I have just watched a very interesting featurette on Sky News about the potential environmental impact of BitCoin mining.
Has anybody else seen it?
After a fairly standard newbie introduction to BitCoin, it showed a secret BitCoin farm located in an industrial complex somewhere in western China. The place was huge, dusty and messy and there were more servers than could be counted. The main aim of the report was to show that BitCoin mining is destroying the environment because the electricity powering the farm was coming from coal powered power stations. Entire external walls were literally taken up by cooling fans (incidentally some large data centres actually recycle the generated heat which would reduce the footprint farm's carbon footprint - and dare I say it may create a net surplus). The farm's electricity consumption was masked by the other manufacturing processes (implied not said directly) in the unit so the authorities wouldn't be suspicious. The same authorities close down such illegal farms on a regular basis.
The report claimed that this specific farm generates approximately ?80,000 a day, by carrying out a series of complex calculations - that we know as mining - which equates to about 2BTC at current prices.
In the concluding part of the report a legitimate farm was shown - from the outside - which looked like any modern clean light industrial / office unit situated in a picturesque valley with a river running nearby. No actual production figures were given but the journalist made a point of saying that this farm was driven by hydroelectricity powered by the nearby river which means it is utilising clean electricity.
Incidentally hydro-electricity and damming rivers may be clean, but it can often have other environmental effects. Just look at the Aral Sea (oh that's right you couldn't as it more or less disappeared!*) and to a lesser extent the Colorado river.
* In recent years the Aral sea has begun to recover thanks to some reversals like shutting down some of the cotton plantations.
So in the end the report, as interesting as it was sent out a bit of a mixed message.
The message is always the same, electricity in itself is fine, but the issue is how is it sourced. You might be driving a hybrid car, but if it ultimately is powered from fossil-fuelled electricity is it really so clean?
In Poland, much of the power is generated from coal and it really is the carbon dioxide monster of Europe. One place in particular near the town of Belchatow, in central Poland, is a particular culprit. It is a large open cast mine - which is incidentally the biggest hole in Europe that resembles a moonscape - that supplies lignite (brown coal) to two nearby power plants that supply a significant amount of Poland's energy needs.
Now that is really dirty electricity - just saying to ram the point home.
Wherever you are and whatever you are doing stay safe and stay well and have a lovely day.
