zlacker

One more thing that can be used for soaking up rarely generated free energy are cheap old inefficient Bitcoin miners.

There are many places already using it for this. Bringing Bitcoin miners to a place at this point is just shipping a container.

>>xiphia+(OP)
This sounds great, but in reality, this concept is also a curse. Moving Bitcoin miners is much easier than building transmission lines - potentially discouraging funding for the infrastructure needed to move the energy where it is more useful. I remember reading of BTC mining companies moving their infrastructure right next door to remote coal fired power plants, getting extremely cheap rates, which otherwise might have been completely decommissioned due to transmission costs.

>>socks+py
Carbon tax fixes this.

>>xiphia+(OP)
Generating a load of heat, when part of the what renewables are for is averting climate change seems counterproductive.

>>stuaxo+PX
At Earth scale it's not human generated heat that's the problem.

The problem (simplified) is that vast amounts of energy from the Sun fall daily across the globe.

An amount of that energy generates a great deal of heat at the land surface and ocean layer.

Much more heat by magnitudes than humans create.

Some of that heat warms the land, water and lower atmosphere, a great deal of that heat radiates outwards toward space ..

A balance was struck that's been more or less "just right" on average for some 200K years.

We have altered that balance by increasing the insulating properties of the lower atmosphere via increased CO2 (with worse flow on effects from increasing methane and water vapor).

This additional trapped energy is causing more powerful atmospheric events and increased mean tempretures.

But the cause is insulating in very large amounts of energy, not generating small amounts of energy (at the appropriate relative scales).

>>TheDud+OO
I don't believe it does. The same phenomenon can occur with a renewable energy source. Remote renewable energy source (solar, hydro etc), not grid connected, could attract the same sort of Bitcoin mining system and even claim to be 'green' - when in fact they are reducing the commercial attractiveness of building the infrastructure to move the energy to the grid, so it might be a net-negative environmental benefit (or at best, negligible, assuming that the mining equipment was originally connected to a dirty grid, rather than new equipment) (and would not be subject to carbon tax).

>>socks+7Hk
> they are reducing the commercial attractiveness of building the infrastructure

A company will do whatever is most profitable (build transmission or build generation). Which is fine, given the bad things (e.g. coal) were taxed out of profitability.

>>socks+7Hk
Thought experiment: If you had to ban one of these, which would you pick?

bitcoin vs coal

One of them is responsible for a significant percentage of global carbon emissions and the other is not.

I don't favor bans, but at least that thought experiment should indicate which one to go after in some way (e.g. taxes).

>>TheDud+xuA
I think emissions are a different issue.

Which is more _wasteful_? I would argue Bitcoin, and dangerously so, because its upper bound of potential energy usage is infinite.

Coal, on the other hand, is not wasted (burning coal without using the heat would be stupidity).

Even when coal is phased out, Bitcoin may still be there, causing unnecessary strain on the infrastructure. Bitcoin will find the cheapest energy and set it on fire, if the price is right. And the heat produced by the equipment also wasted as byproduct due to convenience/commercial factors. I can imagine it already contributes to energy poverty, alongside other issues, in developing nations.

>>socks+bdC
Rather than imagining, we must look at the data.