Debating the Environmental Impacts of NFTs & Crypto Art

RESEARCH & SOURCES

• Eric Elliott “NFTs are VERY GOOD for the environment”
• The Next Web "Sophia the robot ‘created’ an NFT artwork and it sold for almost $700K"
• Ten Hundred “My Art Almost Destroyed the Environment: The Dark Side of NFTs & Crypto Art”
• SuperRare “No, CryptoArtists Aren’t Harming The Planet”
• Loopify “The Big Problem with NFTs: Energy Consumption”
• Memo Akten “The Unreasonable Ecological Cost of Crypto Art”
• Wired “NFTs are Hot. So Is Their Effect on the Earth’s Climate”
• Cheddar Now “How NFTs and Crypto Art Impact The Environment”
• Unchained Podcast “Why This Environmentalist Doesn’t Blame Creators for the Carbon Footprint of NFTs”

3D RENDERING

800 watts an hour for 3D rendering. 19kWh per day. Average NFT is 38-48kWh, so 2-3 days of rendering = 1 NFT transaction.

• Source: Andrew Price, Blender Guru
• Source: Render Street Blog

T-SHIRT PRODUCTION & NFTS

It takes about 494 kWh to make just one cotton t-shirt. 200 cotton shirts would be 98,800 kWh, which equals energy consumption of the average American home in 8 years or 2,058 ETH transactions. (This does not include printing, shipping, etc for customized shirts). CO2 emissions from t-shirts: 2.1kg per shirt. 420kg per 200 shirts. 1 NFT transaction is 28kg CO2.

Source: World Wildlife Fund “Impact of a Cotton T-Shirt”

NFT TRANSACTIONS

Important to note that this is for a single transaction for an NFT. Memo Atkin analyzed ~1,800 NFTs and found, with all the transactions, which can include: Minting, Bids, Canceled Bids, Sales and Transfer of Ownership, that the average is: 340kWh and 211kg CO2. But again, this is still half the footprint of the cost of producing 200 cotton t-shirts. 

Source: Memo Akten “The Unreasonable Ecological Cost of Crypto Art”

ALTCHAINS MENTIONED

• Algorand