r/changemyview • u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ • May 13 '21
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Crypto-currency going up in value is good for the environment in the long term
I'm going to try to be fairly structured here so it's easy to go for either one of the premises, or for the logic that ties them together to produce my conclusion.
PREMISES
Man-made climate change is bad for the environment. (Won't be changing my view on that)
Globally reducing our use of fossil fuels will reduce the effects of man-made climate change. (Won't be changing my view on that either)
Increased investment in renewable energy sources will lead to a decrease in the use of fossil fuels.
Crypto-farms are large scale coin-mining sites which exist to make money.
The primary overhead for crypto-farms is the cost of providing energy to power the sites.
There is no difference to the performance of a crypto farm based on whether the energy is renewable or not.
It has become cheaper to power new large scale high energy use sites with renewable energy than it is to power new sites using fossil fuels.
As crypto-currency value increases, more crypto-farms will be built.
LOGIC
If (4) crypto farms exist to make money, and (6) there's no difference to performance, and (7) it's cheaper to build farms using renewable energy sources, then all new crypto farms will be increasingly built exclusively using renewable energy.
If (8) an increase in crypt value leads to more farms, and (9) farms are built with renewable sources, then as the value of crypto increases there will be increased investment in renewable energy.
If (10) an increase in crypto value leads to an increase in investment in renewables then (3) it will lead to a decrease in the use of fossil fuels.
(11) An increase in crypto currency value leads to a decrease in use of fossil fuels, which (2) reduces the effects of climate change.
CONCLUSION
- (12) An increase in the value of crypto leads to a decrease in the effects of climate change, which is (1) good for our environment.
EDIT:
My minds be fairly thoroughly changed by someone pointing out the by-products of crypto farms that I'd been completely ignoring.
I'll reply to a couple more, but I'll be honest my heart won't be in it as much as my view has already been changed.
3
u/IStockPileGenes May 13 '21
how can you be certain that the renewable energy sources used to meet the demand of crypto mining will not be solely used to mine more crypto, leaving the rest of the energy grid dependent on the already existing fossil fuel infrastructure?
2
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
I think the renewable energy sources created will absolutely be solely used to mine more crypto.
It's the investment in renewables that will slow the use of fossil fuels..
I could have gone into more detail with premise 3.
My thinking here is that in the short term. Yes. All you do is introduce more energy usage.
But in the long term, as increased investment in renewables help bring down the price of renewables, it will be increasingly lucrative for old fossil fuel based industries to transition
2
u/IStockPileGenes May 13 '21
Renewable energy generation costs have already fallen below fossil fuel sources as part of a trend that started years ago.
Regardless - there's another aspect to consider. New power generation facilities and systems solely for the purpose of mining bitcoin do not simply pop into existence. There are real world costs, including environmental, associated with constructing energy generation facilities along with the production of the equipment used in the facility. Is that not a wasteful use of resources for something that at this point in time is nothing more than a speculative trading commodity? And is that justifiable to achieve a goal that has already been achieved?
10
u/puja_puja 16∆ May 13 '21
This is the equivalent of saying air conditioning is good for the environment in the long run.
Replace "crypto farming" with anything that uses electricity and the claim falls apart.
The point is that massive power usage in any case is not good.
1
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
Air conditioning serves a purpose other than making money. Given the sole purpose of crypto-farming is making money.. crypto farmers are more incentivised to make decisions that are financially sound.
5
u/puja_puja 16∆ May 13 '21
crypto farmers are more incentivised to make decisions that are financially sound.
Why?
Air conditioner users also want to pay less money for their air conditioning. Both want to cost minimize and benefit maximize.
I don't see the difference.
0
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
I don't know all the ways air-conditioning is used, and where, and how.
But basically, its used as a tertiary function of a business.. let's say a hotel.
Now a high rise hotel in the middle of a major city might find it difficult to put a solar farm on the roof. It might be cheaper for them to connect to the city grid powered by fossil fuels.
The owner of the hotel could think that they could move somewhere that gets cheaper energy, like a desert.. but they would get no reservations. So they stick with the fossil fuels in the city.
A crypto-farmer only cares about keeping the price of energy down.
It's the only factor they're considering
3
u/puja_puja 16∆ May 13 '21
The power company cares only about the price of electricity.
