Bitcoin mining almost as bad as crude oil for climate: Study

Bitcoin mining is more harmful than beef production and almost as environmentally unsustainable as crude oil, according to research. The digital currency causes more damage to the climate over time, warn researchers at the University of New Mexico in an analysis published in Scientific reports.

The study suggests that bitcoin, as opposed to being “digital gold”, is much more energy intensive, affecting the environment in the same way as beef, natural gas and crude oil.

Co-author of the study, Professor Benjamin Jones, of the University of New Mexico, said: “Globally, the mining, or production, of bitcoin uses huge amounts of electricity, mainly from fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas. This causes huge amounts of air pollution and carbon emissions, which affect our global climate and health negatively.

“We find several cases between 2016 and 2021 where bitcoin is more harmful to the climate than a single bitcoin is actually worth. In another way, bitcoin mining in some cases creates climate damage that exceeds a coin’s value. This is extremely disturbing from a sustainability perspective. “

The research team investigated how bitcoin damages the environment, according to three sustainability criteria: whether the estimated climate damage increases over time, whether the climate damage of bitcoin exceeds the market price, and how the climate damage as a proportion of the market price is compared to others. industries and products.

Their results show that CO2-like emissions from bitcoin mining have increased 126 times from 0.9 tons per coin in 2016 to 113 tons per coin in 2021.

Climate damage peaked in May 2020, according to the report, when 156 percent of the coin price caused environmental damage, making the climate damage more than the coins’ actual value.

Every US dollar of bitcoin market value generated led to $1.56 in global climate damage that month, according to the findings.

The climate damage for electricity produced from natural gas was on average 46 per cent and for petrol produced from crude oil it was 41 per cent.

Bitcoin’s environmental damage, however, exceeds that of beef production, where climate damage accounts for 33 percent of its market value.

Study co-author Professor Robert Berrens, also at the University of New Mexico, added: “Across the class of digitally scarce goods, our focus is on those cryptocurrencies that rely on proof-of-work production techniques, which can be very energy intensive.

“Within a broader effort to mitigate climate change, the political challenge is to create governance mechanisms for an emerging, decentralized industry, which includes energy-intensive proof-of-work cryptocurrencies.”

Jones added: “We find no evidence that bitcoin mining is becoming more sustainable over time.”

Produced in collaboration with SWNS Talker.

This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News.