Bitcoin mining green energy

Further analysis of the hash rate IP addresses shows how during the rainy season in southern China, when hydropower generation substantially increases, the amount of bitcoin being mined from those regions also increases. At the height of the rainy season in September , the provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan — which have the highest number of hydroelectric plants in the country — represented This dropped to As with estimates of overall energy use, analysts disagree on the true proportion of bitcoin mining powered by renewables.

We end up with these fairly weak arguments about nimble Chinese players moving around to follow hydropower, which misses the opportunity to change one of the fundamental drivers of climate change: high-growth, high-consumption lifestyles.

Beyond discussions around energy consumption, some argue that bitcoin can play a practical role as a currency for the clean energy transition. The Sun Exchange, a company that facilitates solar financing for commercial and industrial solar projects, uses bitcoin to allow individuals worldwide to buy solar cells in developing nations and profit from doing so as if the panels were on their own home.

But bitcoin allows people to send very small amounts of money in a matter of minutes, to build solar panels anywhere in the world. Remove this function, and you are left with a highly secure, decentralised database with many potential real-world applications. WePower is a Lithuania-based start-up that uses blockchain technology to create a marketplace from which it is possible to purchase green energy directly from producers.

Blockchain is unique: it is a trust-establishing mechanism that offers cheaper, easier and faster solutions than conventional technologies. It basically turns the energy seller into a big digital service provider. Sign up to Energy Monitor's weekly newsletter, The Switch, for deep dives, analysis and interviews delivered straight to your inbox.

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Nick Ferris Nick Ferris is a data journalist based in London. Hot topics Joe Biden climate push will produce winning companies.

Here are two. The business case for CO2 removal in a net-zero world. Since it was created in , Bitcoin mining has become a lucrative business. But, as the rewards are a bit like a lottery, you need a lot of computers to make it profitable. Massive warehouses around the world filled with specialised machines run round the clock and, as you might expect, these consume large amounts of energy.

So much so that in the last few years, the cryptocurrency has grown to consume more energy than the Netherlands, Argentina or Switzerland. The team behind the tracker say that Bitcoin needs to be inefficient in order to be secure. With efficiency out the window, to be cost-effective, mining operations are often located where energy is cheap. That has meant that in the past, miners have often taken advantage of inexpensive coal power in countries like China.

As Bitcoin has grown, the amount of computational power being used to mine is thought to have more than doubled over the last year.

Crypto mining as a service proposes to maximise renewable energy output

This was a more than 10 per cent increase from and hydroelectric is now one of the most common sources of energy for miners. The environmental organisation started accepting Bitcoin for donations in the US around six years ago. It says it doesn't hold any of the cryptocurrency but uses a third-party processor to instantly change it into US Dollars.

He says that Greenpeace is focusing efforts on governments and big corporations like Apple, Facebook, Google and Amazon to change electricity grids for all users. Genesis Mining is building its data centres in colder climates where energy sources like geothermal and hydroelectric are abundant. Korb explains that the decentralised nature of cryptocurrencies also means that you can mine them anywhere. Companies like Genesis or even individuals can take advantage of any country that has an excess of cheap renewable energy.

Can Bitcoin ever really be green?

They [miners] are using the over capacities, which are remote and it is not possible to transport the power somewhere else maybe because of missing power lines or so on. The flexibility of mining rigs also means that Genesis can stop using electricity whenever they are asked. They can shut down for as little as 20 seconds with no consequences to balance out demand on an electricity grid. Cryptocurrency mining can also help electricity grids operate more efficiently and increase their use of renewables, Korb adds. He believes that renewables are the natural future for cryptocurrencies.

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• Bitcoin consumes 'more electricity than Argentina'.
• Bitcoin mining: a report finds the network mostly runs on renewables - Vox;
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• Electricity needed to mine bitcoin is more than used by 'entire countries' | Bitcoin | The Guardian.
• ‘Cryptocurrency mining as a service’ proposed to maximise renewable energy output.

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