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by trhway 1594 days ago
BTC providing demand for renewables stimulates the development of renewables. Any massive investment like in renewables carries a risk, and the higher the demand the lesser the risk for the investment on the supply side.
3 comments

BTC + a very high carbon tax might actually be an interesting way to incentivize the desired overbuilding on renewables. But Texas is probably going to skip the second part.
Another interesting idea would be for the government to constantly buy any amount of energy produced by renewables at guaranteed price using tax money, and "distribute" it evenly to all enrgy users. This way people using least energy wouldn't pay for electricity at all and people building wind farms would have real good incentive to build more.
That is an interesting idea, I wonder how it would work out. Added benefit of just eating up any demand for energy, I guess crowding out any non-renewables. I bet administratively it would be easier than my idea -- people could proactively show they are selling renewables.
No it doesn't.

It's just a lie.

BTC provides demand for cheap energy not for renewable.

And it consumes the demand. It doesn't create this demand for others.

Cheapest energy is when renewables production peaks. Then it can be worth less than zero.
Part of renewable is short term storage.

You use that peak energy to create heat, charge a battery or do similar things.

You can easily create hydrogen.

But using it for searching for a hash is the worst idea.

If you would be able to use the heat output sure that could work but let's someone do that first

Until then doing anything else with this energy is critit!

Battery is expensive and doesn't hold much. Nobody buys your hydrogen or heat an it needs to be made, stored and transported with losses that make this endeavor uneconomical (that's why nobody is doing it).

So you have two options really. Either partially sponsor your windturbin with bitcoins you'll mine with it or not build the turbin at all.

The current problem is not how to utilize every bit of excess energy. The current problem is where to get the money from to build capacity that will at time generate excess that is hard to transport away from the power station.

That's just not true.

We already have plenty of renewable energy which is cost effective.

We don't need Bitcoin to balance this out.

And Bitcoin doesn't just consume the excessive energy, it consumes all of it as long as it is cost effective to consume it.

Not running your Bitcoin farm 24/7 is not effective.

Bitcoin is not supporting energy production.

Using organs as dog food also stimulates the organ donation market. Still, maybe it's best to use our current stock wisely.
You've probably missed how a foundational technology for growing organs in the future is currently used to grow mice cells in-vitro as an ethical component of cat food.