
BitcoinEmissions – A project to calculate CO2 emissions of mining bitcoin - thanatosmin
https://github.com/peenuty/BitcoinEmissions
======
pavlov
So, to offset a Bitcoin, plant 1.6 trees and keep them alive for a century
[1].

[1] "On average, one broad leaf tree will absorb in the region of 1 tonne of
carbon dioxide during its full life-time (approximately 100 years)."
[http://www.carbonfootprint.com/plantingtrees.html](http://www.carbonfootprint.com/plantingtrees.html)

~~~
kaybe
And then bury it so it doesn't rot and rerelease the CO2. Otherwise you're
just moving the problem to the future.

~~~
zitterbewegung
Unless the tree burns down you realize that it incorporates the CO2 in its
structure right?

~~~
wongarsu
Most trees die at a certain age (or due to other factors). By default this
leads to the tree falling over and starting to decompose, a process which
releases most of the CO2 formerly stored in that tree.

The obvious solution is to plant an entire forest to ensure that new trees
grow to replace old trees.

------
comboy
And so will AC systems in local banks.

The problem is not that something consumes energy if there are people willing
to pay for that energy. The problem is how we generate electricity. It's
getting better, but it has nothing to do with bitcoin.

~~~
joosters
The point about Bitcoin in particular is that it is _deliberately_ consuming
vast amounts of computing power.

The mathematics behind the individual transactions and ledger maintenance are
relatively simple. Getting computers to do this part requires almost no
effort. It's the deliberate 'find a needle in a haystack' part of the protocol
(which is there to ratelimit the creation of bitcoins) that wastes all of the
energy.

The fact that this needle-finding task is deliberately difficult, wasteful and
time-consuming is the horrific part.

~~~
celticninja
It's only wasteful if there is a better alternative, which there isn't so it's
not. If you don't understand bitcoin it is easy to make the mistake that the
electricity is just used to generate bitcoins, however it is also used to
secure an international low cost payment network.

~~~
mpyne
> secure an international low cost payment network

That's something which is actually handled fine in fiat, believe it or not.

Nor is Bitcoin "low cost": Even with the price in the dumps recently a Bitcoin
transaction still averages about $10 __per __transaction.

Nor can Bitcoin feasibly handle international commerce, given that it's still
capped in theory to 7 transactions per second, and in practice to 2-3
transactions per second, and this total capacity also has to support non-
remittance transfers such as the normal exchange hackings (like BTER today)
and SatoshiDice (which can take up about half of all Bitcoin protocol capacity
on some days).

~~~
unabridged
>a Bitcoin transaction still averages about $10 per transaction.

How does this make it not low cost? Transferring that $10 still only costs
$.02

>capped in theory to 7 transactions per second

Not 7 transactions but 7 settlements per second, which clear in under 60
minutes. You can have as many binding transactions per second as you want off
the chain.

~~~
inoop
> How does this make it not low cost? Transferring that $10 still only costs
> $.02

Assuming max TPS rate of 3tps, a 10-minute block will contain 3 * 60 * 10 =
1800 transactions. Each block generates 25btc, which is equivalent $6125 at
the current $245 price.

Each transaction therefore costs $6125 / 1800 = $3.40.

Of this only a small amount is paid for the by the person who creates the
transaction, the rest of paid for by those who hold Bitcoin.

~~~
mpyne
> Of this only a small amount is paid for the by the person who creates the
> transaction, the rest of paid for by those who hold Bitcoin.

I always find it ironic that the illusion of low fees per transaction in
Bitcoin is subsidized by the ongoing inflation of the money supply. Apparently
inflation is acceptable when it helps evangelize the product you're trying to
sell, but it's not acceptable monetary policy in any other situation.

------
DennisP
This is one of the reasons that people are working on proof-of-stake, which
secures a cryptocurrency without mining. There are some good technical
articles on the ethereum blog, eg:

[https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/05/stake/](https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/05/stake/)

[https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/01/10/light-clients-proof-
sta...](https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/01/10/light-clients-proof-stake/)

~~~
wyager
Proof of Stake is fundamentally broken.

