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Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
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24 Mar, 4 tweets, 2 min read
This is actually an interesting question: would a $45k purchase in bitcoin result in a emissions associated with a verifying a single bitcoin transaction (~0.4 tons) or the average CO2 per dollar equivalent of transactions (~2 kg CO2/$, so ~96 tons)?
This makes quite the difference; the former would reduce the benefits of switching from an ICE to a Tesla by around 1.5%, while the latter would make the Tesla 3x worse than an ICE vehicle!
Sources:

CO2 footprint of Bitcoin: digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy…
Annual dollar transactions: ycharts.com/indicators/bit…
Benefits of Tesla vs ICE on emissions: carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-…

*also caveat that I haven't had my coffee yet so forgive any egregious math errors.
The answer seems to be that embodied emissions are constant per transaction regardless of the magnitude, so the impact in isolation on the CO2 benefits of buying a Tesla would be small. But second order effects (e.g. encouraging more mining) may be larger:

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More from @hausfath

Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
22 Mar
Some claim we can never absolutely decouple economic growth from CO2.

However, the UK is an example of how emission reductions need not come at the expense of prosperity.

Since 1990, the UK's real GDP has increased 80%; at the same time, their emissions have fallen 50%.
And, yes, this just includes territorial emissions; some of the decline since 1990 is associated with offshoring.

But consumption emissions (e.g. from all goods consumed in the UK) have been falling just as rapidly as territorial emissions since 2007: carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-t…
Its not just the UK; here is my home state of California's economic growth and emissions since 1990:
Read 10 tweets
Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
11 Mar
Lying in the service of what you think is right is still lying. @ClimateOfGavin said nothing of the sort, and you should be ashamed for putting words in his mouth.

We can control the level of warming that occurs. While 1.5C is quite challenging, <2C is increasingly achievable.
Current policies adopted by countries put us on track for around 3ºC of warming by the end of the century, compared to the late 1800s. Including pledges and targets – such as those included in the Paris Agreement – brings this down to around 2.5ºC.
Countries representing around half of global emissions – including China – have pledged to reach net-zero by 2050 or 2060. If these longer term commitments are achieved, it would bring end-of-century warming down close to 2ºC.
Read 6 tweets
Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
25 Feb
One of the best parts about writing for @CarbonBrief is the ability to do in-depth explainers about complex climate and energy issues. Here are a few of my favorites that I worked on over the years.

First up, explaining the shared socioeconomic pathways: carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-…
CMIP6, the next generation of climate models: carbonbrief.org/cmip6-the-next…
Understanding climate sensitivity: carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-…
Read 25 tweets
Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
22 Feb
In recent months three different deep decarbonization scenarios have been produced from high-resolution grid integration models. In a new analysis at @TheBTI, my colleague @erikolsonn and I look at lessons they provide about what is needed: thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/…

A thread: 1/19
The three models we examine are Princeton's Net Zero America (NZA) project (by @JesseJenkins et al), the @VibrantCE Zero By Fifty scenario, and results by a team of researchers led by Jim Williams at USF. 2/
All three take a deep-dive into how US could reach net-zero emissions by 2050, down to level of where each new generating facility might be located, where transmission lines would be built, and how electricity sources can meet hourly demand in different regions of the country 3/
Read 21 tweets
Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
20 Feb
There is some truth in Gates's suggestion that making new clean energy tech cheap for can be more important than deploying existing clean tech.

But it neglects the fact that a big part of making clean tech cheap is deployment: driving economies of scale and learning-by-doing.
We should recognize the need to do both: accelerate the deployment of existing clean tech to further drive down costs (particularly for more nascent clean tech like EVs that are on the cusp of cost-competitiveness with fossil alternatives) AND dramatically scale up RD&D.
The quote in the original post is from @yayitsrob's excellent interview in the @TheAtlantic this week: theatlantic.com/science/archiv…
Read 5 tweets
Zeke Hausfather Profile picture
18 Feb
Geoengineering is not a solution to climate change, and at best might be a "break the glass in case of emergency"-type bandaid to buy us time.

That said, I disagree with Bill here that small-scale research projects will "take the heat off" of the push for decarbonization. 1/5
Here is where I could see geoengineering playing a role: say, at some point in the future we have gotten our emissions under control, but climate sensitivity was high and we've locked in 2.5-3C warming even though we thought we would limit warming to 2C. 2/5
We discover some previously unknown planetary-scale climate feedback mechanism with hysteresis that will lead to substantial additional warming if temperatures remain >2.5C. We need to actively suck lots of CO2 from the atmosphere to get temperatures down to safe levels. 3/5
Read 5 tweets

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