Bitcoin Forum

One year ago Bitcoin's network was consuming as much energy as Ireland. Now it has apparently doubled and now it is consuming 1% of the world's total electricity consumption.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

This, in a time when the world is trying to reduce carbon footprints to avoid or slow down global warming.
Is Bitcoin sustainable as it is?
I don't think so - in fact I'm sure it is not. There is a limit to insanity.
More data here:

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

What is likely to happen next? Which are your thoughts?

From the ecology point of view this sounds bad and something should be done. Still I beleive there are other things that spend more energy than bitcoin. Maybe some sustainable alternative energy source could be the solution. I would like to believe that bitcoiners are environment friendly and think for the future generations.

The banks are still running since couple of 100 years now and there digitalisation has grown vastly since 100 years. What do you think how much electricity they might have used up until now? I guess this number might be huge and they might using the largest electric supply as they are the basis of whole financial system all over the globe. Just imagine how much there equipments, safes, surveillance, Internet connectivity and much more might be consuming as compared to the bitcoin. Believe me, that comprison makes sense, bitcoin is still tiny bit.

You have to consider what value Bitcoin is providing, and what services it might be replacing. For example: How much electricity does the banking industry consume? What about the gold mining, minting and storage industries? Here's an article (https://medium.com/@datarade/sure-bitcoin-assumes-a-lot-of-electricity-but-f05de54e85f2) that discusses those comparisons.

One of the things Bitcoin's energy consumption is paying for is immutability. So far, there is no mechanism besides proof-of-work that can provide the same level of security.

If it's real figure that is pretty bonkers indeed, but if a large proportion of the world's money and information wound up stored on the Bitcoin chain then it starts to look like a pretty good deal.

At present it's nowhere near that and that amount of profligacy is not good however you want to look at it. But it's possible it'll drive renewable developments and fill existing renewable surpluses such as the hydro plants in China that have a massive excess of unused power that miners have been using.

Considering how quickly the hash rate is rising I wonder how much more headroom is left before it becomes truly obnoxious.

The biggest obstacle to increasing bitcoin prices is mining and energy consumption. I think it is not possible to go far without finding a solution to these.

this has been talked about soo much. many topics

summary:
these bitcoin miners have special contracts with energy companies for the energy companies to produce X amount of electric day or night.
this is good. because these power stations have a guaranteed stream of income and also a measurable utility it can prdict.

if power stations could produce sat 30mwat. but residentially it only produces 25mwat between 4pm and 9pm and drops to 15mwat ovrnigh-morning. the power station would not just stay at 25mwat all day and night. they would keep switching on and off as demand drops and rises.

sometimes because it takes 30 minutes+ to warm up the generators they end up having to grab(import) excess electric from neighbouring power stations to cover any random spikes of utility.

there have been times whre brown outs have occured when suddenly many people used electric but the power stations could not predict it. the UK had statistics that there are sudden spikes that happen during commercials of tv shows. because people suddenly go to their kitchen turn on the kitchen light. turn on their kettle to make a cup of coffee.

imagine 1million people suddenly flipping the switch of a kettle of 1800wat for jsut 5 minutes...

so power companies LOVE guaranteed income and measurable utility it can predict..

also
power companies over the last decade have switched and grown their renewable electricity sources. this is why amrican power stations have suddenly started being bitcoin mining farm happy. they have seen the benefit to iceland and the benefit to china

dont believe the FUD of "governments hate bitcoin" when you separate "government" and utility companies to see that utility companies love it as they can more happily keep a few extra generators running without having to warm up/warm down generators at certain times of day. they can also use the income from the mining farms to expand. or atleast not need to import electric during times of spikes. which saves them money

last point
compared to 2012, the GPU mining days. bitcoin mining is very much energy efficient. and becoming more energy efficient
take this year new 7nm ASICS vs 14nm ASICS can do:
14nm can do ~14terrahash for 1.3kw
7nm can do ~28terrahash for under 1kw

so although the hashrate may double the electric needed for a doubled hashrate goes DOWN
now think about how many GPU's would be needed to do 14 terrahashes of mining. if ASICS never became a thing

Indeed, it may not be the perfect value that is being shown here as we dont know how many miners are actually working on this and how many of them are shutter down themselves long back ago. Even if it is 2% or 5% then also I believe it is safest window for the energy consumption because for any multi national company that would be the same case. Now we cant go out there and close all of them or put them on the renewable source of energy. So why not consider the bitcoin as the same MNC corporation which is unlike others that exists here around. Im pretty sure that you will have some correlation between the two now and it doesnt matter yet and yes developments in the renewable would be the last option to continue things around.

Bitcoins sustainability in terms of electricity consumption is not alarming as there are dozens of power to make bitcoins runs. Renewable energy with solar energy can help bitcoins mining reduce it dependent on the world's electricity.

