About seven gigawatts a year are consumed for Bitcoin's production, according to a new tool from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, the Alternative Economics Center, or simply CBECI.
This energy is little more than uses the whole of Switzerland, according to CBECI. The specific number is admittedly very difficult to visualize, so the researchers provided some comparisons.
It is equal to the 0,21% of the global offer. It is the amount of electricity produced by seven nuclear power plants, Dungeness, according with the BBC.
But does all this energy use contribute to climate change? In other words ... Does Bitcoin boil the oceans?
A study estimates that the electricity used to produce Bitcoin produces around 22 million CO2 emissions per year – a level that is somewhere between those produced by Jordan and Sri Lanka, or almost as much as Kansas City in the US.
The authors of the study, published in the journal Joule in June, say that Bitcoin requires "huge" amounts of electricity to validate transactions through the decentralized protocol, which translates into "significant levels of carbon emissions".
Our approach to Bitcoin's carbon footprint highlights the need to address the external environmental impacts resulting from cryprobes.
The Joule researchers emphasize that their own work highlights the need to address the “external environmental impacts arising from cryptocurrencies” and highlights the necessity investigations evaluating the relationship between benefits and costs for blockchain applications in general.
We do not question gains from the efficiency that technology could offer blockchain, in some cases. However, today's debate focuses only on the expected benefits, and more attention should be paid to the costs.
They believe that policy makers should pay more attention to Bitcoin's production aspects, as global electricity prices do not reflect future losses caused by current carbon dioxide emissions.
And Cambridge researchers agree: despite the fact that Bitcoin creates a small part of global emissions, there is no reason to ignore the environmental concerns about Vitcoin's energy consumption.
There are concerns that increasing electricity consumption by Bitcoin may pose a threat to achieving the goals of a sustainable development of the United Nations in the future.
However, the current data show that, even in the worst case (mining using only coal), Bitcoin's environmental footprint currently remains marginal at best.