If there's a chain fork (which is the important corner case that Proof of Work
is excellent at dealing with), there is no incentive for a Proof of Stake
holder not to "vote" on both forks. This reduces network security
substantially.

It also leads to the rich gaining more and more wealth over time.

Proof of Work leads to moderate energy consumption, but it's negligible
compared to the utility of a Bitcoin.

I wonder how much CO2 it takes to make around $250 in cash?

~~~
DennisP
Voting both forks is the "nothing at stake" problem, which is discussed
extensively on the ethereum blog, with a variety of proposed solutions. It's
not entirely a solved problem yet, which is why I said people are "working on
it," but it's starting to look pretty solvable.

------
thomasfoster96
The most important take away I think is that computing uses a helluva lot of
more energy compared to what people think it does. Loading Facebook on your
phone and seeing a newsfeed uses a fair bit more power than just the fraction
of a percent of your battery's storage. Multiply that by 1.3 billion users and
by a few thousand request per user per month - I suspect that's a lot of
energy.

I think a lot of climate change action includes to a degree a reduction in
energy usage - but I don't see that happening any time soon. Unless computers
get dramatically more efficient in their energy usage, energy demand will
continue to grow. Renewable energy source growth will have to beat it.

~~~
s_kilk
> Unless computers get dramatically more efficient in their energy usage...

Or developers get dramatically better at writing efficient code. Or both.

~~~
thomasfoster96
I don't think many developers optimise ( or would know how to optimise) for
less energy usage. :)

------
PythonicAlpha
More interesting than the CO2 release per Bitcoin is the CO2 release per
transaction.

I guess this is still substantially higher than for normal bank transactions
-- but how much? Normal money and living also releases CO2. When you use your
big car to drive to the bakery 0.2 miles away, you release a lot of CO2 and
all to buy some rolls worth 0.0...? Bitcoin.

When I understand the system right, the number of transactions possible per
generated Bitcoin should also rise in the same speed (or higher?) as the CO2
release does.

------
antiics
This kind of project speaks to a major strength of Bitcoin. The transparency
that is built in to the Bitcoin protocol allows us to actually understand
(albeit through rough estimation at this point) the complete resource cost of
the network.

This transparency allows us (humanity) to actually have discussions on how we
can go about managing our resources in the 21st century.

What is the total CO2 cost of <Large Payment Processor X>? No one knows - the
network is opaque since that kind of information is a competitive advantage.
Which is fine, the core competency of the payment processor isn't
understanding their CO2 footprint.

However, from a policy maker point of view, a system where total resource cost
is verifiable by a third party audit makes for a compelling argument in favour
of the open network.

~~~
Lerc
It's an odd thing but transparency of this sort often causes a bias in
criticism because the problems are apparent. Wikipedia has a similar issue,
with the perennial comments about the information being unreliable. People
interpret a known level of unreliability as more unreliable. Similarly with
bitcoin, a known cost is assumed to be more than a hidden cost.

------
Kenji
The waste is incredible. It seems like the nash-equilibria of a currency are
far, far from a social optimum. In other words, the price of anarchy is very
high. This has always been an off-putting aspect of bitcoin to me.

~~~
comboy
I sincerely don't understand why do people call it wasted energy.

If your car runs on electricity, is taking your from place A to B waste of
energy?

That energy is used to secure transactions. And even with its decentralized
nature which is usually less efficient that centralized systems (but more
reliable, and without single point of failure), it seems to be so far doing it
more efficiently than banking systems.

~~~
danbruc
It is wasting energy because a Raspberry Pi could easily handle one or two
transaction per second(1). If you are worried about having a single point of
failure, use ten or a hundred. Bitcoin is paying an enormous price for its
decentralized nature.

(1) I am of course ignorant of peak loads here.

~~~
blfr
Those rasps still have a single point of failure: their operator. Bitcoin is
decentralized, resilient, trustless, and actually managed to see some
adoption. If anyone can do better, they should.

