BTC Mining CO2 Footprint Gets Below 0.08% Of Global Total

The BTC mining CO2 footprint got below 0.08% of the global total accoridng to a report from CoinShares that we read more about in today’s latest Bitcoin news.

The Bitcoin mining network contributed less than 0.08% to the total carbon dioxide emissions as per the data from Coinshares. The data obtained by the company suggests that BTC mining is responsible for a share of the global CO2 Emissions, in particular when compared with a variety of services that are facilitated by the use of crypto.

The BTC mining CO2 footprint has been an issue for quite some time now.
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The mining network produced some 36M tons of CO2 in 2020 and 41M tons in 2021. the study shows that owing to flare mitigation, 2.1M tons of CO2 could be removed from the market which will bring the total net emissions to a level of 39M tons per year. However, the mining network at this point generates a small share of the total emissions that amount to less than 0.08% of the total. The report said:

“As a frame of reference, countries with large industrial bases such as the United States and China emitted 5,830 Mt and 11,580 Mt CO2e in 2016, respectively.”

The Carbon footprint of BTC mining can not match one of the traditional industries that are responsible for higher CO2 emissions:

“Estimates of the emissions caused by minting and printing fiat currencies come in around 8 Mt per year and the gold industry is estimated to generate between 100 and 145 Mt of CO2 emissions annually.”

At an annual energy consumption of 89 TWh, BTC mining guesses about 0.05% of the total energy consumption in the world. By 2040 or in about 20 years, more than 99% of all BTC will be imprinted and when the minting is done, the vast majority of the energy need will result from the market demand for BTC transaction settlement via transaction fees offered by the users to miners. The company report noted:

“At 0.08 % of global CO2 emissions, removing the entire mining network from global demand—and thereby depriving hundreds of millions of people of their only hope for a fair and accessible form of money—would not amount to anything more than a rounding error.”

The report also argued that BTC provides a global and censorship-resistance monetary network for the entire world:

“Within that context, we believe the small addition to global emissions is absolutely worth the cost, and clearly, so do the several hundred million global Bitcoin users who are all voluntarily sharing the energy costs of the mining network, while foregoing alternative consumption.”