Merge pull request #871 from cslarson/master

fix rate of network carbon emissions
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Yoichi Hirai 2018-02-12 11:40:41 +01:00 committed by GitHub
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@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ Reduce the block reward to 1 ETH.
The current public Ethereum network has a hashrate that corresponds to a tremendous level of energy consumption. As this energy consumption has a correlated environmental cost the network participants have an ethical obligation to ensure this cost is not higher than necessary. At this time, the most direct way to reduce this cost is to lower the block reward in order to limit the appeal of ETH mining. Unchecked growth in hashrate is also counterproductive from a security standpoint. The current public Ethereum network has a hashrate that corresponds to a tremendous level of energy consumption. As this energy consumption has a correlated environmental cost the network participants have an ethical obligation to ensure this cost is not higher than necessary. At this time, the most direct way to reduce this cost is to lower the block reward in order to limit the appeal of ETH mining. Unchecked growth in hashrate is also counterproductive from a security standpoint.
## Motivation ## Motivation
The current public Ethereum network has a hashrate of 205 TH/s). This hashrate corresponds to a **lower bound** for power usage of roughly 710MW, which would correspond to a yearly energy consumption of 6.2TWh (roughly 0.03% of [total](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption) global electricity consumption). [Assuming](http://www.carbonindependent.org/sources_home_energy.html) a rate of carbon emmisions of 0.527 kg/kWh this means at it's present hashrate the network contributes more than 1 million tons of CO2 per month. These numbers assume the [best GPU, perfectly overclocked](http://www.legitreviews.com/geforce-gtx-1070-ethereum-mining-small-tweaks-great-hashrate-low-power_195451), and running on a PC without it's own power draw, so again the true numbers are likely much higher. A future switch to full Proof of Stake will solve this issue entirely. Yet that switch remains enough in the future that action should be taken in the interim to limit excess harmful side affects of the present network. The current public Ethereum network has a hashrate of 232 TH/s). This hashrate corresponds to a **lower bound** for power usage of roughly [821 MW](eip-858/calculations.md) and yearly energy consumption of 7.2 TWh (roughly 0.033% of [total](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption) global electricity consumption). A future switch to full Proof of Stake will solve this issue entirely. Yet that switch remains enough in the future that action should be taken in the interim to limit excess harmful side affects of the present network.
## Specification ## Specification
Block reward to be changed to 1 ETH / block. Block reward to be changed to 1 ETH / block.

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| Variable | Symbol | Value | Unit | Source |
| -------------------|--------------|---------------|---------------|--------|
| Network Hashrate |H<sub>N</sub> | 232001 | GH/s | https://etherscan.io/chart/hashrate |
| GPU Hashrate |H<sub>M</sub> | 31.2 | MH/s | http://www.legitreviews.com/geforce-gtx-1070-ethereum-mining-small-tweaks-great-hashrate-low-power_195451 |
| GPU Power |P<sub>M</sub> | 110.6 | W | https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7vewys/10000_tons_co2_per_day_and_climbing_eip_858/dtrswyz/ |
## Network Power Consumption (P<sub>N</sub>)
A baseline value for network power consumption can be found by multiplying the total network hashrate with a "best case" value for the power/hashrate ratio that a miner can achieve.
> P<sub>N</sub> = H<sub>N</sub> x P<sub>M</sub> / H<sub>M</sub>
>
> P<sub>N</sub> = 232001 (GH/s) x 110.6 (W) x 1000 (MH/GH) / ( 31.2 (MH/s) x 10^6 (W/MW) )
>
> P<sub>N</sub> = 821 MW
As a side note, people often confuse power (W) and energy (power x time, eg. Wh). For instance, assuming an average daily P<sub>Nd</sub> of 821 MW we can calculate that days Energy consumption by multiplying by the number of hours in a day.
> E<sub>Nd</sub> = P<sub>Nd</sub> x T<sub>d</sub>
>
> E<sub>Nd</sub> = 821 (MW) x 24 (h/d) / 1000 (GW/MW)
>
> E<sub>Nd</sub> = 19.7 GWh
## Network CO2 contribution
Work in progress