Miners simply need to look at clean energy for mining, there are a few solar powered projects and i'm sure that more will follow. I read somewhere that a hydro powered mining farm will be created. This will help to fund the plant so it will be self sustainable

The percentage of electricity usage by the mining in any terms is not sustainable. Unfortunately, this won't mean the end of the crypto world but rather a greater call fort more sustainable and renewable energy.

It's also worth bearing in mind global energy sources.

https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy/electricity.html

In Europe and South America zero emission generation via nuclear, hydro or renewables is more than 50%.

Gas makes up the majority in the Middle East and that's half the emissions of coal.

It's that cheeky Asia that's the problem.

This information is excessive and possibly taken out of context. 1% of world's electricity cost more than all crypto market, and that doesn't make sense.
Like many other alleged curiosities, this one is also in the service of creating antagonism towards the crypto world.

Here, there it goes, another cheap score for the anti bitcoin group. They will definitely have one to cling on to to talk about cryptocurrency being bad and all. This is really not encouraging and needs to be addressed. What if more population of the world join, then, more energy and electricity drained.

This is the real point: what would happen if the BTC adoption would rise, the price would rise and the hash rate would rise further? It's scary. Most of the people posting in this thread are not realling getting the big picture.

You're completely right, I've read an article which stated that Russia was looking into selling their excess power to Bitcoin miners.

https://bitcoinist.com/russia-power-sell-energy-bitcoin-miners/

They're even willing to offer them cheaper prices for that power, 2 rubles instead of their normal rate of 4.5 rubles.
Now this article doesn't mention it, but they're doing this because otherwise they would be overloading their grid.

Electricity is made for consumption only.    
But the question is the source of electricity.  Is it dirty source or clean energy source.
If it is generated from renewable source i.e solar; wind; hydro then it is clean energy and I think it does not affect the climate.
But other sources like coal; petro etc i.e. non renewable sources are dirty sources.  These should be avoided.  Miners should try to generate their own energy like solar energy if possible.  

So go green.  Go near to nature.  Save environment.  Utilize the natural resources not waste it.  If we work friendly with the nature it will be sustainable otherwise as the resources finish we will also finish.

I think that everyone here has a bias in favor of Bitcoin which makes them blind towards reality. Guys, all top scientists are talking about how we should reduce carbon footprint since we are facing a catastrophic global warming process. Bitcoin's network is already adding 1% of total electricity consumption to the echosystem so that we can gamble it on exchanges. I point to everyone's attention that even though Bitcoin swallows 1% of the world's energy it still cannot be used to pay for 99.999+% of the world's products.

I don't believe that Bitcoin mining consumes 1% of total electricity. It may consume a lot of power but it is nothing compared to other industries. The news is so bias and even if it's a fact,  banking industry have more electricity consumption than Bitcoin mining.

These are estimated figure, I highly doubt that number is true, let's be realistic. According to a recent article I read, there are 100,000 bitcoin miners in operation throughout the world. Let's say that each Bitcoin miner uses an average of 1kWh of energy, that means that 100,000x this is equal to 10GWh per day. However, the total energy consumption is currently 15TWh per day, meaning that Bitcoin consumes just 0.1% of the total expenditure.

Electricity is not a finite resource, so it doesn't matter whether Bitcoin mining is 1% or 10% or even 99% of the total consumption.

The real issue is the effect of power generation on the environment, and at only 1%, Bitcoin cannot be considered to be a significant contributor to that problem. Furthermore, there are better ways to address the environmental problems than to prohibit certain types of consumption.

I also doubt that it's already at 1%, but even if it's true it doesn't change anything. This power is being bought and sold, it's tradable. Since some countries are willing to sell this power it means that they have an excess, right? I believe that this excess is large enough to sustain bitcoin mining, but what does it mean for the economy? It's of course a huge boost because this excess energy would otherwise be wasted. Since it's being used and paid for, the power companies will have additional funds to expand. The economy will always regulate itself.

I seem to recall that article saying miners as in people, not machines. I've seen estimates of there being 3 million machines running which sounds conceivable considering how much profit Bitmain pulled in last year and how much the hash rate has been rising. It's anyone's guess though.

To know that not all the sources of energy we're using is carbon-free, it's worth noting that the burning of fossil fuels even up to this day is still what's running most of our industries and not only bitcoin. Once we shifted into something greener, efficient and cheaper (like hydro or nuclear), I don't see the need to discuss the same power consumption all over again. There are other industries that use more power and emits more carbon than bitcoin, but have we turn a spiteful eye into them? But one way or another, we might have to look into other algorithms which could drastically reduce the power consumption needed to run the network, perhaps PoS or any other better alternatives.

I believe that solutions is coming on the ways as we can see many projects who are pursuing alternative ways of mining with less electricity.

