Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Quantification of energy and carbon costs for mining cryptocurrencies

An Author Correction to this article was published on 16 November 2018

This article has been updated

Abstract

There are now hundreds of cryptocurrencies in existence and the technological backbone of many of these currencies is blockchain—a digital ledger of transactions. The competitive process of adding blocks to the chain is computation-intensive and requires large energy input. Here we demonstrate a methodology for calculating the minimum power requirements of several cryptocurrency networks and the energy consumed to produce one US dollar’s (US$) worth of digital assets. From 1 January 2016 to 30 June 2018, we estimate that mining Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Monero consumed an average of 17, 7, 7 and 14 MJ to generate one US$, respectively. Comparatively, conventional mining of aluminium, copper, gold, platinum and rare earth oxides consumed 122, 4, 5, 7 and 9 MJ to generate one US$, respectively, indicating that (with the exception of aluminium) cryptomining consumed more energy than mineral mining to produce an equivalent market value. While the market prices of the coins are quite volatile, the network hashrates for three of the four cryptocurrencies have trended consistently upward, suggesting that energy requirements will continue to increase. During this period, we estimate mining for all 4 cryptocurrencies was responsible for 3–15 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1 Blockchain hashrates and coin exchange prices in US$ for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Monero.
Fig. 2: Mining cryptocurrencies generally requires more energy to generate an equivalent value in US$ than copper, gold, PGMs and REOs.
Fig. 3: The carbon footprint of any cryptocurrency would depend on the energy demand of the network and the primary energy mix used to generate the coins.

Data availability

All data analysed here are included in this published article (and its Supplementary Information) or publicly available online as noted.

Change history

  • 16 November 2018

    In the version of this Analysis originally published, in the paragraph that starts “On the basis of our 2017 estimates…” the word ‘trillion’ was mistakenly used three times in relation to rates of energy use; it should have read ‘billion’. This has now been corrected.

References

  1. Extance, A. Bitcoin and beyond. Nature 526, 21–23 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Vranken, H. Sustainability of bitcoin and blockchains. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 28, 1–9 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Catalini, C. & Gans, J. S. Some simple economics of the blockchain. SSRN Electron. J., https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2874598 (2016).

  4. Hutson, M. Can bitcoin’s cryptographic technology help save the environment? Science, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aal1221 (2017).

  5. Zheng, Z., Xie, S., Dai, H., Chen, X. & Wang, H. An overview of blockchain technology: architecture, consensus, and future trends. In Proc. IEEE 6th International Congress of Big Data 557–564 (2017).

  6. Houy, N. The Bitcoin mining game. Ledger 1, 53–68 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Kroll, J. A., Davey, I. C. & Felten, E. W. The economics of Bitcoin mining or, Bitcoin in the presence of adversaries. In Proc. 12th Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS) 1–21 (2013).

  8. IRS Virtual Currency Guidance: Virtual Currency Is Treated as Property for U.S. Federal Tax Purposes; General Rules for Property Transactions Apply. IRS Virtual Currency Guidance, https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-virtual-currency-guidance (2014).

  9. Becker, J. et al. in The Economics of Information Security and Privacy (ed. Böhme, R.) 135–156 (Springer, Berlin, 2013).

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  10. Gipp, B., Meuschke, N., & Gernandt, A. Decentralized trusted timestamping using the crypto currency bitcoin. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.04015 (2015).

  11. De Vries, A. Bitcoin’s growing energy problem. Joule 2, 801–805 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Malone, D. & O’Dwyer, K. J. Bitcoin mining and its energy footprint. In Proc. 25th IJoint IET Irish Signals & Systems Conference 2014 and 2014 China-Ireland International Conference on Information and Communications Technologies (ISSC 2014/CIICT 2014) 280–285 (2014).

  13. Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index (Digiconomist, accessed 21 January 2018); https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

  14. Bevand, M. Op Ed: Bitcoin Miners Consume A Reasonable Amount of Energy — And It’s All Worth It. Bitcoin Magazine https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/op-ed-bitcoin-miners-consume-reasonable-amount-energy-and-its-all-worth-it/ (2017).

  15. Mudd, G. M. Global trends in gold mining: towards quantifying environmental and resource sustainability. Resour. Policy 32, 42–56 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Norgate, T. & Haque, N. Using life cycle assessment to evaluate some environmental impacts of gold production. J. Clean. Prod. 29–30, 53–63 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. McCook, H. An Order-of-Magnitude Estimate of the Relative Sustainability of the Bitcoin Network Vol. 3 (2014).