~~~
danbruc
What about for example Mt. Gox? Until you can use Bitcoin without ever having
to go through an exchange you still have these kinds of trust in the chain.
And even then there is still the risk of a mining pool achieving more than
fifty percent of the hash rate and you have to trust them that they will not
abuse this power or voluntarily split up.

~~~
grubles
You can use Bitcoin without an exchange. Have you ever heard of the #bitcoin-
otc IRC channel? It is a peer-to-peer marketplace.[0]

[0][http://bitcoin-otc.com/](http://bitcoin-otc.com/)

~~~
danbruc
You still have to trust the other party.

~~~
wongarsu
You can meet the other party in person (e.g.
[https://localbitcoins.com/](https://localbitcoins.com/)). That should reduce
the amount of trust needed to a minimum.

~~~
danbruc
Doesn't that actually increase the amount of trust required? What if the other
party »convinces« you using a gun to hand over the money without giving the
Bitcoins to you?

~~~
haneefmubarak
Then perhaps you also ought to have a friend and some weapons to guarantee
your personal safety too. Alternatively, meet up in a relatively safe, public,
conspicuous area where that is unlikely to happen.

~~~
danbruc
I will just keep trusing my bank.

------
fnordfnordfnord
How much CO2 is released hauling bags of coins and notes around?

How much is released keeping the rest of the currency system running?

Bitcoin may or may not win on these questions, but if we're going to ask them
about Bitcoin, we should also ask them about the way we're doing it now.

~~~
stuaxo
I dunnow, but when I carry around £150 it's not usually in coins, just a few
notes..

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
I was thinking more about this:
[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunbar_armored_car.JP...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunbar_armored_car.JPG)

------
xyby
Creating Bitcoins is a side effect of processing transactions. I don't know
how many transactions are currently processed when one Bitcoin is generated.
But that would be the interesting figure.

What I would find interesting is to compare the power consumption per bitcoin
transaction with other currencies.

Power consumption per transaction will probably always stay pretty low.
Because one way or another the users of Bitcoin have to pay for them. And they
won't use it, if it is expensive.

Energy efficiency is one of the few areas I think should be handled by the
government rather then by the individual. If using up energy is cheap but bad
for the environment: tax energy higher. Everything will fall into place then
in just the right proportion.

~~~
jamestnz
> Creating Bitcoins is a side effect of processing transactions.

I don't think that's a particularly useful characterisation of the situation.
It makes it seem like some kind of "processing" on the transactions is where
the real computationally expensive work occurs, with a side-effect of creating
bitcoins.

In reality, mining is pure mathematical busywork. A miner spends time trying
to find a valid block (a valid hash with enough zeros at the start, as
determined by the current difficulty level). This is a mathematical task
unrelated to any "processing" of transactions, and is independent of the
number of transactions or their complexity.

While the miner is performing this busywork (trying hash after hash waiting
for a valid one to come up) a number of transactions are occurring and are
flying around the network. The miner is noticing these and caching them up.
Eventually, if the miner should "find" a valid block, he publishes it to the
network, and crams into it all his cached up transactions.

So creating bitcoins isn't really a side-effect of processing transactions,
per se. Rather, _both_ the approval of transactions _and_ the creation of
bitcoins are side-effects of running a mathematical algorithm (mining).

As such I probably wouldn't usually describe transactions as being "processed"
at all (which would tend to imply computation related to the transactions
themselves), but that they get "included" into a mined block.

>I don't know how many transactions are currently processed when one Bitcoin
is generated

[https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-per-
block](https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-per-block)

That graph shows the number of transactions per block over time. You could
then divide by the block reward to find transactions-mined-per-bitcoin-
generated figure.

>Power consumption per transaction will probably always stay pretty low.
Because one way or another the users of Bitcoin have to pay for them. And they
won't use it, if it is expensive.