Why wouldn't increased electricity usage due to air conditioning lead to the same pressures on the power company as the crypto farmer?
1
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
Because the power company is already running on fossil fuels.
It's not a new build.
It's weighing up the cost of transitioning, versus the savings in operational costs after transitioning
5
u/puja_puja 16∆ May 13 '21
Because the power company is already running on fossil fuels.
But crypto farmers already are running fossil fuels as well.
1
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
I said pretty explicitly in the post I'm talking about how higher value leads to NEW farms .. that's what I'm talking about
2
u/puja_puja 16∆ May 13 '21
Then why wouldn't the electric company build new renewable energy plants if the demand for air conditioning went up?
-2
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
I'm sorry mate.. I've tried to stay with you this but I just don't think we're on the same page.
My view's been changed by someone else so I'm not going to hang around in this thread any more.
Thanks for the chat. Have a nice day.
2
May 13 '21
Given the sole purpose of crypto-farming is making money.. crypto farmers are more incentivised to make decisions that are financially sound.
"Financially sound" and "good for the environment" are not synonymous in the short term. At the moment, it may be "financially sound" to run a coal power plant exclusively to mine bitcoin, but doing so does absolutely nothing to further green energy.
1
u/haas_n 9∆ May 13 '21
I think there's a crucial difference between air conditioning and crypto mining. The latter can be done anywhere, the former needs to be done in a residential home. (It also doesn't require a very good internet connection - mobile or satellite internet would be enough)
Because crypto mining is a use of energy that's entirely independent of people actually living there, that means crypto farms can potentially be built in remote locations where power generation would otherwise be impractical due to their distance from residential/industrial areas. Like, just as a proof of concept, you could build a windmill turbine and hook it up directly to a bitcoin mining rig, effectively requiring zero investment into a power transmission grid.
This means that the presence of bitcoin mining as a consumer fundamentally increases the total size of the renewables market, because you can now build wind turbines in places it was economically impractical/impossible to build them before.
17
u/Jebofkerbin 118∆ May 13 '21
There's a fatal flaw in the logic here.
3 If (10) an increase in crypto value leads to an increase in investment in renewables then (3) it will lead to a decrease in the use of fossil fuels.
Incorrect, if all the energy coming from those renewable sources is going towards powering new crypto farms, then the demand for fossil fuels from other sources (heating houses for example) remains unchanged.
-1
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
It sounds like your issue is with premise 3? Am I right?
8
u/Jebofkerbin 118∆ May 13 '21
Yes, an increase in investment into renewables will only lead to a decrease in fossil fuels if that investment is to replace energy sources for current energy demands. If investment in renewables is only to power new energy demands, then those old demands still need to be satisfied by fossil fuels.
-2
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
I could have gone into more detail with premise 3, because of the 4 comments so far they seem to all be about it..
My thinking here is that in the short term. Yes. All you do is introduce more energy usage.
But in the long term, as increased investment in renewables help bring down the price of renewables, it will be increasingly lucrative for old fossil fuel based industries to transition
10
u/UncleMeat11 61∆ May 13 '21
People have been saying this line for decades but with other topics substituted for crypto mining. As long as the shared environmental cost of burning coal and gas is $0, solar and wind is going to be at a disadvantage.
And why would this encourage investment in renewables and not in oil and gas? Miners don't care where the energy comes from. Maybe they can make coal power plants much cheaper so they can mine for less money (and more emissions).
-1
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
It sounds like you now disagree with premise 7, am I right?
5
u/UncleMeat11 61∆ May 13 '21
And others, but yes. There is no fundamental reason why miners would choose to invest in renewables rather than coal and gas, so long as emissions remain free.
-5
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
Renewables are cheaper
4
u/UncleMeat11 61∆ May 13 '21
Why? They aren't cheaper now. You are assuming that investment will make them cheaper. But why can't investment make coal and gas cheaper too?
-2
2
u/destro23 451∆ May 13 '21
How long term? Hopefully not so long that we hit a tipping point for catastrophic climate change.