At the moment, yes, that's fine. In the future, perhaps this number will increase significantly, but now there are many projects that are aimed at reducing the consumption of electrical energy when working with crypto-currencies ;D

It is a common misconception that making mining more efficient will lower the overall usage of electricity. The truth is that overall electricity usage is determined by the value of the block reward primarily, and making mining more efficient will only result in a higher hash rate.

I believe sooner or later most coins will have to change from proof of work(mining) to proof of stake. Nodes can do better. I feel like "mining" is an old way to run a chain. We need to find different and more "green" options. Pos is one of them.

The Digicoinomist Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index has often been critisized as "flawed". It is based on annual mining revenues - so it's largely based on the average Bitcoin price in the last 365 days. If price goes up, it will grow - until the next halving.

A better estimation, in my opinion, is this one (http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-electricity-consumption/), based on data about mining hardware. Unfortunately it is outdated. But it regularly had results of between a third and half of the consumption the Digicoinomist index claims.

Imo, it's not a topic that we should ignore, but it has solutions. Other posters (here and in another related threads) have already mentioned renewable energies. Solar energy costs of planned plants in Mexico and Chile are estimated to be as low as 0,02 USD per kWh, so it is very likely getting competitive with Chinese coal-based electricity. Probably soon we'll seen a massive shift to renewable-based mining.

Point well taken there, and we can not shy away from the truth that bitcoin does consume a lot of electricity.

But as others said, i doubt bitcoin's carbon footprint is more than the consumption of all banks globally put together. You see, it became easy to declare the consumption of electricity for bitcoin because the nodes are all visible. Whereas it would be difficult to calculate the same for all the banks.  And i am merely basing this comparison against the banks because it is the sector that bitcoin is up against.

Besides, imagine how many trees bitcoin saved as it never needed any printed material to denote its value unlike the endless printing of fiat currencies.

Why do you think bitcoin is not sustainable ? It would be gone if bitcoin was not sustainable from the start.
we know the whole world not just only mining bitcoin, we are mining many cryptocurrency coins.
but i think we still can sustain the crypto mining, as long it still profitable to do.

I just feel bad about this situation.
Cryptocurrency is good, but the fact that it is heating our globe everyday is just sad.
This is also a reason why I dont like mining, and I also think we need better mining algorithms that help us with the situation. Algorithms that dont require much energy but still have the same functionalities, security and efficiency to contribute to blockchain world.

We have already discussed that in this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4943478.0;topicseen).

And the problem is: Banks may consume more today, but they have also a much higher transaction volume.

At least according to this stackexchange post (https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/9165/how-much-money-is-wire-transferred-every-year-worldwide/9184), SWIFT alone handles 11,5 millions of transactions per day, with a transaction volume of 1,25 quadrillions of dollars per year.

Bitcoin handles less than a trillion per year (~2 billion daily (https://www.blockchain.com/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd), with peaks up to ~5 billion during the last bubble). So SWIFT's transaction volume alone is no less than 3-4 orders of magnitude higher than Bitcoin's.

What we should compare, instead, is the hypothetical Bitcoin consumption if it becomes used at least as much as SWIFT, for example. If we now have about 0,5 %, then if the price is 1000 times (3 orders of magnitude) higher, then we can assume that Bitcoin would consume a very significant part of the world's electricity.

That is not a problem because a lot of organisations are currently working on providing the world with an alternate source of power supply that is even air pollution free and environmental friendly using blockchain technology see WPP ENERGY for more details

There are many alternative source of power that can help us sustain the need.  There is geothermal, hydro, wind and solar, each miners should have( i suggest) s have individual source so that the needs of the people will not be affected. We are the new technology.

I believe that this figure will not grow anymore and now there is a decline but if the gold rush goes again on bitcoin then it will spend more energy !

"at only 1%, Bitcoin cannot be considered to be a significant contributor to that problem" is a funny statement, considering that the remaining 99% of consumption is what makes the whole human civilization possible and it's what is keeping 7 billions of people alive. If of course the 1% is correct.

This is exactly the point, and such numbers are clearly unsustainable. This leads to the conclusion that something has to be changed in the way of Bitcoin to work, or it will change by itself in a more catastrophic way at some point. That's plain logic.

yes because there is economic reason for sustaining it, it pays its electricity bills and earninig money for miners
so there will be build new power plants if miners will need it
look at that perspective, its amazing

Even if Bitcoin consuming 10% of electricity, bank is consumes more. Bank's office need electricity, maintaining of fiat money also need electricity (they burn old fiat money to create new one), transferring money also need electricity. We can make a conclusion that banks expenses more resources than bitcoin.

I don't find this is as a big issue in long run because already there are project that emerging to find solution for this matter. I saw recently a crypto project that aims to build up crypto  mining stations which use green energy from wind, water etc...

