Over 109M more trees would have been needed to offset Ethereum’s CO2 emissions prior to its switch to a more efficient consensus.
Ethereum switched to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus last year in an event called The Merge. Regardless of personal views on Ethereum and the wider blockchain and web3 space, The Merge was broadly seen as an incredible feat of open-source engineering.
The Merge is the first major step on the road to Ethereum 2.0 which aims to tackle the platform’s high fees and low speeds. While it will take several years to complete the current roadmap, the planet – quite literally – is already seeing the benefits.
Research from Forex Suggest found that Ethereum decreased its CO2 emissions by 100 percent in 2022:
- In 2021, Ethereum was responsible for 21,950,263 tons of CO2. 109,751,315 trees would be needed to offset the emissions.
- In 2022, Ethereum created 8,824 tons of CO2. 44,121 trees would be needed to offset the emissions.
The Merge has already saved 21,941,439 tons of CO2. 2023 is the first full year that Ethereum will spend as a PoS blockchain and should create even less CO2.
Bitcoin is still using a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus. Proponents believe PoW is more secure and point at Bitcoin’s almost 100 percent uptime as a sign of reliability.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap created an eye-watering 86.3 million tons of CO2 in 2022. Over 431 million trees would be needed to offset Bitcoin’s annual CO2 emissions.
(Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash)
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