Topic: Bitcoin is now consuming 1% of the world's electricity. Is that sustainable? - page 4. (Read 13944 times)

Media, politicians and other people consider the electricity waste caused by bitcoin mining as significant in the world when there are so many other energy wasting work done in the world such as light pollution, and other major areas but bitcoin mining causing electricity waste is shown frequently through media and other sources which I think due to lack of understanding about the good that it does to the world and its people 

I hope through the PoS protocols such as Lightining Network, electricity consumption will decrease. But i think that electricity cost make bitcoin valuable

But in the end, I guess that Proof of Stake will more and more overlap and then slowly eclips Proof of Work. And this will eventually solve the issue.

it's time for miners to switch to alternative energy, no longer using fossil-powered electricity.
this is for the common good, natural resources are increasingly depleting, coal stocks are also running low. if we don't save electricity from now on.
just imagine 20 years from now we will experience a natural resource crisis. and of course that will have a bad impact on the whole world.

Well, at least Bitcoin can be proud to have taken part to Global Warming...

I'm quite worring about this issue. Bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrencies, and it hasnot still been recognized by all around the world. Futhermore, it was supposed that Bitcoin will be soon ended in few year. So, consuming 1% of the world 's electricity. Is this worthy ?

As the report, the electricity was consumed by bank, internet.. is many times as much as bitcoin was. Moreover, once bitcoin dominate the world, it can be changed bank notes, and many other currency. So that, the electric will be small or big. I mean, the electricity which Bitcoin is consuming is not quite remarkable. Therefore, we should not worry about this problem. The issue what we should care most is rasing price of Bitcoin.

All things considered it doesn't really matters how energy is consumed by Bitcoin or whatever, because the system in the end will self regulate itself eventually. If Bitcoin't consumption will be unsustainable then something will change. If mankind's presence on earth will be unsustaibale, then something will change. Whatever the outcome, it will the the only possible and inevitable one.

Anything fast, secure and effective can consume little more power and I think it is acceptable because even the best and latest lamborghini will consume much fuel than a Toyota Hybrid does but the out come is much different so do we say Lamborghini is bad no we don't and I think it is the same story with Bitcoin and its network we wanted faster and better transactions without any interruption which traditional systems can never provide and we got

Of course this is a significant era that the world is more concern about green energy and low power consumption concept so as a latest invention in the financial world when Bitcoin consume more power this was discussed by many people mainly by environmental friendly organizations to point the real issue behind it and I think that is why as a solution we see many solar energy mining projects are coming in this year 

Of course we spend electricity and other valuable resources for unnecessary things that has no value and make no production but some point out the Bitcoin energy consumption as a huge problem to the world but with sustainable mining methods and other systems in the future Bitcoin electricity usage will headed low and such problems will not occur again

Bitcoin is indeed consuming a lot of energy because of the kind of machines use in the crypto mining. There is the need to get a standby or reliable energy supply independent of the general public energy system.

very true, although we can't assume that all energy consumed by bitcoin mining is excess capacity. that's why some localities where electricity is cheap are getting concerned.

for instance, quebec approved a rate hike for bitcoin mining businesses, and also temporarily halted new service requests for them. the logic is that demand for quebec's cheap electricity from miners has gotten so high that they'll need to start buying extra capacity (at rates unknown) to meet demand if they don't start upcharging miners or otherwise stop them from setting up shop. if they have to buy extra capacity to meet miner demand, that will drive up rates for residents, too. if i lived there, i wouldn't be happy about that.

Perhaps it's time to make your own power plant and get energy from it for bitcoin mining.

power plants do regulate. and at night they do shut down some generators.
but they do try to keep some excess between produced and consumed.
it does take 30mins-1 hour to restart a generator. so they like to keep a gap. and they also like to sell some of that excess to other countries**  that have less of a gap and suddenly had a surge of consumption that was unforecasted.
**OR INDUSTRIES hint hint

yea. they forecast extra TV use during super bowl and even forecast even further consumption at commercial tv breaks when people warm up a coffee or microwave some popcorn.
but sometimes. when there is a big news event which on a normal day wouldnt see many people with TV on, suddenly turn on their TV's. that unforeseen event is why they have the excess.. to prevent brownouts


before you made your reply. and as part of my post with loads of maths i was going to add a sarcastic comment to the reddit propagandists who scream "china 51%"

so here goes
lets imagine out of the 20.7twh that 50% was just in china (10.35)
china consumes 5683
china produces 6529
=836 difference (13% safety gap)

10 vs 800 excess.. = no impact to residences lives

mark bevands study was out dated. even in january 2018 he was using ASICS of 2+ generations old.
my numbers were based on the last 12 months. using the 2017/2018 generation miners.
i even broke the costs down to the daily level of the hashrate of the day. worked out asics costs of the day etc.. and then added up the total electric.. (yea i got super anal with the details)
as i showed the OP's source done 54thashrate(54210peta) *365 (yet last week, last month we were not at 54thashrate so his electric use would have been off by alot)

as for the domestic amount per household.
you said
"0.3 kWh per household seems a strange figure ... I guess it's per day, but it seems too low for a day but too high for an hour"

are you saying 300w an hour is high?
...
i just grabbed UK stats
google "Average kWh per day. The average electricity usage per household: Electricity: 8.5 – 10 kWh per day".
8.5/24 = 0.35416kwh     10/24=0.4166kwh
now remember thats just the UK other countries have different amount.  yep many countries use even less electric than the UK (world bank 12.6% of houses have no electric)

america do love their bigger houses AC, gadgets and techy stuff.
google: "average American your monthly read 911 kilowatt hours (kWh)"
911pmonth*12/365/24=1.2479kwh (as i said america love their AIRCON)

where as other countries have smaller houses less techy stuff, no AC... did you know aircon is the biggest electrical drainer in most households..
many countries dont have it. so many countries use alot less electric

 which backed up by a few stats sites showed the world average was 0.3 per household.

