What proportion of bitcoin mining is done in places which have either built new renewable power plants specifically for mining bitcoin or already have a surplus of energy and have no options to sell it to anyone else?
The only example I know is Iceland, but according to https://cbeci.org/mining_map it's not even in the top 10. Over 85% of all bitcoins are mined in these countries:
- 65% is mined in China with 721.2 g/kWh
- 7.2% in US: 417.305 g/kWh
- 6.9% in Russia: 517 g/kWh
- 6.17% in Kazakhstan (couldn't fine specific figure but around 80% produced power comes from Coal plants so gCO2/kWh must be very high)
The only country in the list which close to 0g/kWh is Norway at 0.48%.
China has history of building hydroelectric power plants with excess power and you need only a few instances of surplus energy as they can be bought at a discount, which makes mining more profitable. Fossil fuel can't provide surplus energy in principle and can't be attractive for mining.