I'm fairly concerned about this. At this point, bitcoin couldn't  even dare to compete with the traditional financial system. Bitcoin is already consuming that much energy at this level of adoption, what more if its transaction reaches the banking level, that is, several thousand magnitude more than all cryptocurrency combined?

there's a few angles to consider here.

first, the answer to that depends on whether electricity generation averages towards green/renewable energy sources rather than conventional polluting forms.

second, there is no direct relationship between energy consumption from mining and adoption. ideally, upper layer applications like the lightning network, drivechains, etc could allow exponential transaction growth---but off the main blockchain. miner investment into hardware will ebb and flow according to market value and long term speculation; exponential transaction growth doesn't equate to exponential growth in energy consumption.

I percent of the world's energy consumption?  That's quite crazy but I'll like to say that in terms of pollution and the environment in general, bitcoin will be more friendly because it will move to safer alternative sources of power

1%,,, did you do the math...
average home uses 0.3kwh
1.2bill homes
=4,246,575,342kw/h  (~4.25billion)


14nm asics are 14 terra
hashrate this week is 50,000,000 terra
=3,571,428 asics
each asic is 1.3 kwh
=4,642,857kw/h (~4.6million)

bitcoin uses 0.109% using 14nm rigs

now with 7nm
50 exa with 28terrahash rigs =
1,785,714 asics
each asic is 0.8kw/h
=1,428,571kw/h (~1.23mill)

bitcoin uses 0.0289% using 7nm rigs

yep we are somewhere in the area of between 0.029%-0.11%    no where near 1%
and as i said the 0.029% is the next gen electric usage at this weeks hashrate. so the electric per hash is going down.

now imagine how much electric would be wasted if we stuck with GPU.. but the hashrate was still 50exahash
ill give you a hint. it would be 1177% of household electric

..
back 5 years ago yea the hashrate was 250000x lower.. but the kw per hash was higher using GPU
..

anyway over all we are at 0.1% household use if we use the old ASIC measure

and if we transition to 7nm rigs. we could go upto a hashrate of over 150exa and still be at 0.1% household electric.

this means we can go to 1500exa and finally get to the 1% of household electric this topic is at.

summary:
so give it a while. we are not near a 1% household electric barrier yet.. but pencil in 1500exa into your hashrate calender, then the OP can repost and finally be right

I believe that it would be possible to consider the heat energy that miners produce and direct it in the right direction, for example, for heating residential buildings. Thus, mining would become one of the few sources of heat, along with a heat station that spends electricity or fuel on heat. And consume electricity and they are too many, and even cause harm to the environment with their emissions.

crypto moneys take up little space on the earth and the percentage of energy they consume is too much. I think countries are worried about energy and therefore they do not accept crypto currencies.

Thanks for this calculation. It was indeed sounding strange such an enormous figure. Your estimate is much more reasonable. However, so some extent the problem remains, even though not that big.

electricity consumption is not a problem for bitcoin especially for bitcoin miners, because for now electricity can be obtained from various renewable sources, such as solar cells, wind and water flow

1. my calculation was using ONLY residential electricity (peoples homes) where compared to ONLY peoples homes bitcoin uses 0.029-0.1%..

if i included world corporation and industrial. the bitcoins use would be even further lower % (making even better results for bitcoin).

2. bitcoin mining is done in regions of china that use hydro. in iceland that use geothermal and also in area's of america that do hydro. so although media says "CHINA electric is only X% hydro...".. thats just chatter about china the country.. however bitcoin is using the hydro supply.

3. unlike gold. think about it. there are no electric excavators, they are diesel based. there are no solar powered sluice machines, again thats diesel. and same for the dirt trucks. diesel.
bitcoin is high majority renewable and gold is very high diesel.

@franky1: I pretty much agree that 1% is way too much. But which timeframe are your kWh calculations based on? Year, month, day, hour, second?

0.3 kWh per household seems a strange figure ... I guess it's per day, but it seems too low for a day but too high for an hour. In industrialized countries (from China/South America upwards) households use about 2-10 kWh/day. But I don't know the figures of really poor third-world countries.

So let's take another figure: the 21000 TWh world electricity consumption per year, according to CIA World Factbook.

Bitcoin's consumption should be about 30-70 TWh (upper bound: Digicoinomist index, lower bound: upper bound of Marc Bevand's numbers for January 2018 (http://blog.zorinaq.com/bitcoin-electricity-consumption/), considering all studies still yield an hashrate and consumption increase, despite of the bear market).

So you're basically right, but more with the upper bound of your figures (I get  0,14 to 0,33 percent of the 21K TWh), and considering total electricity consumption, not only "private households".

I don't worry about it too much. As time progresses, mining rigs will become more energy efficient and the electricity consumption will go down. Right now electricity represents a smaller share of the overall mining expenses, but that is changing. So reducing the power consumption has become more of a priority.

That cost is being too high and it is not known if in the future, mining bitcoins will remain profitable.

