English

Ethereum Emissions: A Bottom-up Estimate

Computers and Society 2022-12-08 v3 Cryptography and Security Optimization and Control

Abstract

The Ethereum ecosystem was maintained by a distributed global network of computers that required massive amounts of computational power. Previous work on estimating the energy use and emissions of the Ethereum network has relied on top-down economic analysis and rough estimates of hardware efficiency and emissions factors. In this work we provide a bottom-up analysis that works from hashrate to an energy usage estimate, and from mining locations to an emissions factor estimate, and combines these for an overall emissions estimate. We analyze the entire history of PoW Ethereum, from creation to the merge.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2112.01238,
  title  = {Ethereum Emissions: A Bottom-up Estimate},
  author = {Kyle McDonald},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.01238},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Code at https://github.com/kylemcdonald/ethereum-emissions

R2 v1 2026-06-24T08:01:34.115Z