Technology

59483 readers

5447 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

398

Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin (arstechnica.com)

submitted 9 months ago by L4s to c/technology

159 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin::US government tracking the energy implications of booming bitcoin mining in US.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

While its analysis is preliminary, the Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that large-scale cryptocurrency operations are now consuming over 2 percent of the US's electricity.

The EIA report notes that, in the wake of a crackdown on cryptocurrency in China, a lot of that movement has involved relocation to the US, where keeping electricity prices low has generally been a policy priority.

One independent estimate made by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance had the US as the home of just over 3 percent of the global bitcoin mining at the start of 2020.

Tracking the history of five of these plants showed that generation had fallen steadily from 2015 to 2020, reaching a low where they collectively produced just half a Terawatt-hour.

To better understand the implications of this major new drain on the US electric grid, the EIA will be performing monthly analyses of bitcoin operations during the first half of 2024.

But based on these initial numbers, it's clear that the relocation of so many mining operations to the US will significantly hinder efforts to bring the US's electric grid to carbon neutrality.

The original article contains 783 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!