According to Woo Charts, the intensity of emissions from bitcoin mining has reached its lowest point ever. Investor and activist in climate technology Daniel Batten published the results on April 3.
The graph shows that compared to its energy usage, BTC mining today emits fewer energy emissions. Within three and a half years, according to Batten's prediction, Bitcoin's emissions per KWh will be cut in half. No other industry, he continued, is cutting emission intensity as quickly. The decrease in emissions intensity has two main causes in addition. Nowadays, the vast majority of bitcoin miners use renewable energy. Second, mining equipment is now considerably more effective.
The researcher also included a graph showing the viability of Bitcoin mining. Although it has slightly decreased, this is still very close to its peak figure of 54%. It continues to be high, he claimed, because a large portion of new hash rate entering the network is fueled by sustainable sources. As a result, clean energy is used to power more than half of the network.
Nevertheless, over the past two weeks, overall emissions have grown. This is because mining activity has not increased significantly due to flared or vented methane, despite an increasing hash rate. Bitcoin mining is now more environmentally friendly than electric vehicle technology, as BeInCrypto reported in late March. According to Batten, Bitcoin's main energy source is hydroelectricity.
From January 2020, "fossil fuel supplies have been declining at a combined 6.2% per year," he said. However, the increased energy efficiency has not been recognised by lawmakers who continue to penalize the sector. Despite a new bill recognizing the ability to mine BTC in the Lonestar state, there has been opposition to mining businesses in the mining hub of Texas.
Cambridge University estimates that the BTC network now uses about 140 TWh of electricity annually. This is still less than the 206 TWh lost in the United States annually as a result of transmission and distribution, though. Currently, the average network hash rate (EH/s) is 349 exahashes per second. According to BitInfoCharts, this is not far off the 398 EH/s record-breaking high set on March 24.
Furthermore, network difficulty, which gauges the level of mining competition, has reached an all-time high of 46.8 T. Last but not least, mining profitability is still modest, coming in at just $0.078 per day per TH/s.