Many closed American coal and gas plants are being reopened and dedicated purely to Bitcoin mining The energy used by Bitcoin mining could be slashed
Many closed American coal and gas plants are being reopened and dedicated purely to Bitcoin mining
The energy used by Bitcoin mining could be slashed 99% if the coding was changed, an environmental lobby group said.
The campaign, called Change the Code Not the Climate, urged miners to change the software code to ‘proof of stake’ rather than ‘proof of work’ to cut Bitcoin’s already massive carbon footprint.
The existing code, known as ‘proof of work’, requires the use of massive computer arrays to validate and secure transactions, the Guardian reported.
In the proof of stake model, miners pledge their coins to verify transactions and adding inaccurate information leads to penalties.
Without changing code, the leading digital currency’s mining “incentivises maximum energy use,” according to Chris Larsen, founder and executive chairman of crypto company Ripple and a climate activist, said.
“Fossil fuel growth is outpacing renewable growth in Bitcoin mining and that’s the fundamental challenge,” Michael Brune, campaign director, said.
Many closed American coal and gas plants were being reopened and dedicated purely to Bitcoin mining when less energy-intensive methods should be searched for instead, experts said.
“It’s particularly painful to see this in the electric sector because that is precisely the place where the US has made most of its progress in the last decade,” Brune said, before adding “there’s no way we can reach our climate goals if we are reviving fossil fuel plants.”
Another “nightmare scenario,” Larsen added, would be if much of the world including Europe, the US and China become increasingly more renewable but countries rich in fossil fuels convert to Bitcoin mining to exhaust their remaining resources.
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