I think maybe some sustainable alternative energy sources can be the solution. I want to believe that bitcoiners are environmentally friendly and think for future generations.
From an ecological point of view this sounds bad and something must be done. Still I believe there are other things that consume more energy than bitcoin.

Good answer.
I was unaware that so much of the Chinese electric is hydro - this changes things of course. And even more does the icelandic geothermal one, which cannot even be blamed to warm up the atmosphere.
And as for gold, I could add to what you have said that modern gold extraction is using Cyanide (CN) which is very polluting and its massive use in gold mones devastating for the environment.
Luckily there is still no Proof of Cyanide protocol in Bitcoin.

It is sustainable because we haven't calculated how much of electricity is wasted by currency traditional money transferring systems waste world electricity due to there ineffective systems and processes and if we do that we will definitely find what is the best way to transfer currencies and I am very sure that Bitcoin will win because no other technology in the traditional financial system can compete with Bitcoin at the moment 

I think it's temporary. This is a big environmental problem, but I think it will be solved in the future. In extreme cases, bitcoin can be transferred to pos mining.

The statistics and forecasts of the power consumption of the Bitcoin digging network are extremely complex, and are not simply based on conventional approaches. Increased demand will boost the development of new power plants, and many power plants will burn fossil fuels. However, it will reduce the electrical energy from cash printer and some Bitcoin replacement machines.

I wonder if it's real or someone just trying to impact bitcoin image around the world

Those anti-POW criticisms have a misdirecting argument.

The generation of electricity cannot be stored or "saved" because the world does not have the technology to "hold" all that energy yet. Once it is generated, it should be used, or the costs used to generate it would be wasted. The only "wasted electricity" is unused electricity.

Still waiting at 5200 with my buy order. Come lower pls. Remember, it doesnt matter at what price you bought BTC, it matters that you have it in financial collapse.

First of all we are yet to see what would happen to Bitcoin under a financial collapse because Bitcoin was adopted after the recession (better yet in response to it). We have observed when stocks fall, Bitcoin also falls as in the many signs of 2018. 5200 is a very random buy order. Why not $900 or $4200? Just random.

I think if the developed world becomes modernized, there are many infrastructure to develop, replacing the whole bank. As a result, Bitcoin's power consumption will be much lower than that of banks. In fact, there are too many banks in the world, electricity is huge.
Bitcoin, online transactions, no intermediaries, etc. That is the transaction of the future.

Yes, Bitcoin has been created to give an alternative to traditional FIAT system, but it is now mainly been used to speculate so as to increase one's holdings in FIAT, which is quite perverse given the original mission. So what would happen in the case of a financial collapse is totally unpredictable.

This is a topic that should have discussed previously but I am glad we are doing it right now because the main idea to implement Bitcoin in the world is to provide a efficient and effective transactional method with better security and less interrupt but even it has achieved today the concept of sustainability and to reduce of energy consumption was some what abundant until this year I saw many projects regarding sustainable and power saving Bitcoin mining methods so the above is true but it doesn't mean that BItcoin should not be used because the bad effect can be reduced using today technology 

If you look at this point of view, then the electric cars needs to be locked out. We are saving energy >:(

#support SecureCryptoPayments

In principle, there is nothing surprising in order to earn bitcoins you need to spend a lot of electricity. I think these figures will grow, but it was worth expecting.

in a fiat financial collapse. $10 goes from buying 10 loaves of bread. to only buying 1 loaf of bread.
(look at zimbabwe dollar a trillion dollars buys you a bread crumb)
or to flip the mindset a lof of bread goes from $1 to $10+

what will happen is bitcoin will go up to trillions of dollars. but the purchase value of goods, assets or services wont match the amount of goods or services 1btc can buy today

this is why we need to start measuring bitcoin against cost of living.. or even just a 'bread loaf value' to detach away from the dollar so we can see a real btc vs goods value

as for people waiting to buy at or below $5k range. bar a temporary fluke of stupidity where a whale sells at a loss.. i dont anticipate a sub $5800. and ill explain why

firstly. if a miner that mines to hoard. is happy to spend $6.1k mining. if they see the market drop to under $6100. they will just divest some of that electricity money and just buy btc from the market and save themselves a couple hundred dollars and ofcourse time.

since november 2017 (retested end of june2018) the community has had 10 months to sell below $5800 .. ample oppertunities. and they havnt taken up that option.(thus market community acquisition cost consensus =$5,800+)
ontop of that if you do the math of mining costs of a BTC. that too sits at over $5,800.(thus mining community acquisition costs consensus =$5,800+)

this basically makes the market and mining both support the rational consensus to not sell below their costs (not stupid to sell for a loss)

i would have said the maths of september is more like $6100+... but its too soon to say that, because 5800 was only a couple month ago so too soon to raise the bottomline to 6100 without giving the community ample option to test. so im cautiously sticking with $5800 for a couple more months

