Our financial and environmental policies suck
As some of us know, Proof-of-Work (PoW) cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Etherium v1 (ETH) and Monero (XMR) require a lot of computational power to run, and this requires electricity. The cheaper this is, the quicker the miner can recover they’re computational investment and make a profit.
In another front, humanity is in the middle of a climate crisis, which CO2 emissions are partly to blame for. The use of renewable energy such as Solar, Hydroelectric, Wind, Thermal can help to mitigate climate change in the future.
Therefore, it is my view that the most responsible thing to do is to get miners to power their rigs using renewable sources without paying a premium for it. The future of decentralized PoW cryptos depends on this decentralized network of miners who validate transactions while keeping the network safe. In this way, we can slowly but surely stray away from the current corrupt centralized financial system we depend on.
How to rank countries by their ability provide cheap and environmentally-friendly electricity
This morning in the shower I thought, "how can I make a measure to include both cheap and renewable electricity?" As such this very simple index ranks countries in its ability to provide both cheap and environmentally-friendly electricity (at least in CO2 terms). It gives equal weight to the cost of electricity in a country in terms of USD/kWh and its % of electricity coming from renewable energy sources.
I managed to get data for 124 countries from the freely available online sources noted at the bottom of the article. I made sure the weighing of the ‘cheap’ and ‘green’ component were fairly compares by statistical normalization of each, before summing them up into the final index.
124 countries ranked by the Cheap and Green Crypto Mining Index (CGCMI)
Behold the data below, ranked by score. Does your country appear ranked as you expected? What is your real mining experience there? Looking forward to hearing you opinions.
Rank Country USD/kWh % Renewables CGMI
------ ---------------------- --------- -------------- -------
1 Ethiopia 0.008 93.6% 1.000
2 Zambia 0.029 95.0% 0.977
3 Paraguay 0.058 100.0% 0.961
4 Kyrgyzstan 0.01 86.7% 0.960
5 DR Congo 0.061 100.0% 0.956
6 Norway 0.094 97.2% 0.893
7 Albania 0.11 100.0% 0.884
8 Venezuela 1E-06 67.6% 0.873
9 Angola 0.019 70.3% 0.859
10 Georgia 0.06 80.7% 0.855
11 Namibia 0.131 99.3% 0.850
12 Iceland 0.136 100.0% 0.846
13 Costa Rica 0.141 97.7% 0.827
14 Sudan 0.007 56.7% 0.804
15 Suriname 0.015 58.3% 0.801
16 Mozambique 0.141 83.7% 0.752
17 Brazil 0.133 80.4% 0.746
18 Burma 0.037 52.6% 0.738
19 Zimbabwe 0.035 51.9% 0.737
20 Uruguay 0.199 96.5% 0.735
21 Laos 0.054 53.1% 0.716
22 Canada 0.111 65.0% 0.696
23 Ecuador 0.096 60.2% 0.692
24 Kenya 0.214 90.7% 0.682
25 Cameroon 0.089 52.4% 0.661
26 New Zealand 0.204 83.9% 0.660
27 Ghana 0.062 42.9% 0.650
28 Colombia 0.139 62.9% 0.644
29 Panama 0.161 66.6% 0.631
30 Croatia 0.161 65.2% 0.624
31 Pakistan 0.056 32.7% 0.604
32 Togo 0.207 73.1% 0.598
33 Vietnam 0.082 38.6% 0.597
34 Sweden 0.164 57.1% 0.576
35 Northern Macedonia 0.091 36.7% 0.574
36 Turkey 0.079 32.9% 0.571
37 Armenia 0.081 32.2% 0.565
