Blockchain’s sustainability problem – Not so clean, not so green

cnbctv18.com:

Blockchain technology was created in the hopes of being better, more socially just financial instruments. However, human greed for instant riches and the commercial capacity to fully exploit any financial instrument has shown the cracks in blockchain’s foundation.

When operating at high volume, the proof of work (PoW) consensus algorithm used to verify transactions requires huge amounts of electrical energy, taxing local infrastructures, and sending environmentalists’ warning flags fluttering wildly.As evidenced in the UN’s 2030 sustainable development goals, there is a worldwide recognition that we have an urgent need to reduce fossil fuel consumption. Blockchain flies in the face of that need and is quickly reaching the pinnacle of world energy users, rapidly on its way to single-handedly wasting 1 percent of the total electrical power supply of the world.Blockchain’s exorbitant energy use also allows bad state actors to harvest lucrative returns through Bitcoin mining, all under cover of government programs.