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Comment by saalweachter | Hacker News Reader

Bans of future sales of ICE vehicles are a thing, a lot of countries either have them or are proposing them.

Gonna have lot of exemptions. Long haul and industrial/farm/mining equipment cannot always run on batteries.

We are going to have ICE's for a long time.

Mindless bans like that, if overzealous, will just push even more of industry to Asia/China, where most of pollution happens today anyway.

I wouldn't be surprised if China funds quite a few green causes, big boost for their industries, and they get to just ignore all emissions rules.

I agree that there will likely be exceptions, but long-haul isn't one of them. The trucking industry is already subject to a lot of regulations around mandatory rest stops, so there are well-established break points along every major long-haul route.

This has lead to things like [1] where it is significantly more economical for long-haulers to electrify their existing fleet than continue using diesel fuel. I suspect long-haul will reach 90% electrification long before last-mile trucking and private-use automotives.

That said, I imagine you are spot on regarding farming - and pushing industry to less restrictive jurisdictions.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/29/swap-...

I'm willing to bet that Bitcoin mining will be 100% renewable (compared to 40-70% depending on whose numbers you look at today) before ICE vehicles are all gone. I'm basing this on the fact that miners are incentivized to always seek the cheapest source of energy and that renewable/stranded energy is only going to become cheaper over time. At one point, hydro/wind/nuclear will become much more cheaper than coal/fossil fuels, it's inevitable.

As long as there are fossil fuels being used for the production of electricity, either non-clean energy or a mix will be cheaper as a purchaser (regardless of production costs).

All the electricity gets mixed together in the power network anyway, so if you buy 'renewable' electricity you are effectively just paying a premium to say yours came from the pool of renewable electricity. If you increase the power load on the network though, and in-aggregate the power requirement increases, chances are that increase still comes from fossil fuels.

I think we will be waiting a long time until global electricity is 100% renewable, although I hope it happens quick and it's good that you are more optimistic than me :)

If bitcoin mining is 100% renewable, that is 100% of renewable energy being destroyed instead of being put to use displacing other, more polluting energy.

It doesn't matter if bitcoin mining specifically uses renewable energy. What matters is used in total by everyone. And bitcoin mining will always make things worse, no matter what kind of energy it uses.

if renewables can't power a computer network - sounds like it'll never power the world.

What.

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