Sanaz Chamanara, S. Arman Ghaffarizadeh, Kaveh Madani
Abstract Based on a multi‐attribute assessment of the environmental impacts and challenges associated with global Bitcoin (BTC) mining activities around the globe, we call for urgent action by the scientific, policy, and advocacy communities. The worldwide BTC mining network consumed 173.42 TWh of electricity during the 2020–2021 period, bigger than the electricity consumption of most nations. The mining process emitted over 85.89 Mt of CO 2 eq in the same timeframe, equivalent to the emission caused by burning 84 billion pounds of coal or running 190 natural gas‐fired power plants. The environmental footprint of BTC mining is not limited to greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020–2021, the global water footprint of BTC mining was about 1.65 km 3 , more than the domestic water use of 300 million people in rural Sub‐Saharan Africa. The land footprint of the global BTC mining network during this period was more than 1,870 square kilometers, 1.4 times the area of Los Angeles. These striking numbers highlight the heavy reliance of the BTC network on fossil fuels and natural resource‐intensive energy sources, resulting in major but unmonitored and unregulated environmental footprints. To mitigate the environmental costs of BTC mining, immediate policy interventions, technological advancements, and scientific research are crucial. Proposed measures include enhanced transparency, economic and regulatory tools, developing energy‐efficient alternative coins, and the adoption of greener blockchain validation protocols.
This article explores the extent to which network activity can explain changes in Ethereum transaction fees. Such fees are referred to as “gas prices” within the Ethereum blockchain, and are important inputs not only for executing transactions, but also for the deployment of smart contracts within the network. Using a bootstrapped quantile regression model, it can be shown that network activity, such as the sizes of blocks or the number of transactions and contracts, can have a heterogeneous relationship with gas prices across periods of low and high gas price changes. Of all the network activity variables examined herein, the number of intraday transactions within Ethereum’s blockchain is most consistent in explaining gas fees across the full distribution of gas fee changes. From a statistical perspective, the bootstrapped quantile regression approach demonstrates that linear modeling techniques may yield but a partial view of the rich dynamics found in the full range of gas price changes’ conditional distribution. This is an important finding given that Ethereum’s blockchain has undergone fundamental economic and technological regime changes, such as the recent implementation of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559, which aims to provide an algorithmic updating rule to estimate Ethereum’s “base fee”.
The rapid adoption of hydrogen as an eco-friendly energy source has necessitated the development of intelligent power management systems capable of efficiently utilizing hydrogen resources. However, guaranteeing the security and integrity of hydrogen-related data has become a significant challenge. This paper proposes a pioneering approach to ensure secure hydrogen data analysis through the integration of blockchain technology, enhancing trust, transparency, and privacy in handling hydrogen-related information. By combining blockchain with intelligent power management systems, the efficient utilization of hydrogen resources becomes feasible. The utilization of smart contracts and distributed ledger technology facilitates secure data analysis, real-time monitoring, prediction, and optimization of hydrogen-based power systems. The effectiveness and performance of the proposed approach are demonstrated through comprehensive case studies and simulations. Notably, our prediction models, including ABiLSTM, ALSTM, and ARNN, consistently delivered high accuracy with MAE values of approximately 0.154, 0.151, and 0.151, respectively, enhancing the security and efficiency of hydrogen consumption forecasts. The blockchain-based solution offers enhanced security, integrity, and privacy for hydrogen data analysis, thus contributing to the advancement of clean and sustainable energy systems. Additionally, the research identifies existing challenges and outlines potential future directions for further enhancing the proposed system. This study adds to the growing body of research on blockchain applications in the energy sector, with a specific focus on secure hydrogen data analysis and intelligent power management systems.
Blockchain technology and renewable energy links can realize the fusion of energy flow and information flow. The combination of the two has a high degree of matching, and the related research is also increasing. Although experts have expanded their research on renewable energy and blockchain, there are still restrictions and gaps in the existing research. In this paper, 920 articles from 2016 to 2023 were chosen and visualized using bibliometrics and CiteSpace software to analyze the research field's development base, collaborative groups, hot topics and evolutionary trends. Based on the foregoing research, we summarized the pertinent literature in the area of “Renewable energy & Blockchain” and thoroughly analyzed the current hot issues in depth to determine the future development direction. The findings show that, first, related research in the field increased rapidly in 2016–2023, the research topics and hotspots of “Renewable energy & Blockchain” focus on energy system optimization, clean energy technologies, circular development and renewable energy trading. Second, all subjects have a specific strength and influence contribution in the field, from the micro to the macro level. Among them, China, the United States and their universities have relatively mature research experience and research ability. Third, research gaps in blockchain-based renewable energy application, technology, and policy, as well as potential trends in energy internet, energy management, energy systems, green certificate trading, and green power trading. This study provides researchers with a theoretical foundation for gaining a thorough understanding of current research efforts and future research directions in this field.
The pressing issues of climate change and the limited availability of non-renewable energy resources have created a growing need for sustainable energy alternatives. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the pressing need for sustainable energy solutions and the complex relationship between energy and the economy. The challenges and opportunities presented by the transition to sustainable energy sources are explored, including the need for investment in renewable energy technologies, policy changes to incentivize sustainable energy use, and the potential for job creation in the sustainable energy sector. On the other hand, it is recognized that there are considerable hurdles that need to be addressed, including the substantial initial expenses associated with establishing renewable energy systems, as well as the political and societal barriers to enacting change. The economic benefits of transitioning to sustainable energy, such as improved energy security, reduced dependence on fossil fuels, and the potential for increased economic growth, are evaluated. The complex relationship between energy and the economy is thoroughly analyzed, presenting a valuable contribution to the academic literature on sustainable energy. Furthermore, an inquiry is being made into the potential contribution of blockchain technology in advancing a sustainable energy landscape. This includes its ability to augment the effectiveness and openness of energy markets, as well as its capacity to assist in the assimilation of renewable energy resources. Hence, this research underscores the importance of transitioning to sustainable energy sources for their environmental and economic merits. The findings presented offer valuable insights to inform policy decisions and guide future research endeavors in this field. By promoting the advancement of sustainable energy technologies, this study contributes to the development of a more sustainable global economy.
J. P. Gupta, Sanskar Jain, Suprava Chakraborty, Владимир Панченко · 6 authors
Advancing the sustainable energy transition is a major need in nations that are constantly evolving and developing in terms of their energy economy. India has been chosen for the purpose of analysis due to the heterogenous nature of its polity, topographies, infrastructural capabilities and diverse framework. In accordance with the sustainable development goals proposed by the UN, a metamorphosis is observed within the renewable energy sector of the nation. Blockchain technology that facilitates a transparent transition is incorporated on various upcoming platforms. This is backed up by peer-to-peer trading of energy providing a prosumer with an autonomous environment. The goal of this paper is to highlight the struggles and challenges faced by the energy sector as it takes up unconventional and non-traditional approaches within the country. It also aims to discover potential ways that would help a nation like India facilitate such a transition by studying its ongoing trends. The need is eminent for a practical study that is specific to a developing nation like India in terms of P2P energy trading enabled by blockchain technology to promote the use of open-sourced electricity and achieve a decentralized system.
There has been a growing penetration of renewable energy sources (RES) into power grids in recent years. As extreme weather events and cyber-attacks frequently occur, grid resilience has been an important issue. Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) energy trading has great potential to improve the stability and reliability of resilient power grids integrated with high-penetrated RES. V2V energy trading is a distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) application. As a decentralized distributed ledger technology, blockchain is an ideal platform for V2V energy trading. The consensus mechanism of blockchain determines whether the V2V energy trading blockchain (ETB) can improve grid resilience. However, most studies in the ETB currently utilize conventional consensus mechanisms. Due to their substantial computational requirements and communication overhead, these consensus algorithms are not well-suited for real-time service applications like energy trading. We propose a novel BAC-SDS consensus specifically for V2V ETB, thus enabling resilient grids to maximise the use of renewable energy. We propose an Electric Vehicle (EV) leader election based on cryptography and adopt the sharding technique to enhance the system's scalability. Furthermore, our approach ensures the secure transfer of energy and value, contingent upon the condition that all EVs exhibit reasonable behavior and retain the proofs they possess. We implement the V2V ETB on Hyperledger Fabric. The experiments demonstrate (1) that V2V ETB significantly enhances the resilience of the power grid compared to traditional centralized trading models and (2) the consensus mechanism proposed in this article is better suited for V2V energy trading than existing mechanisms, exhibiting superior performance in terms of security, throughput, and scalability, thus further enhancing the resilience of the power grid.
This paper explores the relationships between the US dollar, crude oil, gold, and bitcoin by taking into account the higher-moment linkages. Specifically, we construct robust estimators for the realized volatility, realized skewness, realized kurtosis, and jump, and study the causalities between the estimators through the Granger causality test. A generalized impulse response analysis identified by our quad-variate VAR specification is further implemented to uncover the lead-lag spillover effect across the variables of interest. We utilize high-frequency data for the chosen assets from January 3, 2016, to June 23, 2022, and observe various patterns of cross-market interconnection related to higher-order moments. These findings suggest that systematic risk factors must be considered while jointly modeling market linkages. Practical implications for investors and market regulators are also discussed.
Blockchain technology is very useful. This paper considers the application of blockchain technology to smart contracts, green certification, and market information disclosure, and introduces the carbon trading market price as a parameter to solve the dynamic incentive problem of the government for port enterprises to reduce emissions under the carbon trading policy. Based on the state change of port carbon emission reduction, this paper uses principal–agent theory to construct the dynamic incentive contract model of government without blockchain, with blockchain, and when carbon trading is considered under blockchain, respectively, and uses the optimal control method to solve and analyze the model. This paper finds that only when the opportunity cost of port enterprises is greater than a certain critical point and the fixed cost of blockchain is less than a certain critical point, the implementation of blockchain will help improve government efficiency. However, only when the critical value of carbon emission reduction of port enterprises and the unit operating cost of blockchain are small, the government should start the carbon trading market under blockchain technology. Through numerical simulation, this paper also finds that it is usually beneficial for the government to regulate and appropriately increase the carbon trading market price.
This study aims to identify the sources of spillovers affecting tourism tokens and classify the type of assets to which they correspond. Using daily data for different asset classes from June 2018 through November 2022, we employ a TVP-VAR methodology to test the connectedness between two tourism tokens, two leading travel equity indices, and the two dominant cryptocurrencies, namely, Bitcoin and Ethereum. The findings show that tourism tokens are relatively independent of fluctuations in the traditional sources affecting the travel and leisure sector, such as the U.S. dollar, the price of oil, or travel equity indices. These results hint that tourism tokens are more closely related to cryptocurrencies rather than pure travel goods. The results may help decision-makers in the travel and hospitality industries considering the use of tourism tokens identify the potential forces impacting them.
M.A. Ehyaei, A. Tofighi, Marc A. Rosen, Hamed Afshari · 6 authors
Bitcoin, the first decentralized digital currency introduced by an anonymous person or group since 2008, has attracted worldwide attention. A significant number of economists have introduced Bitcoin as a new phenomenon in the 21st century that could reduce global inflation. Given the tens of thousands of digital currencies that have emerged since the advent of Bitcoin and its price growth trend over more than a decade, which are signs of the growth of this business. In addition to being money, Bitcoin has always been considered a tool for investing and storing value, which is why it is called digital gold. One of the most important problems in the production or extraction of Bitcoins is the high-power consumption by miners. If the energy sources of electricity generation are supplied by non-renewable energy sources, in addition to emitting air pollutant gases, it will increase greenhouse gases and consequently contribute to climate change. In this research, based on the idea of the authors, which is that the economic support of Bitcoin is energy, a strategy for producing Bitcoin from renewable energy sources is considered. First, the amount of electrical energy consumption by Bitcoin production is calculated based on statistical data, and then based on the price of electricity in different countries of the world and its global average, the base price of Bitcoin is calculated. In the following, four scenarios are proposed for the production of Bitcoin by electricity supplied from non-renewable energy sources. These scenarios include coal-fired steam power plants, natural gas-fired power plants, natural gas/oil gas-fired power plants, and dual-cycle (steam and gas cycles) natural gas-fired power plants. Based on the amount of electricity required to produce one Bitcoin, the amount of pollutants emitted to produce Bitcoin and its social costs are calculated. These costs should be added to the base cost of Bitcoin production if non-renewable energy sources are used to produce Bitcoin. Then, renewable energy sources for Bitcoin production based on the price of electricity generated by renewable energy sources are examined. Based on the analyses, how to choose the best renewable energy source to produce Bitcoin is presented as a scenario. This article briefly answers two key questions: 1. At what price of Bitcoin is it cost-effective for governments to produce it? 2. What is the best renewable energy source to produce it? These two questions can be useful in creating a roadmap and strategy for economists and governments.
The concept of "energy prosumer" is a relatively new phenomenon resulting from distributed energy production through photovoltaic (PV) technology, which has blurred the line between energy producers and consumers. Blockchain technology has facilitated secure and cost-effective energy transactions among consumers, prosumers, and utilities, automating the process. This study aims to develop an agent-based modeling (ABM) simulation framework for energy exchange, demonstrating the power profiles of households and the operation of blockchain operations. The simulation was conducted in the Education City Community Housing (ECCH) microgrid, using a multi-agent framework for a transactive energy (TE) distributed energy resource (DER) that requires blockchain technology. The current blockchain-based local energy market (LEM) aims to balance supply and demand using precise short-term energy generation forecasts and home consumption estimates. This study evaluated the accuracy of state-of-the-art energy forecasting methods in predicting household energy generation and consumption. It examined the impact of forecasting errors on market outcomes under different supply scenarios. Although LSTM models may provide low forecasting errors, the researchers found that the prediction process needs modification for a LEM built on a blockchain. This study stands out from previous research by forecasting the timeline of smart meters in general.
