The Blockchain Mining Council (BMC), says the crypto mining industry’s reliance on a sustainable energy mix is looking greener.
BMC, which describes itself as a voluntary global forum of Bitcoin mining companies and others in the industry, said in a press statement on Friday that the global industry’s sustainable electricity mix had grown to 56% during Q2, based on its “first-ever voluntary survey.”
This made cryptocurrency mining “one of the most sustainable industries globally,” the council said in its statement.
The council was established in May with support from the industry’s U.S. crypto mining companies, Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, focusing on what Saylor has said is a desire to help shape the narrative around bitcoin‘s energy use.
The survey focused on the mining industry’s electricity consumption and sustainable power mix.
“Results … show that the members of the BMC and participants in the survey are currently utilizing electricity with a 67% sustainable power mix,” the council members said in the statement.
Data collected by the council was based on sustainable energy use from over 32% of the current global Bitcoin network, per the statement.
Asked by Castle Island Ventures’ Nic Carter how the BMC arrived at its figures for ascertaining its carbon emissions factor, Michael Saylor said the council took an estimate of off-grid and non-sustainable power.
“Then we allocated another portion that we applied to our BMC sample to in order to get a blend,” Saylor said during a live briefing where questions were being taken by council members. “The blend ended up being slightly more than the electricity grid.”
Saylor continued:
“I think if you back into it and take the 56% and then look at the 67% or 68% that we don’t have that’s the out-of-sample and then you know that number is … 50% sustainable … so … generally it works out that the out-of-sample mix is … assumed to be about 50% sustainable power and we tested that with a variety of analysts.”
Some, however, were not convinced.
While the figures are debatable, the efforts by the mining council show a more concerted drive to lock down the industry’s impact on global greenhouse gas emissions – a major gripe and cause for Musk ending his love affair with bitcoin earlier this year.
Source: Coindesk