It's just a false allegation against bitcoin by its critics.They are equating the total number of transactions confirmed with the energy used for mining.But whatever the number of transactions confirmed,the energy used for mining the whole block remains the same.For gold mining and for banking transactions taking all over the world,more percentage of energy is being used and no one would raise such issues anytime

ok i looked at the digiconomists chart

"Implied Watts per GH/s   0.154"
=154 watts per terrahash  (simply x1000 math)
=2156 watts per ASIC (simple x14 math (asic do 14th)

yet we all know an asic is 1.3kw... not 2.156
so that chart is wrong before even looking at the other implied "estimates".

screw it lets do it

---

Bitcoin's current estimated annual electricity consumption* (TWh)   73.12
Bitcoin's current minimum annual electricity consumption** (TWh)   54.77[3]
Annualized global mining revenues   $4,728,978,787
Annualized estimated global mining costs   $3,656,073,069
Current cost percentage   77.31%
Country closest to Bitcoin in terms of electricity consumption   Austria
Estimated electricity used over the previous day (KWh)   200,332,771 [2]
Implied Watts per GH/s   0.154
Total Network Hashrate in PH/s (1,000,000 GH/s)   54,219   [1]
Electricity consumed per transaction (KWh)   896
Number of U.S. households that could be powered by Bitcoin   6,770,506
Number of U.S. households powered for 1 day by the electricity consumed for a single transaction   30.28
Bitcoin's electricity consumption as a percentage of the world's electricity consumption   0.33%
Annual carbon footprint (kt of CO2)   35,830
Carbon footprint per transaction (kg of CO2)   438.98

---

54,219,000 terrahash    (remember an asic is 14terra)
54,219,000 /14=3872785.714285714asics (remember an asic is 1.3kwh)
3872785.714285714*1.3 = 5,034,621.428571429kwh

electric over a day. thats simple. multiply the hour by 24
5,034,621.428571429kwh *24=120830914.2857143

so [2] should be 120million not 200mill

next. lets look at [3] which is based on the hashrate and assumption of using the s9 asics (14thash that im using)

the 120m kwh per day or the charts 200m kwh per day. can be converted to terrawh per day easily(h/1000=m..)
(kw/1000=mw..)120830914/1000=120,830.14megawattdays
(mw/1000=gw..)120,830.14/1000=128.83014gigawattdays
(gw/1000=tw..)128.830.14/1000=0.12883014terrawattdays
then days to a year is a simple *365
0.12883014*365 = 47.0230011 a year

now. thats lower than [3]
but note the wording of [3] bitcoins minimal
... um sorry. the math of my 47twh a year is based on onday multiplied. so there is an issue
the charts [2]200kw (converted to tw and multipled by 365) is 73.12 .... so there is an issue
the issue is that the estimates are that the electric and hashrate has been the same for the whole year

but BEFORE TODAY hashrates and thus electric used were lower.
so for the last 365 days. the electric/hashrate per day was LOWER
anyway. its harder to write out the daily electric for the last 365days. so i used excel and just displayed the end result

the actual electric consumption for the year is 20.7  not 47 not 54 not 73

ok so i googled "electricity consumption"
and got this
Electric energy consumption is the form of energy consumption that uses electric energy. Electric energy consumption is the actual energy demand made on existing electricity supply. The total electricity consumption in 2012 was 20,900 TWh.
i checked may other statistics site for 2012 and also found domestic consumption at the 19,000-21,000 area

i also looked at newer stats for more recent years. anyway

100/20900*20.7=0.099% ... ok. so on previous pages i done one way of working it out. and this time i done it another way. and both ways resulted in a 0.1%.. so im happy and i double proofed myself.

Do you think 1% is bad enough to compare with the entire electricity consume ? I dont think so.
There are many company using electricity more than bitcoin mining. You can name all of the industry companies in the world and how much they consume electricity. Cryptocurrency will always sustainable as long as we used it.

There definitively are miners using partially "not-scarce" electricity (like coal/hydro/nuclear power at night when there is low domestic consumption but the plants cannot be "regulated down"). But if only because of Bitcoin mining, existing plants have to work more, or new electric plants have to be built, then Bitcoin "is using scarce electricity". I am pretty sure that this applies to a majority of miners.

This is still not the same thing as "wasted" electricity. For me, it becomes "waste" if it's innecessary. If we have a PoS or whatever system that can achieve the same grade of security consuming less energy, then the difference is what I would call "wasted energy".

But there is a solution, even if we preserve PoW: Use non-scarce electricity, like renewable-based electricity that doesn't compete with the electricity used for non-mining (domestic/industrial) consumption.

