Environmental Costs of Bitcoin Worse Over Time • Earth.com
The environmental costs of the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin are shockingly high and only getting worse, according to a University of New Mexico study. The experts report that the climate impacts of Bitcoin mining are comparable to natural gas or beef production.
“We find no evidence that Bitcoin mining is becoming more sustainable over time,” said Professor Benjamin A. Jones. “Rather, our results suggest the opposite: Bitcoin mining is getting dirtier and more damaging to the climate over time. In short, Bitcoin’s environmental footprint is moving in the wrong direction.”
Working with Professor Robert Berrens and Andrew Goodkind, Professor Jones estimated the climate damage associated with Bitcoin mining between January 2016 and December 2021. The experts found that in 2020 Bitcoin mining alone used 75.4 terawatt hours of electricity (TWh). This is higher than the electricity used by Austria or Portugal in the same year.
“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 negatively affects our global climate and health,” says Professor Jones.
“We find several cases between 2016-2021 where Bitcoin is more harmful to the climate than a single Bitcoin is actually worth. Put another way, Bitcoin mining in some cases creates climate damage that exceeds a coin’s value. This is extremely worrying from a sustainability perspective.”
The study also revealed that CO2 equivalent emissions from electricity production for Bitcoin mining increased 126 times from 2016 to 2021.
The estimates indicate that each Bitcoin mined in 2021 generated $11,314 in climate damage, with total global damages exceeding $12 billion between 2016 and 2021. The calculations also indicate that in May 2020, each dollar of Bitcoin generated was associated with $1.56 in global climate damage.
“Across the class of digitally scarce goods, our focus is on those cryptocurrencies that rely on proof-of-work (POW) production techniques, which can be very energy-intensive,” Professor Berrens said. “Within broader efforts to mitigate climate change, the political challenge is to create governance mechanisms for an emerging, decentralized industry, which includes energy-intensive POW cryptocurrencies. We believe that such efforts will be aided by measurable, empirical signals of potentially unsustainable climate damage, in economic terms.”
The research is published in the journal Scientific reports.
Check us out at EarthSnap, a free app provided by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.
–—
Of Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff writer
