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Using electricity isn't the problem. Anyone could use vast amounts of electricity as long as they are willing to pay the price for it. The problem is carbon emi

Using electricity isn't the problem. Anyone could use vast amounts of electricity as long as they are willing to pay the price for it. The problem is carbon emissions. The switch to PoS is a non-issue from my perspective: a centralized system changed from using method A to method B, I don't understand why I should care. Bitcoin mining is increasingly being used to prevent methane emissions in stranded gas reserves. Having an economic incentive to not flare or emit methane but instead using it for generating bitcoin allows Bitcoin mining to become net carbon negative. Reducing methane emissions is vastly more effective at preventing climate change than reducing co2 emissions.

drtz 4y ago
Genuinely curious: how does burning methane to generate electricity make an organization carbon negative? Do you have a reference for this? I understand that methane is orders of magnitude more significant from a greenhouse effect point of view than CO2, but I don't see how it would be economically viable to burn methane "in stranded gas reserves" to generate electricity for Bitcoin mining but somehow it's not viable for other electrical consumption purposes.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  The methane gas has already been burned for decades, adding bitcoin to the equation just made you look No other use case has been profitable for the gas by products so the sites pump it directly into the atmosphere Bitcoin mining is profitable and so the methane is not burned into the atmosphere, the molecules are stripped for electricity in simple catalytic converters and energy used on the spot (some sites are completely disconnected from the grid, these are the best use cases of this. others are connected to the grid which gets the most debate. in both cases no other solution exists in bitcoin mining’s absence and there was no political will to meet climate goals ever) So the solution solves itself simply because it is an environmental solution that is profitable
  - drtz 4y ago
    I asked my question because I doubted the assertion being made without any math to back it up. It seems unlikely that 1) this could ever be a significant enough amount of Bitcoin mining energy to make Bitcoin "carbon neutral", and 2) if it ever did become a significant source of energy for Bitcoin, it would likely also be viable for other uses, eliminating the carbon offset argument I'm not doubting that you can put a cheap and inefficient boiler generator on top of a methane flare and label it "green energy."
    - yieldcrv 4y ago
      1) North America has lots of this kind of energy. Gigawatts/hr being spewed into the atmosphere as an unprofitable waste byproduct as is. 2) Transporting this energy is a cost. Storing and then transporting the energy is a cost. And other kinds of computation on site requires much greater infrastructure, like internet and big box data centers, which these remote sites do not have. Bitcoin mining barely needs any internet bandwidth and doesn't need a low latency connection either. It creates an asset that can be easily sold to people willing to buy that asset at a price far greater than the costs to create it. Its important to understand that these are partnerships between two companies. The existing energy producer who is taking a risk on a dangerous operation, largely technophobic and takes far too long to understand how it benefits them. And a separate crypto mining company searching for cheap energy, driven purely by the market. The mining company sees the energy. The energy producer needs to reduce their waste byproducts. Its semantics and pure coincidence about whether “less hydrocarbons billowing directly into the atmosphere” meets your criteria for “carbon offset” or “green energy”, its also what happens
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    Interesting framing. I'd frame it as Bitcoin having a local unexpected environmental positive externality. (As opposed to negative, which it has most other places without an unplugged methane leak.)
    - taolegal 4y ago
      It's not negative or unexpected. Bitcoin naturally uses the cheapest energy it can find (arbitrage), which usually ends up being stranded energy. Something like a third of all electricity generated is wasted. So the idea that Bitcoin is unique compared to any other arbitrary & subjective use of energy is just anti-Bitcoin propaganda & green dis-information. Whereas it may be difficult for one reason or another to transmit energy from where it's most abundant (a desert, or other remote areas), it's not hard to co-locate miners in those places & incentivize further development & utilization of that energy resource.
hwillis 4y ago
> The switch to PoS is a non-issue from my perspective: a centralized system changed from using method A to method B, I don't understand why I should care. Because every bitcoin transaction costs $60 in electricity. That is a monumentally stupid amount to pay. It's $125 per kB. Proof of stake incentivizes capital directly. Proof of work incentivizes capital via the ability to find prime numbers, which limits you to people who are willing to spend $1000s to millions of dollars to do it efficiently. Limiting the validators like that drives up costs massively. > Bitcoin mining is increasingly being used to prevent methane emissions in stranded gas reserves. Having an economic incentive to not flare or emit methane but instead using it for generating bitcoin allows Bitcoin mining to become net carbon negative. No, it is not. Projects like that may be branded with bitcoin, but bitcoin miners are buying the same electricity as everyone else. The rising cost of electricity is causing new sources of power to be exploited. Instead of being used for something useful, that electricity is being turned into waste heat.
- majinuub 4y ago