@franky1: I repeat, take a look at Mark Bevand's study. I believe his calculations are the best out there.

mark bevands study was out dated. even in january 2018 he was using ASICS of 2+ generations old.
my numbers were based on the last 12 months. using the 2017/2018 generation miners.
i even broke the costs down to the daily level of the hashrate of the day. worked out asics costs of the day etc.. and then added up the total electric.. (yea i got super anal with the details)
as i showed the OP's source done 54thashrate(54210peta) *365 (yet last week, last month we were not at 54thashrate so his electric use would have been off by alot)

as for the domestic amount per household.
you said
"0.3 kWh per household seems a strange figure ... I guess it's per day, but it seems too low for a day but too high for an hour"

are you saying 300w an hour is high?
...
i just grabbed UK stats
google "Average kWh per day. The average electricity usage per household: Electricity: 8.5 – 10 kWh per day".
8.5/24 = 0.35416kwh     10/24=0.4166kwh
now remember thats just the UK other countries have different amount.  yep many countries use even less electric than the UK (world bank 12.6% of houses have no electric)

america do love their bigger houses AC, gadgets and techy stuff.
google: "average American your monthly read 911 kilowatt hours (kWh)"
911pmonth*12/365/24=1.2479kwh (as i said america love their AIRCON)

where as other countries have smaller houses less techy stuff, no AC... did you know aircon is the biggest electrical drainer in most households..
many countries dont have it. so many countries use alot less electric

 which backed up by a few stats sites showed the world average was 0.3 per household.

but yea mark bevand using the previous gen asics which were 2-3x less efficient would get a result 3x more then my numbers. but both me and him got numbers below the OP's 1% figure.
yea

in short if mark used todays gen asics and done th maths per day and added up each day.. he would see we are at 0.1% so his math is good. but just outdated.. where as the OP's source 1% math is meant to be recent. but just wrong in many places

the 1% figure had too many flaws to ignore so was worth the time calculating

power plants do regulate. and at night they do shut down some generators.
but they do try to keep some excess between produced and consumed.
it does take 30mins-1 hour to restart a generator. so they like to keep a gap. and they also like to sell some of that excess to other countries**  that have less of a gap and suddenly had a surge of consumption that was unforecasted.
**OR INDUSTRIES hint hint

yea. they forecast extra TV use during super bowl and even forecast even further consumption at commercial tv breaks when people warm up a coffee or microwave some popcorn.
but sometimes. when there is a big news event which on a normal day wouldnt see many people with TV on, suddenly turn on their TV's. that unforeseen event is why they have the excess.. to prevent brownouts


before you made your reply. and as part of my post with loads of maths i was going to add a sarcastic comment to the reddit propagandists who scream "china 51%"

so here goes
lets imagine out of the 20.7twh that 50% was just in china (10.35)
china consumes 5683
china produces 6529
=836 difference (13% safety gap)

10 vs 800 excess.. = no impact to residences lives

Perhaps it's time to make your own power plant and get energy from it for bitcoin mining.

very true, although we can't assume that all energy consumed by bitcoin mining is excess capacity. that's why some localities where electricity is cheap are getting concerned.

for instance, quebec approved a rate hike for bitcoin mining businesses, and also temporarily halted new service requests for them. the logic is that demand for quebec's cheap electricity from miners has gotten so high that they'll need to start buying extra capacity (at rates unknown) to meet demand if they don't start upcharging miners or otherwise stop them from setting up shop. if they have to buy extra capacity to meet miner demand, that will drive up rates for residents, too. if i lived there, i wouldn't be happy about that.

Bitcoin is indeed consuming a lot of energy because of the kind of machines use in the crypto mining. There is the need to get a standby or reliable energy supply independent of the general public energy system.

Of course we spend electricity and other valuable resources for unnecessary things that has no value and make no production but some point out the Bitcoin energy consumption as a huge problem to the world but with sustainable mining methods and other systems in the future Bitcoin electricity usage will headed low and such problems will not occur again

Of course this is a significant era that the world is more concern about green energy and low power consumption concept so as a latest invention in the financial world when Bitcoin consume more power this was discussed by many people mainly by environmental friendly organizations to point the real issue behind it and I think that is why as a solution we see many solar energy mining projects are coming in this year 

Anything fast, secure and effective can consume little more power and I think it is acceptable because even the best and latest lamborghini will consume much fuel than a Toyota Hybrid does but the out come is much different so do we say Lamborghini is bad no we don't and I think it is the same story with Bitcoin and its network we wanted faster and better transactions without any interruption which traditional systems can never provide and we got

All things considered it doesn't really matters how energy is consumed by Bitcoin or whatever, because the system in the end will self regulate itself eventually. If Bitcoin't consumption will be unsustainable then something will change. If mankind's presence on earth will be unsustaibale, then something will change. Whatever the outcome, it will the the only possible and inevitable one.

