School of Economics and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Nat Commun. 2021 Apr 6;12(1):1938. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-22256-3.
The growing energy consumption and associated carbon emission of Bitcoin mining could potentially undermine global sustainable efforts. By investigating carbon emission flows of Bitcoin blockchain operation in China with a simulation-based Bitcoin blockchain carbon emission model, we find that without any policy interventions, the annual energy consumption of the Bitcoin blockchain in China is expected to peak in 2024 at 296.59 Twh and generate 130.50 million metric tons of carbon emission correspondingly. Internationally, this emission output would exceed the total annualized greenhouse gas emission output of the Czech Republic and Qatar. Domestically, it ranks in the top 10 among 182 cities and 42 industrial sectors in China. In this work, we show that moving away from the current punitive carbon tax policy to a site regulation policy which induces changes in the energy consumption structure of the mining activities is more effective in limiting carbon emission of Bitcoin blockchain operation.
比特币挖矿日益增长的能源消耗和相关碳排放可能会破坏全球的可持续发展努力。通过基于模拟的比特币区块链碳排放模型，研究中国比特币区块链运营的碳排放流，我们发现，如果没有任何政策干预，中国比特币区块链的年能源消耗预计将在 2024 年达到峰值，为 2965.90 太瓦时，相应产生 1.305 亿吨碳排放。在国际上，这一排放量将超过捷克共和国和卡塔尔的温室气体年排放量总和。在国内，它在中国 182 个城市和 42 个工业部门中排名前 10 位。在这项工作中，我们表明，从当前的惩罚性碳税政策转向场地监管政策，这种政策可以改变挖矿活动的能源消耗结构，从而更有效地限制比特币区块链运营的碳排放。
