Carbon emissions are comparable to those of first-tier cities in Europe and the United States, and Bitcoin production has become an energy consumption "black hole"

According to CBECI, Bitcoin's annual energy consumption even exceeds Switzerland's annual energy consumption of 58.46 terawatt hours. If Bitcoin is compared to a country, it ranks 41st in the global energy consumption rankings of countries and regions . It is understood that CBECI is updated every 30 seconds. As of the time of publication of the British Independent on July 3, data showed that Bitcoin has consumed 7.57 gigawatts of electricity this year, accounting for about 2.1% of the world's power supply.

According to the BBC News, last year, an agency predicted that Bitcoin's energy consumption was equivalent to that of Ireland. This year, Cambridge claimed that it had surpassed Switzerland . Obviously, Bitcoin's energy consumption has increased significantly in the past year. Given the continuous strengthening of network computing power and the accelerated popularity of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin's energy demand will continue to rise in the future.

Michel Rauchs, co-founder of CBECI, said: "We want to present the facts in the most intuitive way. Visitors to CBECI can judge for themselves the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining machines." He added that CBECI is just an objective platform that provides reliable information and data. Its purpose is to use data to show the impact of the Bitcoin mining industry on society and the environment.

CBECI can not only display the energy consumption of Bitcoin in real time, but also provide a comparison dimension with other entities. For example, hydroelectric power can run Bitcoin mining machines 69 times, biofuel power generation can run Bitcoin mining machines 10 times, and solar and wind power can run Bitcoin mining machines 23 times.

CBECI's assessment is very close to the statistics previously made by Power Compare, a British electricity tariff comparison company, which estimates that Bitcoin's annual electricity consumption is between 55.63 and 73.12 terawatt-hours, ranking 39th in the global national and regional energy consumption rankings.

The industry generally has a positive attitude towards the assessment of Bitcoin's energy consumption, believing that the energy consumption, electricity consumption and emissions of cryptocurrency are very important to environmental protection and should be given a higher level of attention and vigilance. In fact, since most institutions can only make predictions based on lagging data, there is no most reliable statistics on Bitcoin's energy consumption, so its specific emission scale also needs more comprehensive analysis and assessment.

The interdisciplinary research team at TUM pointed out that the computer capacity of Bitcoin mining machines increased fourfold in 2018 alone. As of now, 68% of the global Bitcoin mining machine network is located in Asia, 17% in Europe, and the remaining 15% in North America.

Coincidentally, a report by TUM's statistics and science magazine Joule coincides with this, which states that the electricity required for Bitcoin mining machines produces about 22 million tons of carbon dioxide per year , which is equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of Kansas City, USA.

In this regard, Alex de Vries, an accountant at PricewaterhouseCoopers and a Bitcoin expert, said that compared with energy consumption, the most important thing is to clarify the scale of carbon footprint as soon as possible. In his signed article "Bitcoin's Growing Energy Problem" published in Joule, he pointed out that the energy consumption of the Bitcoin mining industry is growing day by day, which is an extreme difference compared with the normal financial system, and this will definitely do more harm than good to the world's response to the climate change crisis.

Deutsche Welle wrote that even for people who don't use Bitcoin, a single search on Google consumes 0.3 watt-hours (about 0.0003 kWh), and if you search on Google 20 times, it's equivalent to using an energy-saving lamp for one hour. Globally, the Internet causes more than 33 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, which is the sum of Germany's entire aviation system's airborne carbon dioxide emissions. In this way, computers that require huge computing power and may "mine" Bitcoin day and night will generate incalculable emissions .

In this regard, CoinShares, a British cryptocurrency investment product and research provider, pointed out that the Bitcoin mining industry has long been "inseparable" from renewable energy, and the "huge carbon footprint" proposed by some institutions is questionable. CoinShares is one of the analysis institutions that believes that Bitcoin mining is profitable. In its latest report, it pointed out that Bitcoin is not "extremely" harmful to the earth, and 74% of "mining activities" are completed through renewable energy electricity .

According to the latest data from CoinShares, CoinTelegraph, a US digital currency information website, shows that renewable energy power generation accounts for nearly 74.1% of the energy mix of the Bitcoin mining industry , which is four times the average share of renewable energy in the global energy mix. Interestingly, this proportion is 3.7% lower than the 77.8% announced by CoinShares in November last year. The decline in proportion is due to the emergence of new "mining clusters" in countries and regions where traditional fuel power generation is prevalent.

CoinShares pointed out that Bitcoin mining is mainly located in areas with renewable electricity supply around the world, which is greener than almost all other large-scale industries. In addition to New York and Russia, the "mining farms" in Washington and Oregon in the United States, British Columbia and Quebec in Canada, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Georgia all mainly use renewable energy to generate electricity.

Some experts pointed out that Bitcoin mining is of great significance to the development of renewable energy, and that it is cheaper and more convenient to transmit renewable energy electricity through optical fiber than to set up ultra-high voltage power grids. In fact, although the "mine" is highly mobile and requires very little manpower, the huge power consumption, high-cost mining machines and cooling equipment maintenance costs are still "unbearable" for Bitcoin participants , so areas with abundant power resources and low electricity prices have become the first choice for "mines".

(Text: China Energy News reporter Wang Lin; Source: China Energy News)