Bitcoin Mining Taking Environmental Toll. Crypto Group Considers Green Alternatives
Mining bitcoin is harmful for the environment, say concerned groups like Earth Justice. There may be greener alternatives, though, and some crypto groups are seeking those out.
Mining cryptocurrency coins takes about 146 terawatt hours of electricity, just for this year. Those numbers may go up next year as the demand increases. This energy consumption is comparable to the entire energy usage of a mid-sized country, adding to an alarming energy crisis that environmental groups are worried will hurt the Earth.
Now that Bitcoin (BTC) has managed to pass the $100K mark, there will likely be more growth in the industry and greater energy consumption in the coming years.
Not every crypto group is letting the problem worsen without doing anything about it. Mara Holdings, which is a major crypto mining corporation, is finding green alternatives to produce more bitcoin. They have built massive wind farms that take renewable energy sources and use them to mine more bitcoin and add to the current supply.
The mining operation there is so massive that it cannot rely solely on wind power, which is considered unreliable. Instead, they plan to use wind power to account for about 30% of their mining operations, which still makes a major dent in the overall use of power.
The Cost of Bitcoin Mining
It takes a lot of energy to mine a single bitcoin, and by design, it will take even more power in the coming years. Bitcoin is designed to be a finite source of digital currency, eventually maxing out at 21 million coins. However, the halving process is built in to slow the mining of bitcoin so that the final limit may never be reached. However, it will always take a lot of power to mine bitcoin in a way that is productive for the miners.
Most mining operations simply cannot use green power for much of their mining. In most areas where miners live, there are limited natural resources available (water, sunlight, and wind) to create enough power to reliably run even a basic computer setup all the time. When you factor in the necessity of multiple computers and mainframes that are part of a mining operation, it simply is not feasible to use natural, renewable power to run that kind of setup.
Bitcoin prices are high, and there is a lot of incentive for miners to keep on creating more bitcoin. As long as the demand is there, the mining operations will continue regardless of the toll they take on the environment. What we have seen is that when governments restrict mining or even make it illegal, miners simply go underground or move to another country.
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