Bitcoin is green
You may have read that Bitcoin is an ecological catastrophe. But most of the alarming and worrying statements about this come from people who either don't understand Bitcoin or would like it to fail.
The truth is different. In fact, Bitcoin could simply be one of the key solutions to tackle the climate crisis and accelerate the transition to renewable energy. Bitcoin is actually an ecological solution.
Hard to believe? Read some expert opinions — and make your own.
"2.36% of the Bitcoin network is powered by carbon-negative sources, currently made almost entirely of previously atmosphere-bound methane from the Oil&Gas industry that was previously flared.”
Quantifying the carbon negative component of the Bitcoin network
Daniel Batten, September 2022
"Bitcoin mining possesses a combination of properties that makes it a uniquely flexible energy consumer.
This flexibility allows bitcoin miners to provide positive externalities to various energy systems globally, including strengthening vulnerable
electricity grids, improving the economics of renewable energy, mitigating natural gas flaring, and lowering heating costs by repurposing waste heat.”
How Bitcoin Mining Can Transform the Energy Industry
Arcane Research, September 2022
"To be clear: the claim that Bitcoin miners produce enormous quantities of e-waste is a purely academic fantasy.
[...] Further, Bitcoin ASICs are almost entirely recyclable, and contain no toxic or hard-to-recycle components, unlike conventional sources of e-waste like cell phones.”
Letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Michael Saylor, Nic Carter, Darin Feinstein et al., April 2022
"Bitcoin mining last year consumed 188 TWh out of about 155,000 TWh consumed globally for all uses. The energy mix used for Bitcoin mining was about 58 % sustainable under the definition used by the International Energy Agency, as compared to 31 % for the U.S. energy grid as a whole.”
Testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce
Brian Brooks, January 2022
"We see crypto and computing as part of the solution to one of the biggest problems in the renewable energy industry. [...] Computing is a better battery. Computing is an immediately deployable solution that can allow renewables to scale to their full potential today.”
Testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce
John Belizaire, January 2022
"The cryptocurrency is spurring use of renewable energy even as it undermines existing economic, political, and cultural elites.”
The Fake Environmentalist Attack on Bitcoin
Reason, November 2021
"Bitcoin consumed 62 TWh of electricity in 2020, which resulted in 33 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, insignificant in global terms, representing just 0.04 % of global primary energy consumption and 0.1 % of global carbon emissions”
Bitcoin Net Zero
NYDIG, September 2021
"The data shows Bitcoin’s energy use would represent just a rounding error in the construction, transportation or healthcare industries.”
Bitcoin's Energy Use Compared to Other Major Industries
Haas McCook, August 2021
"BITCOIN MINING ENERGY USE IS ONLY 0.117% WHEN COMPARED TO THE WORLD'S TOTAL ENERGY. IN Q2 2021, THE SUSTAINABLE ENERGY MIX REACHED 56%. [...]
Bitcoin mining uses a negligible
amount of energy, is rapidly becoming more efficient, and is powered by a higher mix of sustainable energy than any major country or industry.”
Global Bitcoin Mining Data Review Q2 2021
Bitcoin Mining Council, July 2021
"By 2026, emissions from Bitcoin will be less than a third of what they are today and by 2031, there will be none.”
Projecting Bitcoin's Future Energy Use
Hass McCook, June 2021
"One example of where Bitcoin mining acts as an energy sink is in oil fields, resulting in a direct reduction in methane emissions. [...] Several companies are building infrastructure to capture the methane at the wellhead and use the otherwise-wasted gas to mine bitcoin. [...] This means that oil producers can ensure a 24x reduction in emissions compared to venting that methane into the atmosphere.”
On Bitcoin’s Energy Consumption: A Quantitative Approach to a Subjective Question
Galaxy Digital, May 2021
"Bitcoin is the least energy-intensive, most efficient technology that we have, perhaps, discovered ever, in the history of the human race.
The world generates 160,000 TWh of energy a year. Of that, 50,000 TWh are wasted. Of that, 120 TWh of energy is used to run the entire Bitcoin network.”
Bitcoin and the Seven Layers of Security
Michael Saylor, May 2021
"Simply looking at Bitcoin’s total energy draw to date and dividing that by the number of transactions doesn’t make sense.”
How Much Energy Does Bitcoin Actually Consume?
