Plan from El Salvador Bitcoin mining with volcanic energy?

Status: 10.06.2021 12:45 p.m.

Completely clean, completely renewable: El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele plans to mine Bitcoins with the help of energy from volcanoes. This is how the country wants to get its high energy consumption under control. El Salvador wants to use geothermal energy from volcanoes for the energy-intensive mining of the crypto currency Bitcoin. President Nayib Bukele tweeted that he had commissioned the state-run geothermal electricity company LaGeo to work out a corresponding plan. The President is convinced that this is very cheap, 100 percent clean and renewable, does not generate any emissions and will develop quickly. There are more than a dozen volcanoes in El Salvador, many of which are still active.

Huge energy requirements

The immensely high energy requirement of Bitcoin mining has been discussed critically in public for a long time. The Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance (CCAF) is working on this topic and has created an index on it . The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index is supposed to estimate in real time how much electricity is currently being used for mining. The data is then extrapolated to the year. The calculated value is currently around 111 terawatt hours. This corresponds roughly to the annual electricity consumption in the Netherlands. According to the Federal Environment Agency, Germany consumed around 553 terawatt hours in 2020. According to a study by Bank of America, the global Bitcoin industry emits a total of 60 million tons of CO2 annually, which corresponds to the emissions of around nine million cars.

Bitcoin as a means of payment …

A few days ago, Bukele announced that El Salvador would be the first country to introduce Bitcoin as legal tender . He expects the move to create thousands of new jobs in the Central American country. Among other things, taxes should be able to be paid in Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the most popular digital currency. It is not issued by a central bank, but created using a decentralized computer process known as mining. It is by no means clear whether it is even suitable as a means of payment.

… or as an object of speculation?

Because so far, cryptocurrencies have mainly attracted attention as speculative objects, the value of which is subject to extreme fluctuations: Bitcoin was quoted at more than $ 55,000 around May 10, and is currently around $ 36,000. If the value of part of the income is exposed to such strong fluctuations within a very short period of time, this poses a number of problems for a state budget policy. The high volatility of cryptocurrencies is also an incalculable risk for companies. The US electric car maker Tesla, for example, started in March of this year To accept Bitcoin as a means of payment for its vehicles and reversed this step a little later . As a justification, Tesla boss Elon Musk referred to the “insane” energy consumption of prospecting. But it is likely that Musk, as a businessman, at least had these price fluctuations in mind.

Our understanding of Earth’s ocean floor is less than that of Mars. Here, scientists believe that the unusual physical and chemical conditions associated with hydrothermal systems on the seafloor may have created the right environment for the origin of life on Earth. Mysterious Megaplume Scientists discovered large areas of thermal fluid in the ocean above volcanic ridges. These large and powerful hot waters, rich in chemicals, rising from the ocean floor are called megaplume. Their size is really huge, with a volume that can exceed 100 km3, equivalent to 40 million Olympic swimming pools. Although they appear to be related to subterranean mountain eruptions, their origin remains a mystery. In their study, the scientists used a mathematical model to explain the dispersion of volcanic ash across the ocean. Thanks to detailed mapping of a volcanic ash deposit in the Northeast Pacific, scientists know that this ash can spread up to several kilometers from an eruption. This cannot be easily explained by tides or other ocean currents. Instead, the results suggest that these water columns are very energetic. The energy required to drive the flow and carry the ash is surprisingly large, about 1 terawatt (nearly half of the energy needs of the entire United States at a time). The scientists calculated that this would create water columns of similar size as said. They have since produced strong evidence that megaplumes are associated with active seafloor eruptions and that they form very quickly, possibly within hours. So what is the source of heat and chemicals to make this megaplume? The most obvious candidate is of course newly erupting molten lava. At first glance, the scientists’ results seem to support this hypothesis. Accordingly, the formation of megaplume occurs simultaneously with the eruption of lava and volcanic ash. However, when the scientists calculated the amount of lava needed for the megaplume, it was unrealistically high, about 10 times larger than most underground lava flows. The scientists’ best guess is that although the occurrence of megaplumes is linked to undersea eruptions, they are mainly derived from depleted hydrothermal reservoirs present in the ocean. . As the lava directed upward to create undersea eruptions, it may have pushed this liquid hotter than 300 degrees Celsius along. Volcano erupts under the sea. Life in harsh environments In contrast to terrestrial volcanoes, detecting an eruption occurring on the seabed is extremely difficult. Therefore, there is still much for scientists to learn about submarine volcanism and its role in the marine environment. A new study by scientists Sam Pegler and David Ferguson at the University of Leeds (UK) published in the journal Nature Communications has yielded important insights. It’s amazing to find extreme ecophiles (polar biologists) around hydrothermal vents. This discovery expands what we know about life and where it exists. The fluid flow involved in megaplume formation may be the main mechanism in dispersing these microorganisms from their subterranean origin. If this is the case, deep-sea volcanism is an important factor influencing the geography of polar communities. Some scientists believe that the unusual physical and chemical conditions associated with undersea hydrothermal systems may have provided a suitable environment for the origin of life on Earth. Thus, the megaplume may have been involved in this dispersal of life across the ocean. In the absence of other sources of nutrients and light, these types of organisms would have been the first to exist on our planet. They are present because of the heat and chemicals that lava spews up the volcanoes under the sea. Because volcanic ash deposits carried by megaplume appear to be fairly common in the deep sea, the scientists’ study found that the proliferation of life through megaplume dispersal could be widespread. Although it is not yet possible to observe a deep-sea eruption firsthand, efforts are being made to collect data on submarine volcanic events. Most notable is the observatory at Axial Volcano in the Pacific Ocean. This seabed measuring device can transmit data in real time, recording ongoing events. Through such efforts, along with continued mapping and sampling of the ocean floor, the character of volcanism under the oceans is gradually being revealed.