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Comment by Ekaros | Hacker News Reader

As person living in country with ties to Scandinavian grid. I see this as very positive. I could argue that current market price situation could even be worse if crypto miners were allowed to externalize their energy cost to rest of society. That is by applying high demand the hydro would have less stored capacity available. Which kinda is currently part of the price problem.

They lower the stored capacity and pay cheap price for that which results later the general population and other industry having to pay much higher cost of electricity, while they probably stop buying it, thus not taking their fair share of costs.

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They are not externalising their cost to the rest of society. They are paying the exact cost of the energy they spend just like the rest of people.

Which is externalizing the cost to the rest of society as there is either no or a too small carbon tax while the estimated cost on society varies between 700 Euros [0] and 100.000$ [1]

[0] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/umwelt-wirtschaft/gesel...

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-020-02785-4

If the estimated cost on society "varies between 700 Euros [0] and 100.000$ [1]" then those scientists should be back to the drawing board because those two numbers can't make sense at the same time.

Also I don't see why only a small part of society should be paying for that "carbon tax" - all citizens should pay an amount corresponding to their energy spending and then we are back to miners not externalising anything.

As said those are estimates. In any case you see the current carbon tax is not anywhere near the cost. It's worth to mention those cost depend on past, present and future emissions as well.

Where did I say that only a small part should be paying the real cost? That's a straw man.

And no: miners are externalizing exactly because the lack of a carbon tax. And from my experience they are not very interested in introducing one either.

Good point, the Danish wind power is partly made viable due to interconnection with the swedish grid and its hydro power, which can generate on demand to even out the production. We sometimes see the spot price go negative when there is an excess of wind. In those cases the optimal routing of energy is essentially going through as much wire as possible, to incur transmission losses. I don't think the excess energy should be used for crypto though, it would be better to pump water back up into the reservoirs.

> due to interconnection with the swedish grid and its hydro power

... and its hydro and nuclear power.

I don't know what the case is in your part of the world but;

"In Sweden, all nuclear power plants are currently operating in baseload, meaning they are constantly operating at their maximum rated thermal power and maximum rated electrical output." [1]

With hydro serving as a flexible power source to compensate for fluctuations in intermittent sources like wind and solar.

[1] http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9020022

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