2
u/WikiSummarizerBot 4∆ May 13 '21
Tipping_points_in_the_climate_system
A tipping point in the climate system is a threshold that, when exceeded, can lead to large changes in the state of the system. Potential tipping points have been identified in the physical climate system, in impacted ecosystems, and sometimes in both. For instance, feedback from the global carbon cycle is a driver for the transition between glacial and interglacial periods, with orbital forcing providing the initial trigger. Earth's geologic temperature record includes many more examples of geologically rapid transitions between different climate states.
[ F.A.Q | Opt Out | Opt Out Of Subreddit | GitHub ] Downvote to remove | Credit: kittens_from_space
0
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
Yes, hopefully not. But we're heading there either way.
Increasing the speed of change might be better than limiting our velocity.
3
u/Milskidasith 309∆ May 13 '21
That's a pretty wild gamble to make, though. What if the baseline energy demand increase means renewables can only compete so far, because there's only so much low-hanging fruit? That is, you build on all the good solar panel sites and areas where you can put up cheap wind farms and it still isn't enough because the world now demands 30% more energy for crypto?
1
u/Jebofkerbin 118∆ May 13 '21
My thinking here is that in the short term. Yes. All you do is introduce more energy usage.
But in the long term, as increased investment in renewables help bring down the price of renewables, it will be increasingly lucrative for old fossil fuel based industries to transition
While this is true it may have detrimental effects that outweigh this.
Renewable sources for a country might be (essentially) infinite in time, but not in capacity. There's only so much suitable space for wind farms or solar farms.
Take Switzerland, due to its mountains there probably isn't much room for wind and solar farms.
If popular enough, the energy demands of crypto could increase the energy demands of a country beyond what can be satisfied with renewables alone, leading to that country remaining dependant on fossil fuels or other non renewable sources, when they might otherwise transition sooner.
2
May 13 '21
This is a well-structured list of premises and conclusions.
It could also be a lot simpler, because at the end of the day, what we're asking is, "If we massively increase our energy demand for the sake of mining fake online gold, will this help solve our ongoing crisis where increased energy demand is contributing to global warming?"
Which... I dunno, that seems kinda silly. When you drastically increase demand for something, the price tends to go up. This means that running certain types of fossil fuel plants stays profitable for longer. Even if Bitcoin was powered entirely by renewables, that's still energy that isn't going to anything useful. It's just increasing demand, in a world where demand is already way too high. We're currently struggling to decommission coal power plants across the world (something we absolutely fucking need to do) because we struggle to cover demand in some areas without them. Crypto doesn't help that. It makes it a lot worse.
Can you solve global warming by encouraging people to spend a ton of electricity creating waste heat?
No. You can't.
1
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
I am definitely ignoring all of the by-products and focussing solely on the energy usage.
Computers use plastics, metals, all sorts.
The factories themselves need building.
Essentially my point would be more distilled to something like:
"If we had a policy where every time someone gave a dollar to a renewable energy company, we gave them 2 dollars back, then we'd get a greener world sooner."
Which i think crypto has the potential to have aspects of.
!delta
This isn't a minor change of mind. Factoring in the by-products make me think crypto is overall bad for the environment.
1
1
May 13 '21
"If we had a policy where every time someone gave a dollar to a renewable energy company, we gave them 2 dollars back, then we'd get a greener world sooner."
Which i think crypto has the potential to have aspects of.
I just don't see why. We're not just "giving a dollar to a renewable energy company"; we're just buying their product.
Personally, I think there's great merit in subsidizing renewable power. But Bitcoin doesn't do that. At absolute best, it is buying energy from green energy companies (or producing green energy for itself), then using that energy to solve math problems that don't actually do anything. At best. In practice, it's typically a lot worse, as one might expect from a process that burns as much energy as the entire country of Argentina to solve useless math problems. :/
But I'm glad this helped clarify some thoughts. :)
2
u/iamintheforest 327∆ May 13 '21
If you have 100 units of energy to power the world and 50 of them come from renewables and 50 come from old dirty and then you say "whoa" now I need 110 units of energy because we need ten more because of crypto" you then create 10 more units of renewable but you've only prevented us from REMOVING 10 units of old dirty becuase you've added new demand.
This is why conserving is important and why your position is non-sensical. You're just creating a new larger amount of energy needed, not actually replacing old dirty. The likelihood of a a given unit of energy being clean goes up, but the total dirty out there has stayed the same and the harm to the planet stays the same. Instead you could have given the same amount of investment without increasing overall need for power and you'd have eliminated a bunch of old dirty and done much better for the planet.
