John Timmer's
With four more years like 2023, carbon emissions will blow past 1.5° limit is based on the United Nations' Environmental Programme's report
Emissions Gap Report 2024. The
"emissions gap" is:
the difference between where we're heading and where we'd need to be to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. It makes for some pretty grim reading. Given last year's greenhouse gas emissions, we can afford fewer than four similar years before we would exceed the total emissions compatible with limiting the planet's warming to 1.5° C above pre-industrial conditions.
...
The report ascribes this situation to two distinct emissions gaps: between the goals of the Paris Agreement and what countries have pledged to do and between their pledges and the policies they've actually put in place.
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Back in 2021 in my
TTI/Vanguard talk I examined one of these gaps, the one between the crypto-bros' energy consumption:
The leading source for estimating Bitcoin's electricity consumption is the Cambridge Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, whose current central estimate is 117TWh/year.
Adjusting Christian Stoll et al's 2018 estimate of Bitcoin's carbon footprint to the current CBECI estimate gives a range of about 50.4 to 125.7 MtCO2/yr for Bitcoin's opex emissions, or between Portugal and Myanmar.
and their
rhetoric:
Cryptocurrencies assume that society is committed to this waste of energy and hardware forever. Their response is frantic greenwashing, such as claiming that because Bitcoin mining allows an obsolete, uncompetitive coal-burning plant near St. Louis to continue burning coal it is somehow good for the environment.
But, they argue, mining can use renewable energy. First, at present it doesn't. For example, Luxxfolio implemented their commitment to 100% renewable energy by buying 15 megawatts of coal-fired power from the Navajo Nation!.
Second, even if it were true that cryptocurrencies ran on renewable power, the idea that it is OK for speculation to waste vast amounts of renewable power assumes that doing so doesn't compete with more socially valuable uses for renewables, or indeed for power in general.
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Note that the
current CBECI estimate shows that Bitcoin's energy consumption has increased 43% since 2021, a 12.7%/yr increase.
Follow me below the fold for more details of the frantic greenwashing, not just from the crypto-bros but from the giants of the tech industry that
aims to ensure that:
Following existing policies out to the turn of the century would leave us facing over 3° C of warming.