but yea mark bevand using the previous gen asics which were 2-3x less efficient would get a result 3x more then my numbers. but both me and him got numbers below the OP's 1% figure.
yea

in short if mark used todays gen asics and done th maths per day and added up each day.. he would see we are at 0.1% so his math is good. but just outdated.. where as the OP's source 1% math is meant to be recent. but just wrong in many places

the 1% figure had too many flaws to ignore so was worth the time calculating

There definitively are miners using partially "not-scarce" electricity (like coal/hydro/nuclear power at night when there is low domestic consumption but the plants cannot be "regulated down"). But if only because of Bitcoin mining, existing plants have to work more, or new electric plants have to be built, then Bitcoin "is using scarce electricity". I am pretty sure that this applies to a majority of miners.

This is still not the same thing as "wasted" electricity. For me, it becomes "waste" if it's innecessary. If we have a PoS or whatever system that can achieve the same grade of security consuming less energy, then the difference is what I would call "wasted energy".

But there is a solution, even if we preserve PoW: Use non-scarce electricity, like renewable-based electricity that doesn't compete with the electricity used for non-mining (domestic/industrial) consumption.

@franky1: I repeat, take a look at Mark Bevand's study. I believe his calculations are the best out there.

Do you think 1% is bad enough to compare with the entire electricity consume ? I dont think so.
There are many company using electricity more than bitcoin mining. You can name all of the industry companies in the world and how much they consume electricity. Cryptocurrency will always sustainable as long as we used it.

ok i looked at the digiconomists chart

"Implied Watts per GH/s   0.154"
=154 watts per terrahash  (simply x1000 math)
=2156 watts per ASIC (simple x14 math (asic do 14th)

yet we all know an asic is 1.3kw... not 2.156
so that chart is wrong before even looking at the other implied "estimates".

screw it lets do it

---

Bitcoin's current estimated annual electricity consumption* (TWh)   73.12
Bitcoin's current minimum annual electricity consumption** (TWh)   54.77[3]
Annualized global mining revenues   $4,728,978,787
Annualized estimated global mining costs   $3,656,073,069
Current cost percentage   77.31%
Country closest to Bitcoin in terms of electricity consumption   Austria
Estimated electricity used over the previous day (KWh)   200,332,771 [2]
Implied Watts per GH/s   0.154
Total Network Hashrate in PH/s (1,000,000 GH/s)   54,219   [1]
Electricity consumed per transaction (KWh)   896
Number of U.S. households that could be powered by Bitcoin   6,770,506
Number of U.S. households powered for 1 day by the electricity consumed for a single transaction   30.28
Bitcoin's electricity consumption as a percentage of the world's electricity consumption   0.33%
Annual carbon footprint (kt of CO2)   35,830
Carbon footprint per transaction (kg of CO2)   438.98

---

54,219,000 terrahash    (remember an asic is 14terra)
54,219,000 /14=3872785.714285714asics (remember an asic is 1.3kwh)
3872785.714285714*1.3 = 5,034,621.428571429kwh

electric over a day. thats simple. multiply the hour by 24
5,034,621.428571429kwh *24=120830914.2857143

so [2] should be 120million not 200mill

next. lets look at [3] which is based on the hashrate and assumption of using the s9 asics (14thash that im using)

the 120m kwh per day or the charts 200m kwh per day. can be converted to terrawh per day easily(h/1000=m..)
(kw/1000=mw..)120830914/1000=120,830.14megawattdays
(mw/1000=gw..)120,830.14/1000=128.83014gigawattdays
(gw/1000=tw..)128.830.14/1000=0.12883014terrawattdays
then days to a year is a simple *365
0.12883014*365 = 47.0230011 a year

now. thats lower than [3]
but note the wording of [3] bitcoins minimal
... um sorry. the math of my 47twh a year is based on onday multiplied. so there is an issue
the charts [2]200kw (converted to tw and multipled by 365) is 73.12 .... so there is an issue
the issue is that the estimates are that the electric and hashrate has been the same for the whole year

but BEFORE TODAY hashrates and thus electric used were lower.
so for the last 365 days. the electric/hashrate per day was LOWER
anyway. its harder to write out the daily electric for the last 365days. so i used excel and just displayed the end result

the actual electric consumption for the year is 20.7  not 47 not 54 not 73

ok so i googled "electricity consumption"
and got this
Electric energy consumption is the form of energy consumption that uses electric energy. Electric energy consumption is the actual energy demand made on existing electricity supply. The total electricity consumption in 2012 was 20,900 TWh.
i checked may other statistics site for 2012 and also found domestic consumption at the 19,000-21,000 area

i also looked at newer stats for more recent years. anyway

100/20900*20.7=0.099% ... ok. so on previous pages i done one way of working it out. and this time i done it another way. and both ways resulted in a 0.1%.. so im happy and i double proofed myself.

It's just a false allegation against bitcoin by its critics.They are equating the total number of transactions confirmed with the energy used for mining.But whatever the number of transactions confirmed,the energy used for mining the whole block remains the same.For gold mining and for banking transactions taking all over the world,more percentage of energy is being used and no one would raise such issues anytime