Well the mining "difficulty" level (which essentially dictates how much power
is needed on average to find a block) is controlled by rules programmed into
the bitcoin system, in such a way that the higher the total mining power
contributing to the network, the higher the difficulty (adjusted every 2016
blocks, so that the entire mining network on average discovers a block every
10 minutes). Here is a graph of how difficulty has evolved over time, as the
aggregate mining power has ebbed and flowed
[https://blockchain.info/charts/difficulty](https://blockchain.info/charts/difficulty)

------
skriticos2
For me this tells that we as a species are still horrible at producing
electricity in an environmentally balanced way. Especially stuff that's on the
grid (like stationary computers) should be easy to run on regenerative energy
and as Bitcoin is a global currency, it should not be a problem to do so 24/7
(the sun always shines somewhere). On a related note: why is fusion still 50
years away? Nobody seems to put proportional effort in that sector.

ps: I think a satellite that is dedicated to compute Bitcoin with solar energy
(no atmosphere/night to bother out there) would be awesome!

~~~
eropple
_> On a related note: why is fusion still 50 years away? Nobody seems to put
proportional effort in that sector._

Why is P=NP unsolved? Nobody seems to put proportional effort in that.

Oh wait, they do, but J. Random Citizen doesn't know about it...? Huh!

~~~
skriticos2
I did not mean to say that it's an easy problem to solve, just that I don't
see an overwhelming political or societal will to push for a solution here.

Flying to the moon was also a hard problem, but resources got allocated and
things got done.

If I'd see that 5% GDP would go into the project with proper focus and aim, I
have the feeling it'd be faster.

PS: and the money could be made with carbon taxation to push fossil fuel cost
into perspective.

~~~
eropple
You're criticizing people for not gosh-darn inventing things fast enough when
_we don 't even know that it's possible_. There are things we _know_ are
possible, which people are doing, while other people are researching blue-sky
technologies.

------
h43z
I would love to see bitcoin having zero waste and impact on our environment
but even now in it's current state it is much cheaper and environmentally
friendly [1] than other methods like Gold Mining, Gold Recycling, Banking
System Electricity Use, Paper Currency & Minting.

[1] [https://www.academia.edu/7666373/An_Order-of-
Magnitude_Estim...](https://www.academia.edu/7666373/An_Order-of-
Magnitude_Estimate_of_the_Relative_Sustainability_of_the_Bitcoin_Network_-_3rd_Edition)

~~~
quonn
I have not fully read the text you linked to, but it is not necessary to do so
to reject at least the part about the Banking System Electricity use: common
sense suffices. Sure, the system requires much more energy, but it also does
much, much more than Bitcoin. In fact, almost everything it does is not
related to the currency itself and would still be required if Bitcoin were to
become popular.

------
DavidSJ
This model is fundamentally flawed. It assumes (highly) exponential increases
in hash rate with time but constant energy efficiency. However it is nearly
entirely increases in efficiency that have driven the higher hash rates. If
those efficiencies stop increasing (and we've probably picked the low hanging
fruit already with ASICs), then hash rate growth rate will dramatically slow.

------
alextgordon
I would have thought miners are more likely to set up in areas with hydro,
because electricity is dirt cheap in those places.

~~~
grubles
Some have. One datacenter that I am aware of is the Toomim Brothers Bitcoin
Mining Concern Ltd.[0] which uses hydro-electric power.

[0] [http://toom.im/](http://toom.im/)

------
_Marak_
When first investigating Bitcoin in 2011 I was highly concerned with it's
energy consumption for the sake of crunching arbitrary calculations. It's a
huge waste of natural resources.

This is one of the main reasons I have been a big supporter of Peercoin.
Peercoin eliminates the need for massive energy consumption and dedicated
server farms. Both of these features will be very important in the future.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peercoin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peercoin)

Bitcoin is a huge innovation, but it can be considered the first major crypto-
currency. In the long-run, alternate solutions like Peercoin will play a
larger role in the market.

Full disclosure: I have investments in both Bitcoin and Peercoin.

------
wtbob
It seems to me that this should be easily addressable with a proof-of-burn
system (c.f.
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_burn](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_burn)).
This simulates the property of burning energy to have a chance of generating
coins by instead burning coins to have a chance of generating coins (I don't
_think_ it's a pyramid scheme: rather, it'd incentivise burners to contribute
to the network, just as miners are incentivised).

Anyway, it's a very neat idea, and it'd make all this much more energy-
efficient while still costing burners quite a lot (and hence making it
expensive to try to attack the network).

------
jrockway
I'm sure the Chinese bitcoin farms are buying high-quality carbon offsets, so
no worries.

------
leni536
How is it comparing to mining and melting gold into bricks?

