r/science • u/shiruken PhD | Biomedical Engineering | Optics • 9d ago

Epidemiology New research estimates that the 34 largest Bitcoin mining operations in the United States consumed more electricity in 2022 than all of Los Angeles combined. 85% of the electricity came from fossil fuels and exposed 1.9 million Americans to more than 0.1  μg/m3 of additional PM2.5 pollution.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-58287-3
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u/ArchaicBrainWorms 9d ago

Jevon's Paradox: gains in efficiency of utilizing a resource lead to increased consumption of said resource.

It's why strides in solar technology haven't reduced fossil fuel consumption. As the price of new, cleaner, tech gets competitive with the old, dirtier, tech we seldom replace the old with the new; we simply use both as cost effective options unless coerced via regulation.

We've made great strides environmentally since I was a kid. I grew up in the sticks of northern appalachia and 40 years ago was a it was a very different place. Everybody burned all their burnable trash. People heated with coal. Every chunk of land had a garbage dump dating to the original land grant and used oil was burned or buried.

We've done a remarkable job of addressing the visible stuff, but I fear the less apparent externalities of our consumption is going to be what does us in

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u/farfromelite 9d ago

It's why strides in solar technology haven't reduced fossil fuel consumption. As the price of new, cleaner, tech gets competitive with the old, dirtier, tech we seldom replace the old with the new; we simply use both as cost effective options unless coerced via regulation.

China hit peak oil this year or last year.

I get this, but it is starting to. Solar and renewables are growing massively especially in China. They're using oil and coal as a backup for vastly electrifying their economy.

We're doing that in the west as well, just more slowly.

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u/grundar 9d ago

China hit peak oil this year or last year.

To add to this, US oil consumption peaked in 2004 and EU oil consumption peaked in 1979.

Both of those were before EVs, which are one of the major factors driving China's oil peak (half of new cars in China are EV/PHEV). This new factor is likely to speed up the oil consumption decline in the West, and potentially result in a faster decline in China than the West saw after its peak.