Most of my research has been focused on understanding cryptocurrencies’ potential environmental impacts. The main goal has been understanding what current impacts cryptocurrency has due to energy consumption and electronic waste. While working through initial research, there was many examples of companies working towards reducing the overall environmental impact, so this also became a focus of this research.

While working through the most recent set of searches I personally believe that I’ve reached saturation, most of this is related to this idea being relatively new since the whole “crypto boom” is so recent. This is a research process that will be interesting to look back on in the future as more focused research has been conducted

The first three results that started leading me towards this conclusion were all done in the Applied Science and Technology database hosted by EBSCOHost.

My First search used the keywords Cryptocurrencies and Energy with the searches limited to full text peer review articles. This had 221 results. This first article was useful in discovering some of the measures bitcoin mining companies are going to help push towards a completely sustainable process. Many are using renewables and cryptocurrency as a leverage for their assets.

Next, I wanted to focus on the relationship coal has with crypto’s energy use. This search used the keywords Currency and Coal. This search had 33 results. With most of them not having a digital focus, this was the first example of some form of saturation. This article as a whole wasn’t that beneficial however, there was a portion about how miners are using waste coal that could act as a point when talking about renewables.

For the final search in this database, I wanted to search more on the potential impacts that blockchains my have. The keywords used were blockchain and energy. This search had 74 results. This search didn’t prove to be valuable most of the articles the one included focus on general ideas and don’t go in depth.

I then moved on to the Gale Environmental Studies database for the next search. The interesting thing is with the environmental databases there are less resulted related to crypto’s environmental impacts, then many of the technology databases.

This search was focused on energy consumption, with the keyword used being “cryptocurrency” and “energy consumption” and was limited to academic journals. With these guidelines there were 9 results. The article found through this search was fairly similar to some of the other articles I’ve came across. While this could be used to reinforce some points, I don’t personally feel that it will not ad anything new to my research.

For my final search I used the ABI/INFORM Collection with my focus again being on blockchain. For this search I used the keywords blockchain and energy consumption. This originally had around 600 results, so I added in a year range from 2020 to current. Then added in only peer-reviewed full articles. After these modifications it left me with 321 results. This article again was a pretty big sign that saturation had been reached. Most of the article was focused on portions of the block chain and its impact on the environment that was outside of the scope of research. Paired with the vast amount of results for this search started to show that I’ve exhausted most of the general sources I will find that fit my research’s scope.

Bibliography

1.) KOSOWATZ, J. (2019). BLOCKCHAIN: An Encrypted Electronic Ledger May Help Microproducers and Individual Consumers Buy and Sell Small Quantities of Renewable Energy. Mechanical Engineering, 141(6), 26–31.

The main point of this article is to talk about the process of using a renewable energy infrastructure as a hedge for cryptocurrency production. This could be used as a base to show the general direction of some of the actors in the industry

2.) Bitcoin Mining Company Buys Second Power Plant. (2021). Coal Age, 126(7), 6–7.

This article focuses on the goals of a cryptocurrency mining, where they intend on having an indirect energy source. The main points in this article for research purpose is to show the steps mining companies are taking to help become more sustainable.

3.) Proctor, D. (2019). Blockchain Technology Will Transform the Power Industry. Power, 163(1), 24–26.

This article wasn’t very useful, unless you want a more general understanding about blockchains and how they function.

4.) Kristoufek, L. (2020). Bitcoin and Its Mining on the Equilibrium Path. Energy Economics, 85.

Most of this article was already covered by other major sources, however if any of the main points or conclusions from those articles need more supporting research this could help. Overall, this is an article that will help but not a cornerstone piece.

5.) Juričić, V., Matea Radošević, & Fuzul, E. (2020). Optimizing the resource consumption of blockchain technology in business systems. Business Systems Research, 11(3), 78-92.

Most of this article is focused on the issues blockchains introduce to data centers and its impact on businesses. This for the most part is out of the scope I’d personally like to stay in. This could be useful when developing an idea of the backend of cryptocurrency but there are some other options that are better.