Bitcoin Could Churn Out 130 Million Tons Of Carbon, Undermining Climate Action. Here’s One Way To Tackle That

Bitcoin Could Churn Out 130 Million Tons Of Carbon, Undermining Climate Action. Here’s One Way To Tackle That

Bitcoin mining site manager Guo-hua checks an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) at ... [+] Haobtc's mine near Kongyuxiang, Sichuan, China. The power demands and carbon emissions of bitcoin mining could undermine global efforts to combat climate change if stringent regulations are not placed upon the industry, a Chinese study has found. By 2024, mining of the cryptocurrency in China alone could use as much power as the entire nation of Italy uses in a year, with greenhouse gas emissions equalling those of the Czech Republic. But rather than recommending increased taxation on bitcoin mining to curb emissions, or simply an outright ban on the practice, the paper, published today in the journal Nature, suggests that miners should be encouraged to shift their operations to regions that provide abundant low-carbon electricity. The research is significant because China carries out at least 65% of the world's bitcoin operations. Shouyang Wang, one of the report's authors and chair professor at the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, told Forbes. com: "While everyone has focused on bitcoin's great profitability, we want people to become more aware of its potential issues and start thinking about these questions: