LONDON — Bitcoin is struggling to go green, with the cryptocurrency making only slim gains in its usage of sustainable energy in the year to January, research by Cambridge university showed on Tuesday.
Processing bitcoin transactions and “mining” new tokens is done by powerful computers, hooked up to a global network, that compete against others to solve complex mathematical puzzles.
The process guzzles electricity, with its heavy reliance on polluting fossil fuels such as coal drawing criticism from policymakers, investors and environmentalists who worry over its impact on global warming.
Projects have sought ways to shift bitcoin mining towards cleaner energy, such as repurposing heat byproducts from oil extraction for crypto mining.
Yet fossil fuels made up some 62% of bitcoin’s energy mix in January 2022, the latest data available, versus 65% a year earlier, the research by the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) showed.
While the level of coal fell to 37%...
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