  > Because every bitcoin transaction costs $60 in electricity. That is a monumentally stupid amount to pay. It's $125 per kB. Its incredibly fallacious to measure the cost of electricity per transaction on Bitcoin. Blocks can be completely full or utterly empty and still use the amount of power. You're also missing the point of the power consumption. Its not used to move capital from one person to another, its used to secure the network from attacks and preserve its integrity. Measuring the cost of electricity per transaction is like measuring the amount of energy bank vaults and the US army use per dollar transaction. Stats like the one you quoted don't take into account the number of Lightning network transactions happening off-chain but is secured by a past on-chain transaction. > No, it is not. Projects like that may be branded with bitcoin, but bitcoin miners are buying the same electricity as everyone else. The rising cost of electricity is causing new sources of power to be exploited. > Instead of being used for something useful, that electricity is being turned into waste heat. One, value and usefulness is subjective. Because something is "useless" for someone like you doesn't mean its useless to others. I, and many people around the world, find Bitcoin to be incredibly useful and worth the electricity. Secondly, if oil and gas companies could profitably monetize flared methane, they would have already. They don't because trapping and transporting the methane would lose them money. Its an industry standard to simply release or burn the methane instead. So Bitcoin IS useful in that respect.
andsoitis 4y ago
> Reducing methane emissions is vastly more effective at preventing climate change than reducing co2 emissions. This statement caused me to do some light research. I discovered that methane is 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
- hwillis 4y ago
  https://climateer.substack.com/p/methane-lifetime https://climateer.substack.com/p/methane-lifetime > Methane emissions decay gradually, with an average lifetime of about 12 years (“perturbation lifetime”, which is what matters for climate purposes). > This will increase by roughly 35% if methane concentrations double, or decrease roughly 25% if concentrations return to pre-industrial levels. Methane is actually 150x-ish worse than CO2, but it breaks down over time. Ameliorated over a long time it's 25-30x worse. Rough part is that breaking down methane depends on OH radicals in the air, of which there are a fixed amount. The more methane there is, the slower methane is broken down. If there were a sudden massive release of methane, it would stay at that 150x potency for a very long time. Fun!
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    > OH radicals in the air, of which there are a fixed amount To make the complexity really mind-blowing, no, the amount is not fixed. It varies, and temperature is one of the largest factors. But it's not a simple relation, because air currents are also very important, and temperature also changes those.
- Ntrails 4y ago
  Messaging and information on actual greenhouse gas emissions and impact have long been god awful, often to the point of borderline misinformation. It's a source of tremendous frustration, in part because spending enormous political capital solving the wrong problems is actively counter-productive
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  Which is why oil production without a gas connection tends to flare the methane. With the renewable transition we will in a not too distant future just leave the oil in the ground instead. https://www.iea.org/reports/flaring-emissions https://www.iea.org/reports/flaring-emissions
reggedtorespond 4y ago
I looked into your statement about bitcoin mining preventing methane emissions and it doesn't add up to me. Oil drillers already flare the methane, which turns it into carbon dioxide. The solution these bitcoin miners are implementing is to burn the methane in a controlled manner so they can harness the energy produced for electricity to mine bitcoin. The same chemical reaction occurs, converting methane into carbon dioxide. The companies internal research claims this reduces carbon dioxide equivalent units, but I'm pretty skeptical. Of course, they would want their research to show they are doing something good. Sure, I guess it is more useful to harness the energy than to just burn it fruitlessly, but I don't see how it reduces emissions. Is there something I'm missing as to why this would make sense?
- majinuub 4y ago
  If you release the CO2 into the atmosphere, it doesn't really reduce emissions. However, because miners can harness the energy in a profitable way, they could afford to sequester or scrub the CO2. That would make oil and gas companies look a little greener, which is even more of an incentive. I believe some miners are doing this already.
  - anonymous_sorry 4y ago
    They may or may not be able to afford to sequester the carbon. Even if they do that (and I have never heard before that they do), in the long run would surely be out-competed by other miners who don't bother.
  - mechagodzilla 4y ago
    I don't think anyone, anywhere is profitably doing carbon sequestration (and i'm not aware of any practical 'scrubbing' scheme).
- landemva 4y ago
  I have been on oil and gas pads and drill sites. Flares have significant incomplete combustion. A financial incentive (lots outside north America) to pipe it into a generator encourages those with troublesome gas leaks to fix it.
matkoniecz 4y ago
> allows Bitcoin mining to become net carbon negative Phrasing in this way suggests that Bitcoin is already net carbon negative or can plausibly become it. That is not true. > Using electricity isn't the problem. It is, as electricity is fungible and wasting it on bitcoin increases prices for everyone else and encourages greater degradation of shared resources.
- nightski 4y ago
  I agree Bitcoin probably won't be carbon negative any time soon if ever. But electricity is definitely not fungible as production is not always in the same place as demand.
  - geertj 4y ago
    If something is not 100% fungible, it can still be fungible to some extent. Given the size of our electricity grids and to a lesser extent the capacity to store energy, electricity is definitely fungible at some level. I don’t have the numbers but I’d say this level is pretty high.
  - simiones 4y ago
    There are very few goods as fungible as electricity, even though it is not perfectly fungible.
    - nightski 4y ago
      If this were true we would not still be dependent on fossil fuels.
      - lolinder 4y ago
        OP didn't say there were no goods as fungible, they said few. Fossil fuels can be more fungible without them being wrong. Arguably, "fossil fuels" are not as fungible as electricity anyway. I can take electricity from any outlet and, with the right adapter, use it to power any electric appliance. I cannot take gasoline intended for my car and use it in a grill, or in the furnace, or in a jet, no matter what equipment I buy.
derac 4y ago
Can you prove out the math on that one please?
FabHK 4y ago
> Anyone could use vast amounts of electricity as long as they are willing to pay the price for it That would be so if all externalities were priced in properly, which is not the case.
drewm1980 4y ago
Oil companies are printing their own money now? God I hope you made that up.