  18. CoinMarketCap Top 100 Cryptocurrencies by Market Capitalization (accessed 26 April 2018); https://coinmarketcap.com/

  19. What is IOTA? Documentation (IOTA Foundation, 2018); https://iota.readme.io/docs/what-is-iota

  20. XRP The Digital Asset for Payments (Ripple XRP, 2018); https://ripple.com/xrp/

  21. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero Hashrate Historical Chart (BitInfoCharts, accessed 23 January 2018); https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/hashrate-btc-eth-ltc-xmr.html#log

  22. Bitcoin Hash Rate (Blockchain Luxembourg, accessed 21 January 2018); https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate

  23. Ethereum Network HashRate Growth Rate (Etherscan, accessed 25 April 2018); https://etherscan.io/chart/hashrate

  24. Monero Private Digital Currency (Monero, accessed 24 April 2018); https://getmonero.org/

  25. Sompolinsky, Y. & Zohar, A. Bitcoin’s underlying incentives. Commun. ACM 61, 46–53 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Magaki, I., Khazraee, M., Gutierrez, L. V. & Taylor, M. B. ASIC clouds: specializing the datacenter. In Proc. 2016 43rd International Symposium on Computer Architecture 178–190 (2016).

  27. Electricity Consumption. The World Factbook (US Central Intelligence Agency, accessed 2018); https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2233rank.html

  28. Ethereum Energy Consumption Index (beta) (Digiconomist, accessed 21 January 2018); https://digiconomist.net/ethereum-energy-consumption

  29. Smith, N. Bitcoin is the new gold. Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-31/bitcoin-is-the-new-gold (2018).

  30. Malmo, C. Ethereum is already using a small country’s worth of electricity. VICE https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d3zn9a/ethereum-mining-transaction-electricity-consumption-bitcoin (2017).

  31. Antminer L3 ++. Mining/BitMain (CryptoCompare, 2017); https://www.cryptocompare.com/mining/bitmain/antminer-l3plusplus-580mhs/

  32. GPU & CPU Benchmarks for Monero mining (Monero Benchmarks, accessed 30 January 2018); http://monerobenchmarks.info

  33. Glaister, B. J. & Mudd, G. M. The environmental costs of platinum–PGM mining and sustainability: is the glass half-full or half-empty? Miner. Eng. 23, 438–450 (2010).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  34. Northey, S., Haque, N. & Mudd, G. Using sustainability reporting to assess the environmental footprint of copper mining. J. Clean. Prod. 40, 118–128 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Sverdrup, H. U., Ragnarsdottir, K. V. & Koca, D. Aluminium for the future: modelling the global production, market supply, demand, price and long term development of the global reserves. Resour. Conserv. Recycl. 103, 139–154 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Balomenos, E., Panias, D. & Paspaliaris, I. Energy and exergy analysis of the primary aluminum production processes: a review on current and future sustainability. Miner. Process. Extr. Metall. Rev. 32, 69–89 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  37. Weng, Z., Haque, N., Mudd, G. M. & Jowitt, S. M. Assessing the energy requirements and global warming potential of the production of rare earth elements. J. Clean. Prod. 139, 1282–1297 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  38. Mineral Commodity Summaries 2018. US Geological Survey (US Government Publishing Office, 2018); https://doi.org/10.3133/70194932

  39. Malla, S. CO2 emissions from electricity generation in seven Asia-Pacific and North American countries: a decomposition analysis. Energy Policy 37, 1–9 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Lampert, A., Harney, A. & Goh, B. Chinese bitcoin miners eye sites in energy-rich Canada. Reuters https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-bitcoin-china/chinese-bitcoin-miners-eye-sites-in-energy-rich-canada-idUSKBN1F10BU (2018).

  41. Peck, M. E. Why the biggest bitcoin mines are in China. IEEE Spectrum https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/why-the-biggest-bitcoin-mines-are-in-china (2017).

  42. Bitcoin Block Reward Halving Countdown (Bitcoinblockhalf, accessed 26 April 2018); http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.com/

  43. Hurlburt, G. F. & Bojanova, I. Bitcoin: benefit or curse? IT Prof. 16, 10–15 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the assistance of D. Faraone in locating and collecting cryptonetwork data. There was no funding for this research. M.J.K. is an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education Post-Doctoral Research Participant at the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research & Development. T.T. is an Environmental Engineer at the EPA’s Office of Research & Development. This manuscript was conceived and developed on personal time. No government funding, equipment or time was used to produce this document. The manuscript has not been subjected to the Agency’s internal review, therefore, the opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not reflect the official positions and policies of the US EPA.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

M.J.K. and T.T. conceived the manuscript. M.J.K. aggregated and analysed the data and drafted the manuscript. T.T. provided writing contributions to the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Max J. Krause.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

M.J.K. declares financial holdings of less than US$5,000 of BTC, ETH, XMR, LTC, MIOTA and other cryptocurrencies. T.T. declares no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Data Set

Data used in analysis, Supplementary Tables 1–19, Supplementary Figures 1–2

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Krause, M.J., Tolaymat, T. Quantification of energy and carbon costs for mining cryptocurrencies. Nat Sustain 1, 711–718 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0152-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0152-7

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing