocked in at 33 per cent of the market value, and the damage from petrol produced from crude oil was 41 per cent.

In May 2020, Bitcoin’s losses peaked at 156 percent of the coin’s price, according to the study.

“We find more cases between 2016-2021 where Bitcoin is more harmful to the climate than a single bitcoin is actually worth,” Jones said in a statement. “In other words, Bitcoin mining, in some cases, creates climate damage that exceeds a coin’s value. This is extremely troubling from a sustainability perspective.”

Carbon emissions for mining a single bitcoin rose from 0.9 tonnes in 2016 to 113 tonnes in 2021 – a 126-fold increase. The industry’s annual carbon footprint is comparable to Greece, according to Digiconomist. And in 2020, Bitcoin used 75.4 terawatt hours of electricity – more than Austria (69.9) or Portugal (48.4).

But the environmental impact of mining this cryptocurrency doesn’t just come from the emissions. “In addition to energy use, you need to consider hardware use and e-waste,” Alex de Vries, a digital currency researcher at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands who was not involved in the new research, told Popular science.

The equipment used for mining is highly specialized – it is only used to extract bitcoins, says de Vries Popular science. Therefore, the computer chips are obsolete within just one and a half years, then they become rubbish. A single Bitcoin transaction creates about 400 grams of e-waste, which is equivalent to 2.44 iPhone 12 units, according to Digiconomist, which de Vries founded.

“[Computing] devices end up in unknown places for unknown amounts of time, and can potentially leak toxic materials into the ground and water, he says. Popular science. “Or they’re thrown into an incinerator, and the toxic materials are released into the air.”

It is possible to produce cryptocurrency in a less energy-intensive way: Another popular cryptocurrency, Ethereum, made a change in September that was expected to cut electricity use by 99 percent. Jones tells New Scientist he hopes that Bitcoin will make a similar move.

For now, the climate impact of mining these coins remains high. The authors write that their results raise a “set of red flags for sustainability.” Bitcoin supporters have called the virtual currency “digital gold”. But “from a climate damage perspective,” the authors write, “it functions more like ‘digital crude’.”