are these Botcoin numbers verified at all? that is two percent of some common electrical grid? or remote hydro-power sites or something.. seems like a really large number, and lots of reasons to exaggerate/misrepresent it
The current bitcoin total hash rate is obviously public information (currently about 6E20 hash/second). I was also able to find a report on average network-wide hashing efficiency, which is obviously self-reported, but is at least in line with logic (just slightly trails the current highest efficiency ASIC miners). That gives around 13 GW of total instantaneous power consumption. The US produced around 4000 TWh last year, which is an average of about 460 GW of power. That would make global bitcoin power consumption equal to about 2.8% of US energy production.
It looks like estimates for global energy production are over 30 TWh last year, so that would mean bitcoin is around 1/3rd of one percent of total global power usage.
The EIA was recently ordered to start investigating/receiving reports on the actual numbers after a preliminary report indicated it was consuming between 0.6%-2.3% of total US consumption:
I can't speak to the 2% figure, but as for the power sources, Bitcoin is somewhat unique, as it is ostensibly the most price-sensitive, most location-agnostic, and most interruptible instance of large-scale power consumption. Mining is done strictly for profit, so it only performed at any scale strictly where it is profitable.
Ironically, this nature can actually fortify the electric grid in some areas, such as Texas. Bitcoin mining businesses have discovered that the unreliability of the existing grid can be mitigated through vertical integration - they create renewable power generation facilities, and when the cost of electricity on the grid is low (because demand is low and supply is high), they use their own renewably-sourced energy for next to nothing.
When grid conditions deteriorate in Texas' deregulated energy market, wholesale electricity prices surge, as those are times when demand approaches or exceeds supply.
When that happens, the electricity being generated by these vertically integrated companies is worth more being sold to the grid than it's worth being used to mine bitcoin, so the miners all shut off (within milliseconds, as this is all automated), and the power that location generates starts getting sold to the grid, which increases supply, helping to lower the electricity prices, and to keep the lights on for everyday people.
It's not a magic bullet that fixes the entire grid, but there is a growing body of evidence saying that it helps grid reliability in Texas more than it hurts, and these vertical integrations are overwhelmingly done with renewable energy sources.
I'm sure the location-agnostic aspect of Bitcoin mining does lend itself to deployment in places where power is plentiful, but where there is little local demand, and the cost of transporting that power far away is cost prohibitive, though I don't have specific example of that.
I've favorited your comment. You spell things out very clearly and accurately.
> I'm sure the location-agnostic aspect of Bitcoin mining does lend itself to deployment in places where power is plentiful, but where there is little local demand, and the cost of transporting that power far away is cost prohibitive, though I don't have specific example of that.
https://www.coinmint.one/ is a specific example of that. Power is delivered directly from the Moses-Saunders dam to a shuttered aluminum smelting plant. Sending the power anywhere else, is cost prohibitive due to the remote location and low local power needs. Connecting it to the grid would overwhelm what is there, so new construction would be needed.
This Cambridge group is the best source I know of that estimates bitcoin mining energy usage and location. There are wide error bars because we don't know exactly what mining hardware is being used, even though we know the approximate hashrate. https://ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci
If their numbers and methodology are correct, bitcoin mining energy use in the US is somewhere between 0.8-3.8% of US electric generation. However, we don't know how much of this mining is actually connected to the grid. There are some off grid operations, like waste methane harvesters. The US government is starting to collect this data, so we might have more precise public information soonish.
We know the rate at which bitcoin are mined, and we know exactly how much a bitcoin is worth, so it is straightforward to calculate how much money the miners are making -- namely, 17 billion USD per year at the current price of bitcoin. Since there are no barriers to entry to becoming a miner, we can expect that the effort spent on mining to match the rewards from mining almost exactly (since bitcoin miners are economically rational). We don't know what fraction of that $17 billion of effort (spending) consists of electricity, but basically all spending damages the environment. If some miner for example decides to pay researchers to come up with a more efficient mining algorithm, well, it takes a lot of carbon emissions (and other environmental harms) to raise, educate, feed and otherwise maintain a researcher. (It takes a lot of carbon emissions to raise, educate and maintain any person, even Greta Thunberg.)
If the price of bitcoin were to double, the (collective) rewards to mining double, too, and so does the environmental damage. In about 4 years, the reward for mining a block is scheduled to halve, and the environmental damage will at that time be about half of what it is now (a few months after the previous halving) provided the price of bitcoin does not change. All the miners know exactly when the reward is going to halve, so as the halving-date approaches, about 4 years from now, miners will invest less and less in mining hardware and other capital improvements, which "smooths out" the damage so that it decreases somewhat smoothly between now and then instead of suddenly halving on the day the reward halves.
I'm still amazed how Bitcoin can damage the environment by just existing yet AI, air conditioning, aluminum smelting, and cat videos have subtle effects that are hard to determine.
- increasingly large cars far bigger than required from a utilitarian perspective
- luxury good production
- theme parks/fireworks displays
- cruise ships
Etc.
Bitcoin/crypto opposition is 95% pushed by embedded financial interests that will use any lever to protect their control over money and the power it gives them.
