JohnB wrote:There is a world renewable power shortage, no site is so remote it can only be used for mining.
I know that this thread is about crypto and in particular if there is a bubble, but since the subject of energy keeps cropping up we possibly should consider it. I'd also like to apologise for the length of this post. Ignore it, unless you are interested in energy supply.
I hope that it's obvious, but energy doesn't get from A to B at zero cost. Remote villages/cities or remote generators either need cross country tunnels or steel towers linked by copper or aluminium wire to move electricity if it isn't local. The more energy used/produced, the more metal needed. There are also losses due to resistive heating in the wires. Pipe lines move gas from Siberia to the UK to generate electricity here, because it's cheaper than moving the electricity.
There is in fact little shortage of renewable power resources, though there is of ones used. You tend to need higher amounts of capital to access them and in some cases few would choose to live close. The obvious example is the amount of solar energy that impacts arid deserts. Why don't we have a huge solar farm in the Sahara? The solar panels would be no more expensive than those used for a field in the UK, but would harvest more electricity due to the angle of the sun. It has been suggested in the past, but shipping the energy to people who would use it is not without costs or issues.
Likewise geothermal energy. We see it around the ring of fire, bubbling up to the surface. How much is used? How many choose to live close to an active volcano. El Salvador has 23 volcanos 6 of which are active and it does use them. According to Wiki (2006), for 12% of it's electricity. Could it be that consumption is not near the volcanos?
Is there really a world wide shortage of rain, sun, wind, tide, wave, heat from the centre of the earth?
Does anyone else really believe that the wind doesn't blow in the centre of an ocean or that there are not uninhabitable locations so remote that it wouldn't be cost effective to move power from them?
The cost of wind turbines and solar panels has been dropping for as long as I have known about them (mass production), the same is not true of the metal used in the wires to move electricity from A to B.
Non of this post so far is about crypto or Bitcoin mining. It simply point's out that there is no shortage of renewable energy, that may not be economical as an energy supply for people.
Moving on to energy management. To regulate a grid you need to bring generators/consumers on and off line to regulate the supply. Some of us remember rolling blackouts in the UK and I have seen them in China. It's CRUDE.
If we want to reduce our CO2 emissions by reducing fossil fuel used for electricity then we need more Hydro dams (possible, but limited) or accept an oversupply and investigate more clever demand side management. Bitcoin mining could play a part in the latter as could electric cars, with a change in their domestic chargers.