Carbon dioxide gas emissions resulting from Bitcoin mining have worsened since being blocked by the Chinese government in 2021.
This is because Bitcoin miners are now using coal-fired power plants. Whereas in the past, when operating in China, most of the miners used electricity from hydropower.
"We see Bitcoin not being as 'green' as it was before," said Alex de Vries, the lead author of the report published in the journal Joule.
The report states that the popularity of Bitcoin is a big problem for efforts to reduce pollution from fossil fuels. However, the prohibition of Bitcoin mining, such as what China did, was not effective in reducing emissions.
This is because the miners just move to other countries where the cost of electricity is cheaper, which is usually produced using power plants that use fossil fuels, such as coal, as quoted by us from The Verge, Thursday (3/3/2022).
In total, according to de Vries estimates, the carbon footprint generated by Bitcoin is equivalent to the carbon footprint generated by the Czech Republic. Cryptocurrency mining produces huge greenhouse gas emissions, because the mining process requires a lot of electricity.
China itself was previously the 'home' for around 70% of Bitcoin miners in the world. Until finally in 2021 they banned Bitcoin mining because of the environmental problems it caused.
While still mining in China, the miners usually utilize excess hydro energy during the rainy season in Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces. But during the dry season, they usually move to Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, which depend on coal-fired power plants.
But since being banned, the miners are now scattered to Kazakhstan and the United States. In Kazakhstan, the majority of electrical energy comes from coal, and the type of coal used is even worse because it produces more carbon dioxide than the coal used in China.
While in the US most of the electricity generation comes from gas, as well as coal. The use of natural gas to mine Bitcoin in the US has increased from 15% to 30% since miners were expelled from China.
Then the de Vries report also stated that the use of renewable energy to mine Bitcoin plummeted from 42% in 2020 to 25% in August 2021, right after China banned Bitcoin mining.