- It's approximately a 180° pivot to go from "unused renewable energy" to "flare gas for green bitcoins"
- It doesn't reduce the emissions. Whether you flare it or burn it in a gas turbine / engine driving a generator to mine bitcoin, the CO2 released is exactly the same, as you are burning ~100 % of the hydrocarbons either way. The difference is that one generates bitcoins, the other does not. This is only valuable to bitcoin stakeholders, and as has been pointed out up and down all these threads this is either of approximately no value or of negative value to society at large. And overall, creating the equipment to mine bitcoins with flare gas, and deploying that to remote oil fields w/ no use for gas, creates a bunch of emissions that simply don't exist if you just flare the gas.
- There are non-emissive alternatives, e.g. gas re-injection. Note that the great majority of unwanted gas is already dealt with this way. This means that mining bitcoins using flare gas has a very good likelihood of increasing the share of unwanted gas that is effectively flared, again, increasing emissions.
Reducing the amount of flared gas (and putting it through a turbine to mine bitcoin is the same as flaring it as far as emissions go) is in fact an UN IEA goal.
The simple fact of the matter is that there is no free lunch and there is NO ecological way of randomly wasting energy.
> - It's approximately a 180° pivot to go from "unused renewable energy" to "flare gas for green bitcoins"
I wrote earlier to avoid this specific derailing. Renewable and captured are not synonymous but usually the same. This is one of the cases where it is not the same. To my knowledge, the only other captured sources are at hydroelectric plants, while some parties are interested in geothermal as well.
Noteworthy is that “captured” seems to be also called “rejected” energy in some circles.
> And overall, creating the equipment to mine bitcoins with flare gas, and deploying that to remote oil fields w/ no use for gas, creates a bunch of emissions that simply don't exist if you just flare the gas.
Once. I’m not sure how a one time event is remotely comparable to ongoing issues. Please elaborate?
> It doesn't reduce the emissions. Whether you flare it or burn it in a gas turbine / engine driving a generator to mine bitcoin, the CO2 released is exactly the same, as you are burning ~100 % of the hydrocarbons either way. The difference is that one generates bitcoins, the other does not.
Hmm. Is there anything we can do about that then? Like does that format allow for further processing towards sustainability? The generating of bitcoin making it economical to do more with the CO2 that the oil guys just threw their hands up on decades ago? If this issue has nothing to do with bitcoin mining and the alternative is just business as usual with it going directly to the atmosphere like it already was, then why point fingers at the bitcoin mining?
- It's approximately a 180° pivot to go from "unused renewable energy" to "flare gas for green bitcoins"
- It doesn't reduce the emissions. Whether you flare it or burn it in a gas turbine / engine driving a generator to mine bitcoin, the CO2 released is exactly the same, as you are burning ~100 % of the hydrocarbons either way. The difference is that one generates bitcoins, the other does not. This is only valuable to bitcoin stakeholders, and as has been pointed out up and down all these threads this is either of approximately no value or of negative value to society at large. And overall, creating the equipment to mine bitcoins with flare gas, and deploying that to remote oil fields w/ no use for gas, creates a bunch of emissions that simply don't exist if you just flare the gas.
- There are non-emissive alternatives, e.g. gas re-injection. Note that the great majority of unwanted gas is already dealt with this way. This means that mining bitcoins using flare gas has a very good likelihood of increasing the share of unwanted gas that is effectively flared, again, increasing emissions.
Reducing the amount of flared gas (and putting it through a turbine to mine bitcoin is the same as flaring it as far as emissions go) is in fact an UN IEA goal.
The simple fact of the matter is that there is no free lunch and there is NO ecological way of randomly wasting energy.