[acover]

> DePaul University suggests that this number should be closer to 35 tons of CO2 for jewelry, which accounts for roughly 50% of global gold demand. It is assumed that refinement uses a similar amount of power to recycling; therefore, a total of 79.9 MWh is used for the mining and refinement of each gram of gold used in jewelry. Each kilogram of recycled gold produces 37 tons of CO2 and uses 31.3 MWh of energy. This brings the gold mining industry’s 2020 total to 265 TWh of energy used and 145 Mt of CO2 produced if we use the DePaul study’s numbers and account for 1750 tons of jewelry.

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/a-comparison-of-bitcoins-env...

That includes the cost of making jewelry. Also, transactions with gold basically 0 energy.

[latchkey]

> transactions with gold basically 0 energy.

Transactions with gold often involve transporting it from one location to another location.

[spixy]

That's generally not true with transaction between countries:

> when countries exchange money for goods in other countries, the gold bars aren't even moved. they bar just gets recorded as belonging to another country

And I don't think individuals or companies make transactions with gold that often.

[anchpop]

transactions on bitcoin cost basically 0 energy too. the bitcoin energy expenditure is from block creation, which is independent from transactions.

Of course, bitcoin transactions incentivize block creation, but gold transactions also incentivize gold mining to some degree.

[tromp]

Bitcoin energy expenditure is not entirely independent from block creation. Transaction fees already make up a nontrivial fraction of the block reward and can be expected to dominate block subsidy within a few decades as the latter keeps halving every 4 years.

[m00dy]

Children workers are slaved to work in African gold mines