EU is Unhappy with Crypto, Wants to Make it Greener

It is one of the latest measures rolled out by the EU to attain its ambitious climate goals alongside the agreement on the markets in crypto-assets (MiCA), which is poised to take effect in 2024, demanding that cryptocurrencies disclose their carbon footprint.

The Commission will cooperate internationally with, and build on the technical expertise of, standardization bodies to develop by 2025 an energy-efficiency label for blockchains, as well as minimum energy efficiency requirements,

The draft of the document reads.

Even though the bloc, just like the U.S, is trying to cut the impact of emissions on the environment, not everyone is convinced that the energy grades will result in the desired outcome. Not least because just 10% of the world mining activity takes place in the EU.

“Creating an EU labeling system for crypto will not solve the problem as long as crypto-mining can continue outside the Union, also driven by EU demand,” Spanish Green lawmaker Ernest Urtasun, who led a failed battle within Parliament to phase the most energy-intensive blockchains out of Europe, said. “The Commission should rather focus on developing minimum sustainability standards with a clear timeline to comply.”

Urtsun also emphasized that he is content that Ethereum went from PoW to PoS, citing it as a possible solution.

Its goal is to nudge crypto companies to discard power-intensive mining practices that require, as per certain estimates, as much energy as some countries use up within one year.

Ethereum's recent upgrade just showed that phasing out from environmentally harmful protocols is actually feasible, without causing any disruption to the network,

Ernest Urtasun added.

Previously, The Coinomist reported that Ledger’s CEO fears that a new European law would encroach privacy.