Is cryptocurrency mining environmentally friendly??
Well, from a limited point of view, YES, since one of the weak points of cryptocurrency mining that is being discussed everywhere is the enormous amount of energy it needs to do the mining work. The CCAF conducted a study where it monitored the energy consumed, for example, by bitcoin mining worldwide, the study showed the incredible result that bitcoin mining consumes more energy per year than all of Argentina, with an approximate consumption of 40 to 445 TWh per year.
This large expenditure of energy is mainly due to the large processing power needed to solve the calculations (which is estimated to be approximately 160 quintillion calculations per second, ie 160,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000***) and this vast computational effort is the Achilles heel of the BTC.
And this is why bitcoin mining has been criticized and has been accused of being a catastrophic damage to the environment. Of course there are countries like USA or China that consume 10mil times what bitcoin consumes per year (but who cares about that) for governments and skeptics it is much better to blame the new technologies for the environmental damage that exists right now, instead of looking at the years and years of consumption and destructive modernism to cover the great loss of power over people that governments and central banks are having by the rise and rise of cryptocurrency technology and decentralized economy.
But unlike these closed-minded people, there are entrepreneurs who instead of continuing to blame bitcoin mining as the cause of the next global catastrophe, think about the basic principles of reusing or transforming energy to use it and thus obtain a higher profit and lower costs in other fields.
For example in Canada they have used the waste energy generated by mining equipment to provide industrial heating with zero carbon emissions, the company MintGreen is using this innovative idea to capture the heat emitted by their mining equipment. The thermal energy they produce is being used to provide industrial heating needed for the production of sea salt and mashing of malt grain to make Scotch whisky.
The process they use is to recover heat from the ASIC miners, which use an immersion system that allows them to be placed under dielectric fluid. They then capture those high temperatures and reuse it for commercial purposes and obtain a great benefit without damaging the environment with so much C0² emission.
Others are using the heat generated by mining equipment for agriculture in greenhouses in countries with sub-zero temperatures such as the Netherlands or Sweden, The company Genesis Mining is behind this large project, where they are developing containers for mining equipment capable of directing the waste heat flow to nearby greenhouses growing fruit and vegetables.
"Just one container of ASICs equipment in a subarctic climate could heat up to 3,000 m2 of greenhouse, or partially heat a 10,000 m2 greenhouse, which would increase local self-sufficiency by 8%. In addition to greenhouses, the heat can be used for fish, insect and algae farming."
Genesis Mining
This idea is extremely impressive, as it takes advantage of the heat generated by mining equipment to reduce the carbon footprint of the heating used in these Nordic countries with very cold climates, as it can reduce costs and avoid unnecessary carbon burning and air pollution.
Finally we have another fascinating project where they use the same system of harnessing the heat generated by mining equipment, but with the difference that it is used for heating homes and heating water.
The company that is leading this incredible idea is WiseMining where they are developing Sato a system that uses the heat produced by ASICs equipment to produce hot water and function as heating and all this while you make money mining bitcoin. In my country this is called killing two birds with one stone, as $1 of electricity will produce $1 of heat and also $1 in bitcoin.
So, looking at how the waste energy from bitcoin mining can be harnessed or transformed, you don't have to be a blockchain genius to realize the great potential that these projects have and the great benefits for everyone, since while you produce money, you heat your home or your greenhouse or you can even sell that energy and make even more profit, all while reducing the impact on the environment.
We came to the conclusion that bitcoin mining looking at it from a broad point of view, does not affect dramatically as they are showing it in the news, as if it does the wasted energy in China or the United States can not be used for anything else and every year more and more energy is consumed to keep all the cities running and illuminated, that CLEARLY generates an impact on the environment and leaves a large carbon footprint because to produce that energy you have to burn a lot of coal.
It is time to do the math and disprove the governments that constantly insist that bitcoin mining and other cryptocurrencies will cause the ruin of humanity, these projects show us the opposite and better yet these wonderful ideas will continue to be replicated everywhere and getting more and more new methods to continue taking advantage of the residual energy of mining equipment, so for all these reasons and more the decentralized economy of cryptocurrencies is really the future of humanity.