11% of India’s annual consumption needs electricity for bitcoin mining, China’s climate target is failing

Cryptocurrency is being discussed all around. Recently, the second richest person in the world, Elon Musk, tweeted that now Tesla’s car will not be found in Bitcoin. The company announced in February to accept payments in bitcoin. Musk said that energy consumption is very high in bitcoin mining due to which it has a very bad effect on the environment. That is why we have decided this. In such a situation, the big question arises that how much energy is required in bitcoin mining?

According to AFP report, Switzerland consumes as much energy in a year. The same amount of energy is spent in bitcoin mining in a year. Elon Musk has shared the data of the Cambriz Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index by tweeting. According to this, about 150.04 TWh (terra watt hours) of energy is being used in this mining on an annual basis at 6.30 pm on 15 May. If we compare this, Google consumes 12.20 TWh energy within a year. All the data centers around the world, in total, they consume 200 TWh energy in a year. However, bitcoin mining has been kept out of these. This information has been shared by the International Energy Agency IEA.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank said that if Bitcoin were a country, a year’s worth of mining would take as much energy as energy would consume in a year. According to a 2016 report by the International Energy Agency, global electricity production stood at 25082 TWh of which bitcoin mining accounts for 0.60 per cent. The total electricity consumption stood at 20863 TWH, in which Bitcoin accounted for 0.69 per cent.

According to IEA data, India’s total energy consumption stood at 1277 TWh in 2018, while the worldwide energy consumption stood at 23398 TWh. America’s consumption was 4033 TWH, Russia’s 929 TWH, Japana’s 940 TWH, France’s 450 TWH and China’s 6453 TWH. India’s gross consumption in the year 2019-20 was 1383 TWH. In this way, one-eighth of the energy consumed by India in a year is spent in bitcoin mining.

In fact, bitcoin mining is based on the “Proof of work” principal which was formulated in 2008. The system generates some bitcoins every ten minutes. However, the puzzle has to be cracked for this. Due to the increase in prices, people from all over the world are engaged in its mining. According to a report in the science journal Nature, China accounts for 80 percent of the global cryptocurrency trade. The pollution that is happening due to its mining may spoil the climatic target of the country.