Financial Supervision Management Head of the Financial Supervision (Financialspektionen) Eric Tedenen and the Head of Environmental Protection Agency (NaturvArdsverket) Bjorn Raisinger offered the European Union to ban mining cryptocurrency on the PROF-OF-WORK algorithm (POW). The joint statement is published on the FINANSINSPEKTIONEN website. According to officials, the production of digital money holds the region from achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change.
proof-of-work (“Proof of work performance”) – a mechanism by which the authenticity and honesty of cryptocurrency transactions is checked. Pow based systems are extremely resource-intensive. Currently, this algorithm uses most of the most popular cryptocurrency – Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin and others. Ethereum developers have already announced plans to move from POW to another mechanism – PROOF-OF-STAKE (POS), for which the mining is not required.
The University of Cambridge and the DigiConomist research project estimated that the daily mining of 900 bitcoins leads to an atmosphere of up to 120 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. According to experts, the mining Bitcoin and Ethereum goes about twice as much more electricity per year than to supply all Sweden. By paying attention to these indicators, the Swedish regulators have developed two more suggestions that will help to cope with the environmental consequences of cryptographic at the national level.
First, Teden and Raisinger announced the need to prevent the development of mining and the discovery of new “mining” enterprises in Sweden. Secondly, the regulators proposed to introduce a new restriction for companies that trade in cryptocurrency, mined on the basis of POW, or invest in it. Officials stated that such firms should be prohibited to describe their activities as an environmentally friendly or “sustainable”.
In Canada, invented a way to compensate for the harm of mining for ecology. The local Mintgreen company in October stated that it will begin heating more than 100 residential and commercial buildings in the city of North Vancouver with the help of energy from the mining farms. This technology will help to prevent 20 thousand tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which could produce natural gas.