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Implausible projections overestimate near-term Bitcoin CO2 emissions

Nature Climate Change volume 9, pages 653–654 (2019)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 28 August 2019

The Original Article was published on 29 October 2018

arising from Mora, C. et al. Nature Climate Change https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0321-8 (2018)

Bitcoin mining is an increasingly energy-intensive process1,2,3 for which the future implications for energy use and CO2 emissions remain poorly understood. This is in part because—like many IT systems—its computational efficiencies and service demands have been evolving rapidly. Scenario analyses that explore these implications can therefore fill pressing knowledge gaps, but they must be approached with care. History has shown that poorly constructed scenarios of future IT energy use (often a result of overly simplistic extrapolations of early rapid growth trends) can spread misinformation and drive ill-informed decisions4,5,6. Indeed, the utility of an energy demand scenario is proportional to its credibility, which is demonstrated through careful attention to technology characteristics and evolution, analytical rigour and transparency, and designing scenarios that align with plausible future outcomes.

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Fig. 1: Comparison of Bitcoin CO2 emissions projected by the Mora et al. model.

Data availability

The authors declare that all data supporting the findings of this study are available in the article, the Supplementary Information and at https://github.com/emasanet/Bitcoin-analysis.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Eric Masanet & Nuoa Lei

  2. Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Eric Masanet

  3. Energy Analysis & Environmental Impacts Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Arman Shehabi

  4. Faculty of Management, Science & Technology, Open University of the Netherlands and Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Harald Vranken

  5. Rocky Mountain Institute, Basalt, CO, USA

    Jonathan Koomey

  6. Ericsson Research, Ericsson AB, Stockholm, Sweden

    Jens Malmodin

Authors
  1. Eric Masanet
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  2. Arman Shehabi
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  3. Nuoa Lei
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  4. Harald Vranken
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  5. Jonathan Koomey
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  6. Jens Malmodin
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Contributions

All authors contributed equally to the conception and design of this critique, and to the preparation and review of the manuscript. E.M., A.S., N.L. and H.V. led the analytical components.

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Correspondence to Eric Masanet.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–9, Tables 1 and 2 and references.

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Masanet, E., Shehabi, A., Lei, N. et al. Implausible projections overestimate near-term Bitcoin CO2 emissions. Nat. Clim. Chang. 9, 653–654 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0535-4

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