~~~
Adlai
[http://www.coindesk.com/microscope-true-costs-gold-
productio...](http://www.coindesk.com/microscope-true-costs-gold-production/)

~~~
leni536
So it is roughly 20t/kg CO2 emission. 1kg gold is roughly 5 BTC at the moment,
so normalized to BTC it's already 4t/BTC CO2 emission for producing gold.

------
joncp
Color me skeptical.

I believe the author merely looked at the mean of the CO2/KWh stats on
Wikipedia for all generation. That leads to misleading numbers. For example, I
recall hearing that a large number of miners have set up shop in Iceland,
where the electricity is all low-impact geothermal (and cheap).

To get accurate numbers, one would need to figure out what types of
electricity sources the miners are ACTUALLY using.

------
Tycho
Thing is - as all that is being produced is information, you could generate
all this power in the desert with solar power, run the machines out there, and
just send the information along fibre-optic or microwave channels. There's
absolutely no need for the operation to have a high carbon footprint, no
matter how much power it needs. You can't say that about most things.

~~~
brianbreslin
Solar has its own environmental impact too. Don't forget the factories and
mining and energy requirements to produce photovoltaics.

~~~
Tycho
Not all solar power systems are photovoltaic though. And the same argument
holds for any other green power source.

------
shillster
How much CO2 is released to mine an ounce of gold?

------
larrydag
Note that the assumption of 500 gCO2/KWHe comes from an IPCC report which,
according to another wikipedia article, has had its fair amount of criticism.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_As...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report)

------
johndevor
There's the argument that fiat money enables wars because nobody pays for them
directly. The rise in bitcoin could bring this to an end. The wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq supposedly matched as much oil as India uses each day to
run. I think in order to examine Bitcoins Co2 impact you need to look at the
alternatives in great detail.

~~~
dalke
That argument doesn't make sense.

I think about the wars of Alexander III of Macedon, the Mongolian wars, and
the wars of Rome, and wonder how they could have existed without fiat money.
Or is the argument that they would have been more successful with fiat money?
For that matter, how would the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs and Incans been
enabled by fiat money when the accumulated wealth of those empires effectively
gave Spain the ability to mint its own commodity money?

In "Debt: The First 5, 000 Years", David Graeber makes a convincing argument
that the introduction of commodity money helped the king raise larger armies.
The king pays soldiers in gold or silver, then requires people to pay taxes in
the same. Otherwise the soldiers, who are effectively strangers, don't have
access to the credit economy of small communities.

------
EGreg
As the price of mining goes up, the difficulty goes down. Was that taken into
account?

I still think that using proof of work as a part of a consensus algorithm is
terribly wasteful. The rich get richer by way of buying energy in an arms race
and the externality is pollution.

------
uptown
Maybe some of the "waste" heat could be used to heat homes:
[https://medium.com/re-form/heat-your-home-with-data-
ab27fe7d...](https://medium.com/re-form/heat-your-home-with-data-ab27fe7d6f01)

------
nctr
There are alternatives, Proof of Stake for example, or gridcoin, where the
computing power to "mine" gridcoin goes towards scientific projects via BOINC.

~~~
oafitupa
Yeah, there are also bottle caps which can be used as currency!

But seriously, don't call those "alternatives" if they are not secure. There
is no known replacement for PoW.

~~~
nctr
Why does Proof of Stake not work in your opinion?

------
yarrel
How much energy do ATMs, banking mainframes, security trucks, HFT, chip & pin
machines, accounting PCs, minting etc. consume?

Let's compare like to like.

~~~
alex_duf
It's not the same economy scale though.

------
sova
r. o. f. l.

~~~
oldpond
I know, save the planet, speculate on virtual currency. Hilarious.

~~~
sova
i just thought it was really funny that each bitcoin creates so much carbon.
the actual study itself is awesome

