Criticism: "Bitcoin uses energy that otherwise would go to waste"
corlaez opened this issue · 1 comments
First, the article is written by Nic Carter which is clearly very invested in blochain technology and if I have to guess holds a bunch of crypto, I feel that his bias should be acknowledged in the text of this repo.
Besides that the counter-argument: "Bitcoin uses energy that otherwise would go to waste" is a blanket statement that cannot be derived from the source.
- How many TWh is consumed in this Sichuan case mentioned that would go to waste? It seems to go unmentioned in the article.
- How much does that represent of the current annual estimate of 138.31TWh?
- Also notice how bitcoin electricity consumption keeps growing and growing. Is the electricity output of that Sichuan plant growing at the same rate?
With this points I think it is clear that "Bitcoin uses energy that otherwise would go to waste" could be at least changed to "Some of the energy used to mine Bitcoin would otherwise would go to waste" but that really begs the question of How much of the energy mined by bitcoin would go to waste.
As a separate, personal comment and just because I don't want to find a source and make it part of the main argument, can we ask ourselves WHY do we have plants with twice as much energy than what the grid can contain?
The country mentioned has a history of over building due to how they are handling their finances and build sector and this over building and waste also contributes to climate change so this is not a model to encourage or replicate in my book.
Enhancing the grid and taking the hit of the loss energy in transport to serve people and avoid even more power plants with more waste would be a better scenario than just encourage overbuilding in size and number and just attach mining rigs to those areas.
UPDATE: This can paint a picture of the impact of the energy frenzy in that region of the world: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-hydropower/dam-nation-big-state-projects-spared-in-chinas-hydro-crackdown-idUSKCN1LF2RG