Miners using sustainable energy sources accounted for 91.3% of Bitcoin (BTC) mining in the first two months of the year. data Shared by Daniel Batten, Vice President of Climate Tech.
battens I got it Marathon Digital transferred about 300 megawatts from thermal to wind power in January, making a significant contribution to the above metrics. Additionally, Batten said that even though hash rates are rising, network emissions are also declining, leading to increased power consumption.
Reduced network emissions
According to Batten, in addition to Marathon Digital’s transition, the actions of China and Kazakhstan contributed significantly to the record decline in network emissions.
China
China will ban cryptocurrency mining in May 2021. At the time, China accounted for over 75% of her BTC hashrate in the world.battens I got it Chinese mining was only 41.6% sustainable at best. Therefore, the country’s decision to ban cryptocurrency mining had a significant impact on the network’s emissions.
The chart above shows the net emissions of the BTC network as a dark blue line. There is a clear drop in emissions after China’s May 2021 ban decision. Since then, total network emissions have increased slightly, but the overall trend has been downward, with total emissions never reaching pre-China ban levels.
Kazakhstan
With its cool climate and abundant coal resources, Kazakhstan has emerged as a mining haven, growing to account for 18% of the world’s hash rate by late 2021. BTC network.
But after an energy crisis hit the country at the end of 2021, Kazakhstan turned its back on miners. To stop high-energy-consuming mining operations, the state cuts off power to miners, tightens regulations on energy consumption, and introduces differentiated tax rates based on the energy consumed by miners.
As a result, Kazakhstan’s fuel-based mining operations decreased by 11.6% and sustainable energy use across the network increased by 2.9%.
America
the battens too I got it Zero-emission energy sources account for 52.8% of U.S. mining operations This makes sense given that mining operations in China and Kazakhstan are declining while U.S. mining operations are registering an increase. there is.
According to October 2022 data, two US mining pools, Foundry and Antpool, account for over 51% of the global hash rate.
The global grid is going green
The overall sustainability rate of the BTC network has steadily increased since January 2021.
The graph above shows the percentage of sustainable energy used in BTC mining since January 2020 as a purple line. Currently, sustainable energy use in BTC mining is 52.6%. This percentage was 52.2% in December 2022 and 28.48% in 2021.
