it's funny that this appeared today. i've recently been musing about whether or not a technical and political migration of the bitcoin ecosystem from proof of work to a consensus model that simulates the proof of work economy in a clean way, complete with a socio-economic solution that does not leave miners and their associated/secondary economy out in the cold, could be an idealized model for migrating the global economy off of fossil fuels.
There are a number of articles claiming various percentages of Bitcoin mining from renewables, but this is probably the most balanced quote:
"Commonly cited estimates range from 39% to 73% renewable energy. Jesse Morris, CEO of non-profit Energy Web says most estimates find 20% to 50% of bitcoin is powered by renewable energy, but all available numbers are based on self-reported data, which is unverifiable. 30 June 2021"
My inner optimist is satisfied that the renewable percentage is constantly growing.
Does anyone know of any sources that attempt to look at the marginal energy source rather than the average energy source?
For example, a region might have 50% of its power from hydro and 50% from gas, but 0% of new power plants are hydro and 100% are gas. In such a world, adding a new electricity consumer to the grid causes 100% gas emissions, even though "50% of power is clean hydro." The proper attribution really ought to be the causal attribution, which typically means looking at the marginal source of power rather than the average.
I know this is a complicated topic. Entire PhD theses have been written on modeling the emissions impact of EVs, and there's a healthy debate of how to best calculate the 'causal' impact.
as long as there are any dirty megawatts, any clean bitcoin mining energy could be replacing it, assuming it is physically close enough to existing electric power grids.
all bitcoin mines are is a proof of investment for the purposes of divvying up entries in a decentralized periodic lottery where the probability of winning is proportional to ones investment in equipment and energy.
is it really truly impossible to efficiently simulate this (specifically the economics, so that existing players don't revolt) while maintaining decentralization in the consensus algorithm?
it seems like there could be a technical solution, but the harder problem is building political consensus in a decentralized world... sort of like getting the global economy off of fossil fuels...