drtz 4y ago

Genuinely curious: how does burning methane to generate electricity make an organization carbon negative? Do you have a reference for this? I understand that methane is orders of magnitude more significant from a greenhouse effect point of view than CO2, but I don't see how it would be economically viable to burn methane "in stranded gas reserves" to generate electricity for Bitcoin mining but somehow it's not viable for other electrical consumption purposes.

yieldcrv 4y ago
The methane gas has already been burned for decades, adding bitcoin to the equation just made you look No other use case has been profitable for the gas by products so the sites pump it directly into the atmosphere Bitcoin mining is profitable and so the methane is not burned into the atmosphere, the molecules are stripped for electricity in simple catalytic converters and energy used on the spot (some sites are completely disconnected from the grid, these are the best use cases of this. others are connected to the grid which gets the most debate. in both cases no other solution exists in bitcoin mining’s absence and there was no political will to meet climate goals ever) So the solution solves itself simply because it is an environmental solution that is profitable
- drtz 4y ago
  I asked my question because I doubted the assertion being made without any math to back it up. It seems unlikely that 1) this could ever be a significant enough amount of Bitcoin mining energy to make Bitcoin "carbon neutral", and 2) if it ever did become a significant source of energy for Bitcoin, it would likely also be viable for other uses, eliminating the carbon offset argument I'm not doubting that you can put a cheap and inefficient boiler generator on top of a methane flare and label it "green energy."
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    1) North America has lots of this kind of energy. Gigawatts/hr being spewed into the atmosphere as an unprofitable waste byproduct as is. 2) Transporting this energy is a cost. Storing and then transporting the energy is a cost. And other kinds of computation on site requires much greater infrastructure, like internet and big box data centers, which these remote sites do not have. Bitcoin mining barely needs any internet bandwidth and doesn't need a low latency connection either. It creates an asset that can be easily sold to people willing to buy that asset at a price far greater than the costs to create it. Its important to understand that these are partnerships between two companies. The existing energy producer who is taking a risk on a dangerous operation, largely technophobic and takes far too long to understand how it benefits them. And a separate crypto mining company searching for cheap energy, driven purely by the market. The mining company sees the energy. The energy producer needs to reduce their waste byproducts. Its semantics and pure coincidence about whether “less hydrocarbons billowing directly into the atmosphere” meets your criteria for “carbon offset” or “green energy”, its also what happens
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  Interesting framing. I'd frame it as Bitcoin having a local unexpected environmental positive externality. (As opposed to negative, which it has most other places without an unplugged methane leak.)
  - taolegal 4y ago
    It's not negative or unexpected. Bitcoin naturally uses the cheapest energy it can find (arbitrage), which usually ends up being stranded energy. Something like a third of all electricity generated is wasted. So the idea that Bitcoin is unique compared to any other arbitrary & subjective use of energy is just anti-Bitcoin propaganda & green dis-information. Whereas it may be difficult for one reason or another to transmit energy from where it's most abundant (a desert, or other remote areas), it's not hard to co-locate miners in those places & incentivize further development & utilization of that energy resource.

