Bitcoin mining consumed enough electricity last year to release carbon emissions on a par with Estonia, according to a study that suggests the climate change impact of the cryptocurrency isn’t as bad as previously thought.
Past research has suggested that the emissions from mining bitcoin – where computing power is used to solve mathematical problems to create new currency – may be as high as 63 megatonnes of CO2 per year. Some researchers have even claimed the cryptocurrency alone could bust global climate goals.
Susanne Köhler and Massimo Pizzol at Aalborg University in Denmark found that earlier estimates had made blanket assumptions that carbon emissions from electricity generation were uniform across China, where they estimate just over half of all bitcoin mining takes place.