Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060Ti

What does that actually mean?

At the world-average grid intensity of about 475 g CO₂e/kWh, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060Ti running 24/7 for a year releases about 808 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent. Here's what that looks like in everyday terms:

Where you plug in matters

Electricity is not one thing. A kilowatt-hour from a coal plant carries roughly 820 g of CO₂; the same kilowatt-hour from a hydro reservoir carries about 24 g. That's a 34× difference — large enough that Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060Ti's annual footprint swings from roughly 1,396 kg on coal-heavy grids down to about 41 kg on hydro-dominated grids. The single biggest lever a miner has on their carbon footprint is choosing where to plug in.

Regions commonly used for low-carbon crypto mining include Quebec and British Columbia (hydro-dominated, typically <50 g CO₂/kWh), Iceland and Norway (geothermal + hydro, often <30 g), Paraguay (Itaipú hydro), and parts of the US Pacific Northwest. Coal-heavy grids — Kazakhstan, Inner Mongolia, Poland, parts of Australia — sit at the opposite end, often above 700 g CO₂/kWh.

Some operators also reduce their net impact by using otherwise-wasted energy: flare gas at oil wells (burning methane that would be vented anyway), curtailed renewables (wind or solar that the grid can't absorb), or behind-the-meter hydro during off-peak hours. These arrangements can drop effective emissions below the local grid average because the energy would have been wasted or flared without the mining load.

How to reduce this rig's footprint