hwillis 4y ago

> The switch to PoS is a non-issue from my perspective: a centralized system changed from using method A to method B, I don't understand why I should care. Because every bitcoin transaction costs $60 in electricity. That is a monumentally stupid amount to pay. It's $125 per kB. Proof of stake incentivizes capital directly. Proof of work incentivizes capital via the ability to find prime numbers, which limits you to people who are willing to spend $1000s to millions of dollars to do it efficiently. Limiting the validators like that drives up costs massively. > Bitcoin mining is increasingly being used to prevent methane emissions in stranded gas reserves. Having an economic incentive to not flare or emit methane but instead using it for generating bitcoin allows Bitcoin mining to become net carbon negative. No, it is not. Projects like that may be branded with bitcoin, but bitcoin miners are buying the same electricity as everyone else. The rising cost of electricity is causing new sources of power to be exploited. Instead of being used for something useful, that electricity is being turned into waste heat.

majinuub 4y ago
> Because every bitcoin transaction costs $60 in electricity. That is a monumentally stupid amount to pay. It's $125 per kB. Its incredibly fallacious to measure the cost of electricity per transaction on Bitcoin. Blocks can be completely full or utterly empty and still use the amount of power. You're also missing the point of the power consumption. Its not used to move capital from one person to another, its used to secure the network from attacks and preserve its integrity. Measuring the cost of electricity per transaction is like measuring the amount of energy bank vaults and the US army use per dollar transaction. Stats like the one you quoted don't take into account the number of Lightning network transactions happening off-chain but is secured by a past on-chain transaction. > No, it is not. Projects like that may be branded with bitcoin, but bitcoin miners are buying the same electricity as everyone else. The rising cost of electricity is causing new sources of power to be exploited. > Instead of being used for something useful, that electricity is being turned into waste heat. One, value and usefulness is subjective. Because something is "useless" for someone like you doesn't mean its useless to others. I, and many people around the world, find Bitcoin to be incredibly useful and worth the electricity. Secondly, if oil and gas companies could profitably monetize flared methane, they would have already. They don't because trapping and transporting the methane would lose them money. Its an industry standard to simply release or burn the methane instead. So Bitcoin IS useful in that respect.