38 Tanzania 0.099 37.1% 0.564
39 Austria 0.237 74.3% 0.561
40 Gabon 0.22 68.4% 0.554
41 Sri Lanka 0.074 27.7% 0.551
42 Lithuania 0.157 49.4% 0.545
43 Cambodia 0.149 47.2% 0.545
44 Argentina 0.06 21.5% 0.538
45 El Salvador 0.203 60.7% 0.538
46 Iran 0.005 5.8% 0.535
47 Bosnia & Herz. 0.105 31.5% 0.526
48 Nigeria 0.059 18.6% 0.524
49 Cuba 0.008 4.5% 0.524
50 Latvia 0.19 54.2% 0.522
51 China 0.084 24.4% 0.518
52 Honduras 0.182 50.1% 0.512
53 Kazakhstan 0.041 11.3% 0.512
54 Iraq 0.024 6.4% 0.510
55 Russia 0.063 16.9% 0.509
56 Peru 0.185 50.1% 0.508
57 Libya 0.004 0.0% 0.506
58 Malaysia 0.058 13.7% 0.500
59 Switzerland 0.226 59.8% 0.499
60 Azerbaijan 0.041 8.8% 0.498
61 India 0.077 18.1% 0.495
62 Egypt 0.045 8.2% 0.489
63 Nicaragua 0.212 53.3% 0.485
64 Finland 0.184 44.2% 0.478
65 Romania 0.175 41.4% 0.476
66 Chile 0.182 43.3% 0.476
67 Mexico 0.081 15.3% 0.474
68 Oman 0.026 0.0% 0.473
69 Ukraine 0.048 5.6% 0.471
70 Kuwait 0.03 0.1% 0.468
71 Qatar 0.032 0.3% 0.466
72 Algeria 0.039 0.6% 0.457
73 Madagascar 0.115 20.8% 0.454
74 Indonesia 0.1 15.9% 0.450
75 Bahrain 0.048 0.0% 0.441
76 Saudi Arabia 0.048 0.0% 0.441
77 Trinidad & Tobago 0.052 0.0% 0.435
78 Dominican Republic 0.09 10.4% 0.435
79 Bangladesh 0.066 1.8% 0.424
80 Guatemala 0.251 51.7% 0.419
81 Tunisia 0.076 3.0% 0.416
82 Thailand 0.114 13.1% 0.414
83 Lebanon 0.077 2.8% 0.413
84 Belarus 0.075 1.2% 0.408
85 Portugal 0.27 53.5% 0.401
86 Ivory Coast 0.13 15.0% 0.401
87 Morocco 0.131 14.8% 0.398
88 Bulgaria 0.137 15.7% 0.394
89 United Arab Emirates 0.081 0.3% 0.394
90 Philippines 0.169 24.3% 0.393
91 Jordan 0.1 4.9% 0.391
92 Taiwan 0.101 4.2% 0.386
93 Moldova 0.106 5.3% 0.384
94 Serbia 0.094 2.0% 0.384
95 Hungary 0.125 10.1% 0.382
96 Spain 0.23 38.1% 0.377
97 USA 0.148 14.7% 0.373
98 Slovenia 0.21 30.6% 0.367
99 Malta 0.157 15.6% 0.364
100 South Korea 0.111 2.8% 0.363
101 Botswana 0.109 0.2% 0.353
102 Denmark 0.335 60.5% 0.343
103 Slovakia 0.204 24.5% 0.343
104 Estonia 0.161 12.5% 0.342
105 Greece 0.217 27.4% 0.339
106 Italy 0.261 37.3% 0.328
107 Australia 0.228 27.7% 0.325
108 South Africa 0.147 3.2% 0.313
109 Poland 0.192 15.5% 0.312
110 United Kingdom 0.26 33.0% 0.306
111 Netherlands 0.187 12.1% 0.302
112 Senegal 0.185 10.4% 0.295
113 France 0.214 17.5% 0.291
114 Singapore 0.169 1.6% 0.272
115 Israel 0.175 2.5% 0.268
116 Luxembourg 0.247 20.8% 0.260
117 Germany 0.364 46.2% 0.224
118 Ireland 0.292 24.7% 0.215
119 Czech Republic 0.245 11.3% 0.212
120 Japan 0.259 15.0% 0.211
121 Cyprus 0.238 8.7% 0.209
122 Belgium 0.311 16.6% 0.144
123 Jamaica 0.292 8.2% 0.127
124 Benin 0.36 3.2% 0.000 Methodology:
Countries with unavailable data were filtered out. Both electricity price data and %renewable data was normalized (link to normalization, wiki). The CGCMI is the addition of the normalized electricity price and normalized %renewable, and then normalized to range between 0 and 1.
Sources:
Electricity price data for December 2020, retrieved 17/08/21 from https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/
% Electricity from renewable sources data for November 2018, retrieved 17/08/21 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production. This data is supposedly from https://iea.org
