EU Carbon Taxes Push Bitcoin Mining to Russia, Study Claims

Study Suggests High EU Carbon Pricing Causes Mining Migration To Russia

The strict controls that the European Union (EU) exerts over carbon emissions might be a factor in the migration of these industries, at least operationally, to jurisdictions without carbon emissions taxes.

The “Does Carbon Pricing Displace Crypto-Mining Emissions? Quantile Evidence on Carbon Leakage from EU27, Russian and Rest-of-World Power Grids” study, published by Pham Ngoc Toan, Le Tran Trung Hieu, and Nguyen Vu Trung Nguyen, three Vietnamese investigators, examined whether carbon pricing in the EU could be a relevant cause behind bitcoin mining operations moving to Russia.

To this end, the study examined daily power sector emissions from the EU, the rest of the world, and Russia from 2019 to 2025 and linked them to bitcoin daily closing prices.

The results found a statistical correlation between carbon pricing in Europe and carbon emissions in Russia, concluding that bitcoin mining operations “migrate” to Russia at off-peak times when both bitcoin and EU carbon allowance prices grow higher.

The same statistical relationship was not present when examining the same relation between the EU and the rest of the world, making the finding more relevant.