Last week I read an article that stated that 76% of "hashers" used renewable energy for some of there energy usage. At first, I was pumped however I quickly began to realize that the article might not have been as forthcoming as it should have been. Upon further research and digging deeper into China's power plants under construction I realized it was not as honest as I would have hoped.
The first thing to realize in the article (which is located here) is that it states that 76% of miners use it as there energy mix. All this means is that at some point during the year the for a brief second could have used renewables and could check off this. Since there was no set amount of renewable time miners could have used coal to mine 99.99% of the time and only for a brief second flipped over to renewable energy before going right back to coal. China, which has the most hash power, has also been on a huge infrastructure spending spree. With this spending spree though they have been building coal-fired power plants and not renewable energy plants. China has been doing this to support its mining sector which is driven by coal extraction. This dampens hopes on China moving to more renewable mining since they are building more coal plants.
There was some good information as 39% of the total energy used to mine was reported as being renewable. This was in a large part due to hydroelectricity at 62% of miners saying they used it. Coal and natural gas followed at 38% and 36% respectively. Further growth though of renewables in this sector though is restricted. Hydropower while renewable is being heavily criticized by environmentalists due to damming up rivers and destroying ecosystems around it. In the US there have been calls to actually destroy some dams to allow the fish and rivers to heal. In the US which accounts for 8% of the world's hash power, renewables were used by 63% of the miners. Other areas like APAC (Asia Pacific) contribute 77% of Bitcoins mining has power but have the lowest use of renewables at just 8%.
Overall, there is improvement and hope for clean powered mining but obstacles still remain. If China could begin to ween itself off of coal power and began to build more renewable power plants they alone could significantly move the needle in renewable energy usage in crypto.
I hope yall enjoyed this article!
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