The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that a tax of $0.047 per kilowatt-hour "would push the crypto mining industry to curb its emissions in line with global targets," and that the tax would rise to $0.089 per kilowatt-hour if the impact of miners on local health was taken into account. The higher tax would increase the average electricity price for crypto miners by 85%, increase global government revenue by $5.2 billion per year, and reduce emissions by 100 million tons per year, equivalent to the emissions of Belgium.
They claim that one Bitcoin transaction consumes about as much electricity as the average Pakistani uses in three years, while the AI model ChatGPT requires ten times as much electricity as a Google search. The two also proposed a $0.032/kWh tax on energy use by AI data centers, which would rise to $0.052 if pollution costs were taken into account because "these data centers tend to be located in places with greener electricity." IMF officials said the tax could generate $18 billion in revenue for the government each year.