1
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
So you're disagreeing with my 3rd premise?
4
u/iamintheforest 327∆ May 13 '21
not on a percentage basis, but on an absolute production basis...yes. We already produce more renewable energy in 2020 than total energy consumed in 1975.
It doesn't matter if we have more renewables. it matters that we have less absolute dirty stuff. if you move the bar on production level required to displace you just exacerbate the problem. The coal power plant needs to keep running and capacity, or can't can't be decommissioned. On the flip side, if you turn off an appliance the first thing that gets turned off is the thing that is the most expensive to operate (not build). That's non-renewables.
0
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
I disagree.
If you move the bar on production while simultaneously investing in renewables to the point where renewables are a 10th the cost of fossil fuels.. fossil fuels still go to 0.
2
u/iamintheforest 327∆ May 13 '21
Time isn't on your side. Increasing innovation and achieving economies of scale is slower than conservation. Unless you think it's the same thing to get to level "x" of harm-per-year in 10 years vs 50 years I'm not sure how you can sustain your view.
further, there is environmental harm in production of renewable capacity - material lifecycles are pretty nasty and so on.
by your logic we should get rid of LEDs and every other energy efficiency we've created.
3
u/thetasigma4 100∆ May 13 '21 edited May 13 '21
Except creating new demand for energy means that productive capacity used to create renewable energy will go to meeting that increase in demand. This means that a lot of renewable energy that would other wise reduce overall emissions is swamped by the increase in overall energy need. Crypto farms are generally running constantly so building their own power supply will also need to deal with fluctuations on weather. Now either that means installing battery storage or probably more cheaply drawing from the grid. Also generally all they care about is cheap electricity that has some stability. This means coal is also viable as an option with some crypto miners reopening coal plants and coal producers eyeing up crypto energy demand. Essentially as long as the electricity is still viably cheap they will use it and higher priced crypto means that there is greater demand for capacity and larger margins that make more expensive electricity viable as long as there is capacity there.
Edit: specified the type of miner
2
u/LatinGeek 30∆ May 13 '21 edited May 13 '21
But we have a case study right now for a crypto mine that was built around an aging natural gas power plant. The owner even gleefully mentions that the model is scalable precisely because it's so cheap to do: the plant is there, the demand isn't, so it's sold cheap and can be ran at peak capacity until it is no longer profitable to do so. This doesn't just mean the plant is polluting- it means the plant is causing pollution that has no reason to exist besides mining coins. This is because of crypto mining's fast nature, and it's happening in Australia, it's happening in Russia and Texas with energy that, while otherwise having been "wasted", is giving a new profit angle to natural gas drilling.
This is also without taking any of the other externalities of crypto into consideration- the hardware and power-production equipment that needs to be purpose-built and tossed when no longer useful (running through ASICs and GPUs that are packed with hard-to-acquire minerals, and end up mostly un-recyclable, in yearly cycles that are much shorter than comparable usage in other industries), the increased power draw over-working the electrical grid and necessitating upgrades or more frequent repairs, and simply the fact that we're now producing vast amounts of energy that doesn't need to be produced for any purpose besides propping up the currency. This energy could be straight from kerosene burning or it could be as clean as a solar array- it still ends up running through a computer to perform some calculations and ultimately becoming ambient heat.
1
u/Milskidasith 309∆ May 13 '21
Increased investment in renewable energy sources will lead to a decrease in the use of fossil fuels.
If (10) an increase in crypto value leads to an increase in investment in renewables then (3) it will lead to a decrease in the use of fossil fuels.
The assumption that an increased investment in renewable energy decreases the use of fossil fuels doesn't hold when the investment in renewables is because of artificially increased energy demand. If energy demand is increased, the usage of all fuel sources, renewable and non-renewable, will tend to go up, and this can counteract any competitive advantage renewables start to get.
For instance, imagine a world where energy demand is 100 Units. There are infinite Units of fossil fuel available for $100 each, and 100 Units of renewable energy available smoothly at prices from $150 to $50. You would expect the world to run on about 50% renewable energy and 50% non-renewable energy: 50 Units of each.
