Bitcoin prices have surged further as BTC trading today (Feb.18) closed at $51,960, after major companies bought bitcoins to seed their digital business funds. During the week, BNY Mellon and Mastercard led the pack of companies that have already instituted plans of including cryptocurrencies in their business operations. These latest developments will likewise make bitcoin mining more profitable for successful miners.
Still, the continuing rise in the number of mining participants will heighten mining difficulty that will in turn, increase global electricity consumption. The growing concern among advocates of climate change movements is that the high energy used in cryptomining will greatly impact, if not negate the results of all actions undertaken to reduce carbon emissions. This is considering that climate scientists have set the year 2050 as the crucial period by which zero carbon emission must be achieved.
A recent study by Cambridge University researchers has already established that fact that about 0.56% of the global energy used in 2020 was used for mining bitcoins and various altcoins. Using a device in analyzing the electricity consumed by all cryptocurrency miners throughout the globe, the Cambridge researchers reported that the global mining industry has been using up to 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year.
The amount was compared with other countries, to which results showed that it exceeded the 113.20 TWh of electricity consumed by the United Arab Emirates and has slightly exceeded the 121 TWh of electricity consumed by Argentina.
Wide Use of Renewable Energy as a Way to Reduce the Carbon Footprint of the Bitcoin Mining Industry
While many bitcoin mining farms are using renewable energy such as solar, wind and hydro, as well as nuclear, as means of reducing cost of electricity, not all bitcoin miners have access to these types of electrical power generators. Some have formed mining pools in order to optimize the coal-powered electricity consumed by their bitcoin machines. However, the strategy proved effective at the time when bitcoin trade was dominated by retail traders, and when bitcoin was not widely used as payments for online transactions.
Nonetheless, the use of renewable energy is at present, still the likeliest solution to reducing the carbon footprint generated by the mining machines used for global mining
Mining As A Service as an Alternative to Running Mining Machines on Coal-Powered Electricity
To provide small-scale bitcoin mining businesses and independent professional miners with a solution to reducing CO2 emissions, the Elevate Group is now offering Mining As A Service. The services offered through the group’s platform include using one or more bitcoin mining machines running actively in the company’s low-cost mining facility.
The terms of the service contract is indefinite as termination coincides with the life of the bitcoin mining machine. That being the case, the Mining as a Service (MaaS) includes cost of maintaining the machine and the facility to ensure prolonged productivity of the mining machine even as difficulty rises.
Moreover, in the event of power outages, professional bitcoin miners will have less to worry about if their mining machines are supported by Elevate Group’s Mining as a Service platform.