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> 1) the technology to capture the flare gas and transport it to a generating station (all doable, but the reason the gas is being flared in the first place is

> 1) the technology to capture the flare gas and transport it to a generating station (all doable, but the reason the gas is being flared in the first place is because it's not cost effective to do so) That's why they don't transport it, they do it on premise. The transportation issue is why all other use cases have failed and mining does not because of the low infrastructure demands. > 2) CCS technology for the generating plant (again, a known tech that because of cost is used only where there is a market for the CO2 byproduct; I'm not sure exactly what this means, but the miners use their own capital for the infrastructure demands necessary, or partner with the site to invest in this. But usually because the sites don't want to take any risk to their fossil fuel operation and also don't really understand the value of the digital commodity, the miners have to prove the system themselves and make this as frictionless as possible to the site they are proposing to attach to. Each company and site and state is different so I really think its up to you to prove 1) and 2) are in fact not happening, or not happening to your standard. Or maybe you feel the standard is levied on me. In any case how about we have a discussion about it, I believe its happening OR can be improved upon and I think your sentiment is valid and can be directed at pointing out HOW it can be improved, which unfortunately requires you to move to "lets improve proof of work" instead of "rationalized fantasy for this super bad problem for this ridiculously inefficient use case". So I understand the challenge of having that conversation, I just think you might find it interesting. > 3) some kind of deep geological or other storage for the CO2, or they'd have to find a new market for the gas that did not result in its eventual release. There is no storage as it is used on demand. The amount not used is still flared. The mining operation usually aspires to use as much as possible per site.

walnutclosefarm 5y ago
We can have a discussion. I agree on your response to my first point - if they put their mining rigs at the wellhead, they can avoid the transport infrastructure cost. I know there is a company in Texas that does that. But they are still burning the methane, which means they are producing CO2. They are undoubtedly reducing the greenhouse burden, since they can burn a higher fraction of the gas than the flare does, and methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. But everything else I wrote is still true. You have to have a carbon capture and storage system (CCS) on the exhaust pipe of your methane powered generator (which will not be a highly efficient combined cycle gas turbine, BTW, but a big old internal combustion engine of lower efficiency). Capturing carbon requires a whole additional set of infrastructure and inputs (the CC in CCS) (which is why there are only a couple of dozen carbon capturing gas power plants in the world), and then you end up with CO2 gas, which you must permanently sequester somehow (Storage - the S in CCS). If there is anyone doing that at the back end of a mining rig, I have never seen a reference to it. And here's the thing - if you're going to go through the trouble of building a mini generator set up at the wellhead, and you can produce cost-advantageous electricity by doing so, you could in most cases be feeding that back into the electrical grid, so that at least something useful is done with it. Using it to solve throw-away mathematical problems is still a waste of energy.
- vmception 5y ago
  Great, thanks for having the discussion in good faith. So no rebuttal except to your last point, miners do look at selling energy back to the electrical grid due to the amount of energy they are able to produce and when it is more profitable or advantageous to sell it instead of mining it. I'm not sure if any have successfully tapped in and done it, but its often part of their sales pitch for investors and other stakeholders, the observation and capability of it. The issue is that the incumbent fossil fuels sites weren't doing that, for decades, so if this is your stance then it needs to be levied at the fossil fuel sites. The miners only may have created this capability, at their expense, so it is really impractical to say they must do that when they took all the risk and had a completely different economic reason of taking that risk. In fact, its still likely not economically viable for all times, only icing on the cake sometimes but not enough to sustain the goal of their buildout on site, which suggests that even a government subsidy on building this infrastructure (without the participation of miners at all) is untenable. Many fossil fuel sites aren't connected to the grid at all, or not well enough. They're just barely extracting enough oil and natural gas to transport elsewhere Which has been its own problem, especially where flaring and fracking was involved, but we know that there is no political consensus on stopping that so we chisel around the edges, bitcoin mining turns out to be one of those chisels. These low infrastructure sites, now with miners, can only have an aspirational goal of becoming energy traders.

walnutclosefarm 5y ago

We can have a discussion. I agree on your response to my first point - if they put their mining rigs at the wellhead, they can avoid the transport infrastructure cost. I know there is a company in Texas that does that. But they are still burning the methane, which means they are producing CO2. They are undoubtedly reducing the greenhouse burden, since they can burn a higher fraction of the gas than the flare does, and methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. But everything else I wrote is still true. You have to have a carbon capture and storage system (CCS) on the exhaust pipe of your methane powered generator (which will not be a highly efficient combined cycle gas turbine, BTW, but a big old internal combustion engine of lower efficiency). Capturing carbon requires a whole additional set of infrastructure and inputs (the CC in CCS) (which is why there are only a couple of dozen carbon capturing gas power plants in the world), and then you end up with CO2 gas, which you must permanently sequester somehow (Storage - the S in CCS). If there is anyone doing that at the back end of a mining rig, I have never seen a reference to it. And here's the thing - if you're going to go through the trouble of building a mini generator set up at the wellhead, and you can produce cost-advantageous electricity by doing so, you could in most cases be feeding that back into the electrical grid, so that at least something useful is done with it. Using it to solve throw-away mathematical problems is still a waste of energy.

vmception 5y ago
Great, thanks for having the discussion in good faith. So no rebuttal except to your last point, miners do look at selling energy back to the electrical grid due to the amount of energy they are able to produce and when it is more profitable or advantageous to sell it instead of mining it. I'm not sure if any have successfully tapped in and done it, but its often part of their sales pitch for investors and other stakeholders, the observation and capability of it. The issue is that the incumbent fossil fuels sites weren't doing that, for decades, so if this is your stance then it needs to be levied at the fossil fuel sites. The miners only may have created this capability, at their expense, so it is really impractical to say they must do that when they took all the risk and had a completely different economic reason of taking that risk. In fact, its still likely not economically viable for all times, only icing on the cake sometimes but not enough to sustain the goal of their buildout on site, which suggests that even a government subsidy on building this infrastructure (without the participation of miners at all) is untenable. Many fossil fuel sites aren't connected to the grid at all, or not well enough. They're just barely extracting enough oil and natural gas to transport elsewhere Which has been its own problem, especially where flaring and fracking was involved, but we know that there is no political consensus on stopping that so we chisel around the edges, bitcoin mining turns out to be one of those chisels. These low infrastructure sites, now with miners, can only have an aspirational goal of becoming energy traders.