andsoitis 4y ago

> Reducing methane emissions is vastly more effective at preventing climate change than reducing co2 emissions. This statement caused me to do some light research. I discovered that methane is 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

hwillis 4y ago
https://climateer.substack.com/p/methane-lifetime https://climateer.substack.com/p/methane-lifetime > Methane emissions decay gradually, with an average lifetime of about 12 years (“perturbation lifetime”, which is what matters for climate purposes). > This will increase by roughly 35% if methane concentrations double, or decrease roughly 25% if concentrations return to pre-industrial levels. Methane is actually 150x-ish worse than CO2, but it breaks down over time. Ameliorated over a long time it's 25-30x worse. Rough part is that breaking down methane depends on OH radicals in the air, of which there are a fixed amount. The more methane there is, the slower methane is broken down. If there were a sudden massive release of methane, it would stay at that 150x potency for a very long time. Fun!
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  > OH radicals in the air, of which there are a fixed amount To make the complexity really mind-blowing, no, the amount is not fixed. It varies, and temperature is one of the largest factors. But it's not a simple relation, because air currents are also very important, and temperature also changes those.
Ntrails 4y ago
Messaging and information on actual greenhouse gas emissions and impact have long been god awful, often to the point of borderline misinformation. It's a source of tremendous frustration, in part because spending enormous political capital solving the wrong problems is actively counter-productive
Gwypaas 4y ago
Which is why oil production without a gas connection tends to flare the methane. With the renewable transition we will in a not too distant future just leave the oil in the ground instead. https://www.iea.org/reports/flaring-emissions https://www.iea.org/reports/flaring-emissions

reggedtorespond 4y ago

I looked into your statement about bitcoin mining preventing methane emissions and it doesn't add up to me. Oil drillers already flare the methane, which turns it into carbon dioxide. The solution these bitcoin miners are implementing is to burn the methane in a controlled manner so they can harness the energy produced for electricity to mine bitcoin. The same chemical reaction occurs, converting methane into carbon dioxide. The companies internal research claims this reduces carbon dioxide equivalent units, but I'm pretty skeptical. Of course, they would want their research to show they are doing something good. Sure, I guess it is more useful to harness the energy than to just burn it fruitlessly, but I don't see how it reduces emissions. Is there something I'm missing as to why this would make sense?

majinuub 4y ago
If you release the CO2 into the atmosphere, it doesn't really reduce emissions. However, because miners can harness the energy in a profitable way, they could afford to sequester or scrub the CO2. That would make oil and gas companies look a little greener, which is even more of an incentive. I believe some miners are doing this already.
- anonymous_sorry 4y ago
  They may or may not be able to afford to sequester the carbon. Even if they do that (and I have never heard before that they do), in the long run would surely be out-competed by other miners who don't bother.
- mechagodzilla 4y ago
  I don't think anyone, anywhere is profitably doing carbon sequestration (and i'm not aware of any practical 'scrubbing' scheme).
landemva 4y ago
I have been on oil and gas pads and drill sites. Flares have significant incomplete combustion. A financial incentive (lots outside north America) to pipe it into a generator encourages those with troublesome gas leaks to fix it.

matkoniecz 4y ago

> allows Bitcoin mining to become net carbon negative Phrasing in this way suggests that Bitcoin is already net carbon negative or can plausibly become it. That is not true. > Using electricity isn't the problem. It is, as electricity is fungible and wasting it on bitcoin increases prices for everyone else and encourages greater degradation of shared resources.

nightski 4y ago
I agree Bitcoin probably won't be carbon negative any time soon if ever. But electricity is definitely not fungible as production is not always in the same place as demand.
- geertj 4y ago
  If something is not 100% fungible, it can still be fungible to some extent. Given the size of our electricity grids and to a lesser extent the capacity to store energy, electricity is definitely fungible at some level. I don’t have the numbers but I’d say this level is pretty high.
- simiones 4y ago
  There are very few goods as fungible as electricity, even though it is not perfectly fungible.
  - nightski 4y ago
    If this were true we would not still be dependent on fossil fuels.
    - lolinder 4y ago
      OP didn't say there were no goods as fungible, they said few. Fossil fuels can be more fungible without them being wrong. Arguably, "fossil fuels" are not as fungible as electricity anyway. I can take electricity from any outlet and, with the right adapter, use it to power any electric appliance. I cannot take gasoline intended for my car and use it in a grill, or in the furnace, or in a jet, no matter what equipment I buy.

derac 4y ago

Can you prove out the math on that one please?

FabHK 4y ago

> Anyone could use vast amounts of electricity as long as they are willing to pay the price for it That would be so if all externalities were priced in properly, which is not the case.

drewm1980 4y ago

Oil companies are printing their own money now? God I hope you made that up.