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> mining gold certainly has an environmental impact

Can you quantify the environmental impact of gold mining? How does it compare to the CO2 output of a medium-sized country?



Looks like 0.8 tonnes / troy oz? https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...

Given 3000 tons of gold mined per year, that should be roughly 70 megatons of CO2 / year.

[I am pleased to report that this falls squarely in my previous estimate of 30-150 megatons / year that was based on the cost to mine gold, the cost of fuel, and the CO2 emitted by fuel.]


- Fossil CO2 Emissions (2016) 35,753 megatons globally

- so gold mining is 0.2% of global CO2 emissions!?

- Bitcoin mining energy use is at least 78TWh annually

- 480-500g of carbon dioxide produced for every kWh consumed

- So mining bitcoin produces 40 megatons of CO2 per year, which is the same order of magnitude of gold mining.

- And mining bitcoin is 0.1% of global CO2 emissions

(I would be grateful if someone would check my calculation)

References:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/10/bitcoin-r...

https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/


Bringing this around to carbon taxes, a $20 / ton carbon tax would raise the cost of producing gold by about $16 / troy ounce, and the cost of electricity by around 1 cents / kWh. Googling says it's currently about 700 kWh / BTC transaction, which would create a "carbon surcharge" of about $7 / transaction.


> so gold mining is 0.2% of global CO2 emissions!?

Looks like iron & steel is 7.2%. Non-ferrous metals are listed at 0.7%, so gold is ~1/3 of the CO2 of non-ferrous metal production.

Paper ("and pulp") is 0.6%.

https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector


Wow so all that junk mail I get in the mail every day is dwarfing the co2 emissions of Bitcoin?


I wouldn't say dwarfed but the answer looks to be ... maybe?

5.8 million tons of junk mail each year in the US. Mass of CO2 to mass of paper looks to be 10.5x for new paper and 3x for recycled, so depending on whether junk mail is primarily recycled or new, that is somewhere between 17 and 60 megatons of CO2 / year.


This here is the problem. Gold does use a lot of CO2 yes (heavy equipment construction and operation), but that's not even the worst thing. Mining literally is poisoning water, and destroying very large ecosystems. And carbon tax won't stop that. And 90% of gold is speculative (if you include jewelry).




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