One of the fascinating features of Tesla's electric vehicles is that these vehicles are zero-emission. Reducing global carbon emissions is a very important philosophy of the company's brand. On its official website introduction page, the company states: "Tesla believes that the world would be a better place if it could stop relying on fossil fuels more quickly and move towards a zero-emissions future."
It also explains why Tesla's recent purchase of bitcoin has drawn some attention, with critics arguing that the $1.5 billion purchase of such energy-intensive coins undermines the brand's environmental mission.Is this criticism fair? We analyzed some data. It must be noted, however, that these calculations rely on certain estimates and assumptions.According to the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, Bitcoin has a carbon footprint of about 37 million tons per year. A recent study suggested that this number may be too low, but this article will use it as a reference because it is an estimate relative to the widely quoted global carbon footprint of Bitcoin (no single, accepted figures).With Bitcoin's current market cap of $853 billion, according to CoinMarketCap, Tesla's $1.5 billion investment represents roughly 0.175% of all Bitcoin. Assuming that Tesla therefore needs to bear a proportionate portion of Bitcoin’s carbon footprint, this means Tesla should be responsible for about 63,000 metric tons of carbon emissions per year.We convert this to US (short) tons because that is the metric Tesla uses to measure carbon reductions: Tesla will be obliged to reduce carbon emissions by 69,455 tons per year.Now, let's see how that number compares to the energy savings Tesla has made? On its website, Tesla claims its electric vehicles have saved more than 3.6 million tons of carbon emissions. It's not clear what period this data is in, but on Tesla's website, this number is increasing by 0.1 tons every 37 seconds (as of this writing), which gives us an estimate of Tesla's estimated annual production capacity of its electric vehicles. A rough estimate of the carbon savings: 85,232.By this standard, then, Tesla’s carbon impact is still net negative, but the amount of carbon it saves is surprisingly close to the amount of Bitcoin’s carbon emissions it should be responsible for. Based on these assumptions, the energy costs of Tesla’s investment in Bitcoin offset nearly all of the emissions reductions from its electric vehicles.Of course, things are far from simple—any way of doing such calculations relies on estimates and assumptions that are not universally agreed upon.What is clear is that, regardless of the actual change in Tesla's net carbon emissions, among customers interested in electric vehicles for environmental reasons, investing in Bitcoin may have had a negative effect on its brand Impact., Use data to understand the blockchain.
LongHash, Use data to understand the blockchain.
