The environmental cost of high-tech

NFTs, blockchain, and cryptocurrencies may not be physical, but, like anything digital, they come with a serious climate cost. We look at some of the high-tech with the highest environmental cost.

 

 

Cryptocurrencies aren’t clean or green

 

There are countless pros and cons for charities considering getting involved with cryptos. When we’re weighing up whether to get involved in cryptos, we mustn’t forget about the environmental harm.

 

The process of producing cryptocurrency is called ‘mining’ and it can involve huge amounts of computer processing time and power. Cryptocurrency mining is linked to more environmental damage than physical mining of resources like gold or copper, and it now reportedly uses nearly as much electricity as entire countries, like Argentina.

 

One prominent cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has more than quadrupled its energy consumption over the past four years.

 

Bitcoin was designed to become progressively harder to mint, as the currency was capped at 21 million units. The more units are minted, the fewer there are to mine, so it takes more computational power to mint new ones.

 

As Bitcoin becomes scarcer and increasingly lucrative, more people are using more electricity to mine the remaining units.

 

The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index estimates that Bitcoin mining uses more power globally each year than some countries, like the Netherlands and Pakistan.

 

 

Alternatives to costly mining

 

But we can move away from this costly approach to cryptocurrency. Instead of expending huge amounts of energy on the current system, known as proof of work, cryptocurrencies could move to a system called proof of stake.

 

Proof of stake relies on users agreeing to stake (have and not sell) a certain amount of cryptocurrency. When a user agrees to stake cryptocurrency they become a validator, who can validate the legitimacy of blockchain transactions in the same way that a currency miner can.

 

A certain number of people need to agree that transactions are valid before they are added to the chain. This uses much less computing power than proof of work.

 

Other methods are also being developed, like proof of history, proof of elapsed time, proof of burn, and proof of capacity.

 

Energy sources matter, too. Most Bitcoin mining facilities currently run on coal power. The Crypto Climate Accord aims to see all blockchains run on entirely renewable energy by 2025.

 

Until all blockchains run on renewable energy, it’s unlikely that we can consider cryptos environmentally-friendly.

 

 

NFTs

 

An NFT is a unique token that can take the form of almost anything digital – from an artwork to a social media post. They may be digital, but their real-world environmental impact can be enormous.

 

They’re typically traded online in marketplaces like SuperRare or Nifty Gateway, which use Ethereum, or other major cryptocurrencies. Ethereum currently uses proof of work, though it plans to switch to proof of stake. For the time being, any trade involving Ethereum is a far from environmentally-friendly choice.

 

 

Cloud computing

 

Most of us store data in the cloud. From photos to music, we’re used to being able to access vast amounts of information without needing physical hardware. But data can be dirty.

 

The data centres that make cloud computing possible are associated with huge electricity and water consumption, mainly needed to keep server centres cool.

 

In recent years, data centres have used more electricity than the whole of the UK.

 

Taking up around 3% of global electricity usage, and 2% of greenhouse gas emissions, data centres are around as carbon heavy as the entire aviation industry.

 

By 2040, storing digital data could represent 14% of world carbon emissions, or around the same percentage as the entire USA.

 

Building data centres in countries with cooler climates can help. But it’s neither realistic nor legal to try to move facilities to Siberia in an effort to save energy, since many countries have laws that citizens’ data must be stored domestically.

 

One promising area of innovation is in the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Some data centres are successfully using AI to control climates more accurately, and significantly reduce their power consumption.

 

What do all these innovations have in common? We tend to access them on a laptop or a smartphone.

 

Increasingly, we’re using our smartphones for more and more tasks. That means that when we weigh up the impact of almost any technology, we should take into account the carbon cost of creating that phone.

 

 

Smartphones

 

A brand new smartphone packs a carbon punch, with an average of 85 kilograms in carbon emissions in its first year. Almost all of this comes from manufacturing, including the extraction of raw materials and shipping.

 

The precise level of carbon emissions depends on factors like how much recycled material is used, how energy-efficient the manufacturers’ facilities are, and how much the manufacturing ecosystem relies on renewable energy.

 

In some countries, factories – and to a lesser extent transportation – might be powered by renewable energy sources like wind, solar, or hydro.

 

Manufacturing makes up most of a smartphone’s carbon footprint. So if we’re serious about reducing the carbon footprints of our phones, the single biggest change most of us can make is to use our devices for longer.

 

Most phones are discarded after two to five years. Using them for longer, and recycling them when we’re finished, could drastically improve the carbon cost.

 

We can all start small

 

Most of the climate costs of high-tech are outside our control as individual consumers. We won’t achieve meaningful change by making small tweaks to our own behaviour, so we must keep pushing for systemic change.

 

But don’t despair, there are plenty of changes we can all make. We can all:

• Try switching to green web hosts, or tracking and managing the carbon footprint of our website, cloud data and other online activities
• Remember that digital activity has a climate cost. Don’t just ask “do you need to print this email?”, ask yourself and your colleagues, “do you need to send this email?”
• Say no to digital innovation for its own sake. If cryptos, NFTs, or any other high-tech innovation won’t advance and transform our charity’s mission, then why get on the digital bandwagon?