Nic Carter, May 2021
"These ratios suggest that central banks are vastly more polluting than Bitcoin, indeed more polluting than the worst industrial offender you could imagine. Bitcoin, by implication, is among the most green technologies humanity has ever invented.”
What’s the Carbon Footprint of Fiat Money?
Peter St. Onge, May 2021
"We can say that Bitcoin consumes/emits less than half of what the gold mining industry does, and less than one-fifth of what bank branches and ATMs do.”
A comparison of Bitcoin's environmental impact with that of gold and banking
Hass McCook, May 2021
"The Bitcoin network functions as a unique energy buyer that could enable society to deploy substantially more solar and wind generation capacity. This deployment, along with energy storage, aims to facilitate the transition to a cleaner and more resilient electricity grid.”
Bitcoin is Key to an Abundant, Clean Energy Future
Square, April 2021
"A world with Bitcoin is a world that, at equilibrium, generates more electricity from renewable carbon-free sources."
Solar + Battery + Bitcoin Mining
Brett Winton, Yassine Elmandjra, Sam Korus, April 2021
"The ecological implications of Bitcoin are badly misunderstood and missold to the general public. We all want to preserve the planet and the idea of unnecessary energy waste is equally unacceptable to bitcoiners."
Why Bitcoin’s energy use won’t destroy the planet
Josef Tětek, April 2021
"The concept of Bitcoin as a threat to a renewable future actually has things exactly upside down. Far from being a blocker of a decarbonated future, Bitcoin mining can play an invaluable part as a building block in such a system. It is actually an incredible opportunity for us to increase the share of intermittent renewable generation in our electricity grids, without ruining the economics."
A Closer Look at the Environmental Impact of Bitcoin Mining
Christopher Bendiksen, March 2021
"Bitcoin has fundamental features that make it useful in the debate about energy: Bitcoin can leverage currently unharnessed energy production; Bitcoin mining can help remodel energy grids and make them greener; Bitcoin mining can improve social development."
Bitcoin, a gift to environment
Laurent Benichou, March 2021
"The idea that Bitcoin is mined mainly with coal in China is a tale. Yes, China is the biggest mining country, and yes, China’s energy mix is still mostly carbon-based. But it is not on coal plants that mining is mainly done there, it is on hydroelectric stations.
China has so many dams and run-of-river power plants that just the surplus from all these hydro-powered facilities would be enough to power 4 additional Bitcoin networks! So, no, Bitcoin is not charcoal black."
Bitcoin Mining Funds Green Energy
Sébastien Gouspillou, March 2021
"Bitcoin has created a global competition for low cost electricity that is driving further investment in renewable energy generation. Bitcoin provides a way to capture the value of every joule of electrical energy that we are able to generate."
Bitcoin Is Green Money
James Viggiano, Feb 2021
"The reason people are choosing Bitcoin is because it possesses almost all of the necessary characteristics of useful money with its brilliantly engineered design. [...] This system is perfectly engineered because of the way it uses geographically decentralized surplus energy (and other important innovations) to impenetrably protect the very characteristics that make it valuable."
Special Report: Energy Backed Money
Satoshi Energy, Dec. 2020
"Solar energy and cryptocurrencies are both based on principles of decentralization. Both are disrupting antiquated, opaque industries with large societal externalities (energy and banking). Both are following exponential adoption curves. And at an even more basic level: Bitcoin is energy."
The Solar-Bitcoin Convergence
Max Webster, Sep. 2020
“Part of the reason Bitcoin consumes so much electricity is because China lowered the clearing price of energy by overbuilding hydro capacity due to sloppy central planning. In a non-Bitcoin world, this excess energy would either have been used to smelt aluminum or would simply have been wasted.”
The Last Word on Bitcoin’s Energy Consumption
Nic Carter, May 2020
“Bitcoin mining is mainly located in global regions where there are ample supplies of renewable electricity available. We calculate an estimate of the renewables penetration in the energy mix powering the Bitcoin mining network at 73%, making Bitcoin mining more renewables-driven than almost every other large-scale industry in the world.”
The Bitcoin Mining Network
Coinshares, Dec. 2019
“A significant portion of Bitcoin’s energy consumption is generated from renewable resources. Bitcoin will spur innovation in the development of renewable energy technology & resources. Bitcoin consumes energy that is otherwise wasted, if not, flared into the atmosphere.”
Bitcoin Does Not Waste Energy
Parker Lewis, August 2019
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