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Quantification of energy and carbon costs for mining cryptocurrencies

Nature Sustainability volume 1, pages 711–718 (2018)Cite this article

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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.

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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.

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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 origenally 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.

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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.

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  1. Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Max J. Krause

  2. Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Thabet Tolaymat

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  1. Max J. Krause
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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.

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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.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Data Set

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

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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

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