Comment by socks
3 years ago
This sounds great, but in reality, this concept is also a curse. Moving Bitcoin miners is much easier than building transmission lines - potentially discouraging funding for the infrastructure needed to move the energy where it is more useful. I remember reading of BTC mining companies moving their infrastructure right next door to remote coal fired power plants, getting extremely cheap rates, which otherwise might have been completely decommissioned due to transmission costs.
Carbon tax fixes this.
I don't believe it does. The same phenomenon can occur with a renewable energy source. Remote renewable energy source (solar, hydro etc), not grid connected, could attract the same sort of Bitcoin mining system and even claim to be 'green' - when in fact they are reducing the commercial attractiveness of building the infrastructure to move the energy to the grid, so it might be a net-negative environmental benefit (or at best, negligible, assuming that the mining equipment was originally connected to a dirty grid, rather than new equipment) (and would not be subject to carbon tax).
Thought experiment: If you had to ban one of these, which would you pick?
bitcoin vs coal
One of them is responsible for a significant percentage of global carbon emissions and the other is not.
I don't favor bans, but at least that thought experiment should indicate which one to go after in some way (e.g. taxes).
2 replies →
> they are reducing the commercial attractiveness of building the infrastructure
A company will do whatever is most profitable (build transmission or build generation). Which is fine, given the bad things (e.g. coal) were taxed out of profitability.