Report on Bitcoin mining: collapse of fossil sources

A couple of weeks ago, a report was published revealing that over the last decade, the use of renewable energy for Bitcoin mining has practically doubled.

This has also led to a collapse in the use of electricity produced from fossil sources such as coal.

The report on Bitcoin mining

The report, titled “Mining the Future: Bitcoin’s Renewable Energy Footprint and the Path to 2030“, was published by MiCA Crypto Alliance, and was created in collaboration with Nodiens.

This is a 19-page PDF that analyzes the environmental impact of the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining, with a particular focus on the so-called “carbon footprint“, or CO2 emissions.

The key points of the report are four.

The first is the conclusion that Bitcoin mining is actually becoming much more eco-friendly. In fact, from 2011 to 2024 the share of renewable energy in its energy mix has grown from 20% to 41%.

In other words, in thirteen years it has almost doubled, now reaching nearly half of the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining worldwide.

The second key point is perhaps the most sensational.

In fact, the report states that the use of coal as an energy source for Bitcoin mining in the same period has decreased from 63% to 20%.

This is a real collapse, considering that coal has gone from being by far the most used energy source for Bitcoin mining (especially in China) to being a much smaller source, with a share now even less than half of that of renewables.

The report concludes that at this rate, it is expected that by 2030 Bitcoin mining will be powered by at least 70% from sustainable energy sources.

The fourth and final point, however, warns that, in absolute terms, carbon emissions could still increase for a few more years, especially if the price of Bitcoin goes through other bull phases before stabilizing and finally declining.

The report was drafted by Aayush Ladda, of DLT Science Foundation, Juan Ignacio Ibañez, of MiCA Crypto Alliance, Kamil Tylinski, and Paolo Tasca, of Nodiens.

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The data from Nodiens on which this report is based illustrate a clear trend towards greater use of renewable energy sources, driven by the economic incentives integrated into Bitcoin, but also and above all by technological advances and a global push towards sustainability.

Nodiens is indeed a metrics platform that offers financial insights and social health scores on over 4,000 cryptocurrencies, including more than 300 ESG parameters on climate impact and decentralization.

His data is collected daily from over 10 million data sources on platforms like Telegram, X, Reddit, Yahoo Finance, Stocktwits, and GitHub.

Nodiens is also a key partner of the MiCA Crypto Alliance.

MiCA Crypto Alliance

The MiCA Crypto Alliance helps companies navigate the complex regulatory landscape.

The members of the alliance have access, for example, to a wide ESG dataset, so they can meet the legal and environmental standards of the MiCA.

One of the activities of the MiCA Crypto Alliance is the creation of MiCA-compliant white papers, as well as the production of sustainability data, since from December 2024 they will be a legal requirement for all cryptocurrencies within the EU.

In fact, according to the new EU regulation on cryptocurrency markets (the MiCA), any entity that wishes to publicly offer a cryptocurrency or list it for trading on a platform in the European Union must publish a MiCA-compliant white paper, along with the relevant sustainability data, and this also applies to crypto service providers (CASP), such as exchanges and custodial wallet providers.

Nodiens

Last week Nodiens announced the launch of its platform, which monitors more than 100 financial, community, and ESG risk parameters on over 4,000 Web3 assets.

Among these parameters are prices, market capitalizations, volumes, concentration and cost of liquidity, pairs, depeg rates of stablecoins, both on CEX and DEX.

There are also parameters that monitor the real involvement of the community thanks to mood, trust, and popularity indices, and the trending topics on X, Telegram, Reddit, Github, Stock Twits, and Yahoo Finance, to detect manipulations, assess the sentiment, and catch the first warning signs.

Other parameters analyze energy consumption, the decentralization index, node distribution, and transaction productivity on over 200 blockchains.

Furthermore, the Data Intelligence team at Nodiens publishes monthly articles that cover trends, on-chain behaviors, community health, and risk dynamics in the main protocols.