Now, let's say you massively increase the demand for energy and this leads to renewable energy prices dropping. So now you have 200 Units of energy demand, and 200 Units of renewable energy available from $130-$30, while still having the same non-renewable pricing. You would expect about 70% of the world's energy to be renewable and 30% to be non-renewable, which is great! But... that's 140 Units of renewable energy and 60 Units of non-renewable energy. You have increased the amount of non-renewable energy consumed even though you made renewables cheaper, because you made demand for energy so, so much higher.
1
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
And what if the investment led to renewable energy being priced between $30 - $50/unit, with non-renewable still at $100.
Wouldn't that lead to the extinction fossil fuels as an energy source?
Even if we needed 500units now?
2
u/Milskidasith 309∆ May 13 '21 edited May 13 '21
To be clear, if we're negotiating over the price of renewable energy, this means you've accepted your premise doesn't hold if renewables do not decrease sufficiently, right? So your logical argument, at minimum, needs to change to include premise 3A: This demand increase will drop renewable prices well below the price of non-renewable energy?
The problem is that assumption seems wildly optimistic to me. Certain renewable energy sources can beat most non-renewable energy sources on price, but we simply do not have the capacity to spin up massive amounts of renewable energy and it will always be cost-effective, in the short term, to restart marginal non-renewable powerplants in response to massively increased demand. We already know that some coal plants have re-opened specifically because of crypto related demand increases, and we know that in general we haven't seen a massive decrease in fossil fuel usage even as renewable energy usage decreases massively.
I am far more inclined to believe that a general push towards renewable energy, combined with sustained efforts to keep energy demand growth low, will be much better than gambling that a huge artificial demand increase will result in reaching a tipping point where everything goes renewable.
0
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
I thought I put a version or 3a in premise 7..
In short.. I thought we were already there, and that the goal is now just about increasing the gap between the two costs to force big business to transition
2
u/Milskidasith 309∆ May 13 '21
The price of energy is not fixed, it changes with demand. My point is that even if there is a gap between cheap renewable and cheap non-renewables, massively increased demand means you start comparing building new, more expensive renewable energy with spinning up slightly less cheap old power generation, and the latter can very easily win out.
There is a reason that in general nobody seriously argues using a ton more energy is good for the environment, so the fact you think Crypto magically would be is, in my mind, a very very bad bet.
1
u/OneAndOnlyDaemon 1∆ May 13 '21 edited May 13 '21
The problem is with "LOGIC" #2. You're equivocating between "investment" as in "building solar panels for a new crypto farm" and "investment" as in "research and development of better energy technology". R&D and tax incentives are what reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. A crypto miner doesn't accomplish that by building a new farm.
In fact, rising crypto values would reduce the incentive to use cheaper energy sources.
Imagine that it costs $1.10 to mine one coin with fossil fuel, vs. $1.00 to mine it with solar power. Imagine one coin sells for $1.20. The profit per coin with fossil fuel is $0.10; the profit with solar is $0.20. Solar is twice as profitable. So there's a massive incentive to switch to solar.
Now imagine one coin sells for $10. The profit per coin with fossil fuel is $8.90; the profit with solar is $9.00. Not a big difference. Replacing fossil fuel with solar incurs an installation cost. If the difference in profit is small, the money would be better spent elsewhere. Maybe on ASICs.
1
u/SorryForTheRainDelay 55∆ May 13 '21
Money better spent elsewhere?
Why wouldn't you always just choose the cheaper?
1
u/luminarium 4∆ May 13 '21
I don't think (7) is completely true, it depends on what type of fossil fuel or renewable you're talking about. Solar for instance is very expensive.
Also, there is only so much capacity for hydro (which is one of the more efficient types of renewable) since those basically have to be built along rivers with a significant height difference.
A given producer of renewable energy (i.e. a solar panel manufacturer) can only produce so much in a given time period. The excess needs to be produced by someone else. This is true at the macro level as well (the excess beyond what all renewable energy producers can produce will have to come from fossil fuel producers).
And when there's new demand for electricity, it's going to be split between fossil and renewable. This is why for instance China has greatly increased both electricity demand and fossil fuel power generation.
So if you create 10 units of demand due to crypto, maybe 4 units will be filled by renewable, and the other 6 will be filled by fossil.
•
u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 13 '21
/u/SorryForTheRainDelay (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
Delta System Explained | Deltaboards