Andreea-Elena Drăgnoiu, Moritz Platt, Zixin Wang, Zhixuan Zhou
The energy consumption of popular cryptocurrencies varies greatly: cryptocurrencies based on proof-of-work (e.g. Bitcoin) consume much more electricity than their counterparts that use alternative consensus mechanisms, such as proof-of-stake (e.g. Ethereum). Nevertheless, proof-of-work cryptocurrencies dominate the market. We investigate whether energy labelling, i.e., displaying electricity consumption information on centralized exchanges, influences consumers’ product preferences. We conduct a control/treatment study: during this study, participants with an interest in cryptocurrencies (N = 200) are presented with a fictitious cryptocurrency exchange user interface. The treatment group is shown a user interface that displays energy labels, while the control group receives no information related to electricity consumption. Participants then declare how likely they are to acquire particular cryptocurrencies. We measure the treatment effect and find a significant negative correlation (p = 0.002) between being exposed to energy labels and expressing a strong preference for energy-inefficient cryptocurrencies. Based on this finding, we reflect on the sustainability issues of cryptocurrencies and discuss how energy labelling on centralized exchanges can be applied to nudge investors away from energy-inefficient cryptocurrencies. This indicates that regulators would be well advised to consider energy labelling to address the adverse climate impacts of cryptoassets.
Many countries have implemented different carbon reduction policies to achieve carbon neutrality in the current century. As one of the popular policies, the cap-and-trade policy provides carbon emission quotas for power generation companies. Each company must carefully determine its energy production based on the carbon emission quota and renewable uncertainty. This paper analyzes the cooperation among different power generation companies using the coalitional game theory. Power generation companies can form a union to share the total carbon emission quotas to maximize their total profit. We show the optimality of the grand coalition by proving that the profit function is superadditive. This result highlights the benefits of cooperation. Besides, we propose a profit allocation mechanism that allocates the total profit to different power generation companies. Furthermore, we prove that the proposed profit allocation mechanism is in the core of the coalitional game such that no group of power generation companies has any incentives to leave the grand coalition. We design a smart contract to enable power generation companies to form a coalition. We further implement the smart contract on the Ethereum platform to validate its effectiveness. Numerical studies have been conducted to validate the established theoretical results.
The world is facing a formidable climate predicament due to elevated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fossil fuels. The preceding decade has also witnessed a dramatic surge in blockchain-based applications, constituting yet another substantial energy consumer. Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are one such application traded on Ethereum (ETH) marketplaces that have raised concerns about their climate impacts. The transition of ETH from proof of work (PoW) to proof of stake (PoS) is a step toward reducing the carbon footprint of the NFT sector. However, this alone will not address the climate impacts of the growing blockchain industry. Our analysis indicates that NFTs can cause yearly GHG emissions of up to 18% of the peak under the energy-intensive PoW algorithm. This results in a significant carbon debt of 4.56 Mt CO 2 -eq by the end of this decade, equivalent to CO 2 emissions from a 600-MW coal-fired power plant in 1 y which would meet residential power demand in North Dakota. To mitigate the climate impact, we propose technological solutions to sustainably power the NFT sector using unutilized renewable energy sources in the United States. We find that 15% utilization of curtailed solar and wind power in Texas or 50 MW of potential hydropower from existing nonpowered dams can support the exponential growth of NFT transactions. In summary, the NFT sector has the potential to generate significant GHG emissions, and measures are necessary to mitigate its climate impact. The proposed technological solutions and policy support can help promote climate-friendly development in the blockchain industry.
The energy use of Bitcoin is fiercely debated among academics, practitioners, and the general public. This debate is often biased and characterized by a lack of understanding. Therefore, I start this paper with a discussion of the fundamentals of Bitcoin, which includes the clarification of widely held misconceptions. Next, I illustrate how Bitcoin is related to energy and describe the underlying incentive mechanism. In the main body of the paper I discuss various components of Bitcoin’s energy use, including the amount, composition, and geographical distribution of the energy, as well as emerging positive and negative effects. These components are then combined into a comprehensive framework that provides a solid foundation for future academic research and presents practitioners with the big picture of how and why Bitcoin requires energy and whether this can be justified from an environmental point of view.