Bitcoin Mining is warming the planet: Greenpeace FUD
The debate over Bitcoin mining and network energy use rages on, and the latest round of unsubstantiated FUD has come from Greenpeace.
Environmental activist organization Greenpeace hit out at the crypto industry and the Bitcoin network in response to an article published last year.
On October 17, Greenpeace wrote that “Bitcoin mining is driving millions of tons of new global warming pollution in the US.”
Its primary criticism was the use of waste energy from gas flaring to power Bitcoin miners. Greenpeace claimed that burning this gas “does nothing to reduce fossil fuel consumption and even keeps old gas wells open”.
Baseless Bitcoin Mining Tales
In reality, gas flaring happens anyway, so this carbon goes into the atmosphere anyway. Bitcoin miners convert this otherwise wasted energy into a productive process rather than letting it go up in smoke.
Greenpeace also cited no sources for their “millions of tons of pollution” claims. This may be because it is not possible to accurately measure the carbon footprint of mining.
Market analyst Willy Woo commented:
“Would be nice if you backed up your position with hard data and science instead of citing a narrative, which frankly is the norm these days.”
According to the Cambridge University Electricity Consumption Index, the entire global Bitcoin network currently uses an estimated 106 terawatt hours (TWh) per year. Demand has actually been in decline this year due to the bear market and more efficient mining hardware.
By comparison, this is almost half of the losses for the transmission and distribution of electricity in the USA alone, which is an estimated 206 TWh per year. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated that these losses were equivalent to about 5% of the electricity distributed in the United States from 2016 to 2020.
Furthermore, the renewable energy cap in China, which is a cut-off rate for an oversupply of energy that cannot reach the grid, is around 105 TWh per year, according to Cambridge University.
Both of these are completely wasted sources of energy. Together, they spend three times more than the Bitcoin network.
Runs a global monetary system
Back to gas flaring, Cambridge Uni estimates that the global extraction potential for this activity is 688 TW/h. Again, this is a complete waste of energy from burning fossil fuels that could power the entire BTC network 6.5 times.
Comparing Bitcoin’s energy consumption to other industries also highlights how little it actually uses:
Bitcoin’s global energy consumption share is only 0.48%. This energy is used to power a decentralized permissionless monetary network. More importantly, Bitcoin has never been hacked and is instantly available to anyone in any country at any time.
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