Bitcoin energy use is so great that it’s worse for the environment than beef production, according to a report from the University of New Mexico.
The Bitcoin universe is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, the study reports.
Each Bitcoin mined in 2021 generated $11,314 US in climate damages, said the report and total global damages were greater than $12 billion US between 2016 and 2021, it said.
Damages peaked at 156 per cent of coin price in May, 2020 - i.e. it cost $1.56 to produce $1 worth of Bitcoin.
Taken as a share of the market price, the climate change impacts of mining the digital cryptocurrency Bitcoin is more comparable to the impacts of extracting and refining crude oil than mining gold, according to an analysis published in Scientific Reports by researchers at The University of New Mexico.
Benjamin Jones and colleagues Robert Berrens and Andrew Goodkind present economic estimates of climate damages from Bitcoin mining between January 2016 and December 2021. They report that in 2020 Bitcoin mining used 75.4 terawatt hours of electricity (TWh) – higher electricity usage than Austria (69.9 TWh) or Portugal (48.4 TWh) in that year.
“Globally, the mining, or production, of Bitcoin is using tremendous amounts of electricity, mostly from fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas.
"This is causing huge amounts of air pollution and carbon emissions, which is negatively impacting our global climate and our health,” said Jones.
“We find several instances between 2016-2021 where Bitcoin is more damaging to the climate than a single Bitcoin is actually worth. This is extremely troubling from a sustainability perspective.”