As the report, the electricity was consumed by bank, internet.. is many times as much as bitcoin was. Moreover, once bitcoin dominate the world, it can be changed bank notes, and many other currency. So that, the electric will be small or big. I mean, the electricity which Bitcoin is consuming is not quite remarkable. Therefore, we should not worry about this problem. The issue what we should care most is rasing price of Bitcoin.

I'm quite worring about this issue. Bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrencies, and it hasnot still been recognized by all around the world. Futhermore, it was supposed that Bitcoin will be soon ended in few year. So, consuming 1% of the world 's electricity. Is this worthy ?

Well, at least Bitcoin can be proud to have taken part to Global Warming...

it's time for miners to switch to alternative energy, no longer using fossil-powered electricity.
this is for the common good, natural resources are increasingly depleting, coal stocks are also running low. if we don't save electricity from now on.
just imagine 20 years from now we will experience a natural resource crisis. and of course that will have a bad impact on the whole world.

But in the end, I guess that Proof of Stake will more and more overlap and then slowly eclips Proof of Work. And this will eventually solve the issue.

I hope through the PoS protocols such as Lightining Network, electricity consumption will decrease. But i think that electricity cost make bitcoin valuable

Media, politicians and other people consider the electricity waste caused by bitcoin mining as significant in the world when there are so many other energy wasting work done in the world such as light pollution, and other major areas but bitcoin mining causing electricity waste is shown frequently through media and other sources which I think due to lack of understanding about the good that it does to the world and its people 

Energy problem is not just about crypto-money mining. Consumption of each used device is increasing. In general, electricity consumption has accelerated. In particular, we have to give great importance to green energy.

Bitcoin will vastyl drain not just electricity but also socioeconomic fabric as well.

regards

We can get energy from different sources here in our planet, we have to think of ways to have energy or electricity in other ways so that we dont consume most of the main sources of energy.

Lightning is not a PoS protocol. Lightning transactions are simply "bundled" Bitcoin transactions. So Lightning's security is, ultimately, based on Proof of Work.

And unfortunately, Lightning does also not really contribute to a "decreasing energy consumption". Bitcoin's energy consumption is mostly based on its price (higher price -> higher potential profit for miners -> higher hashrate -> higher energy consumption). Lightning could even lead to a boost in price, because of the increasing attraction to use Bitcoin for smaller real-world transactions, and thus to a higher energy consumption.

Lightning's big advantage is different: It decreases hardware, networking and storage costs for full nodes. These costs can be ultimately also described as "energy consumption", but are much lower than the consumption by miners.

Ecologic disaster is the biggest problem of bitcoin in my opinion. Environmental problems which arise from electiricity consumption will be irreversible as long as bitcoin mining is getting harder and harder.

Correct. I think that mining speculation -- and thus energy consumption -- are tied to price, which is tied to adoption and speculation about adoption. Eventually those two things will converge, but for now it's a gold rush that assumes future exponential adoption.

Lightning may bring renewed utility and micropayments to Bitcoin, which could certainly foster adoption and drive price up. Not only that, but Lightning requires that users lock up BTC to use the network or collect fees from it. That can lessen available supply on the market.

With that in mind, I don't really see the mining arms race slowing down anytime soon...

many farms use solar panels but it is always "wasted" energy. I personally believe that PoS is a good alternative for emerging altcoins. the bitcoin will remain PoW as it should be

What regulates the expenditure on electricity from the exploitation of virtual currencies is the quotation: if they are worth a lot, the consumption goes up, if they are low, it decreases.

its seems alot. but mainly alot of this mining facilities powered by surplus energy. like many power plant in china struggle to operate, mining could be there solutions to keep these power plant continue to operate.

You don't have such quantities of energy produced "as a surplus". This sounds like a desperate argument of someone in denial of the true echological implications.

I saw recently a number of ICO introduced as a solution to the world electricity problem and some of them were targeting cryptocurrency mining power consumption so in the near future we will get a good solution.

not as much as mining gold  ;)

I think, when the world's electricity supply is still large, and has reserves from every source, the world's electricity will be able to handle bitcoin.

in addition, the development of electricity is never stopped, the innovation of electrical energy from various sources has always been used to save world electricity, such as hydroelectric power, solar power, waste power, and steam power.

The world does not have "reserves" of electrical energy, since on large scale electricity cannot be stored. It must be produced just when it's needed. So if the Bitcoin network is consuming X energy, that quantity has to be produced in real time, with all the implications of that.

Bitcoin consumes 1% of the world's electricity. Is this worth it? I hope through the PoS protocol as Lightining Network, power consumption will decrease.

The most important characteristic of bitcoin is its sustainability as it has made its existence since more than a decade and not only this bitcoin is that resource of the world that could hardly be exhausted as now till date there are millions of people around the world who are investing into bitcoin, as I heard the rumour that bitcoin is now consuming 1% of total worlds electricity and will consume double the amount of electricity as consumed the the entire world currently in the coming decade, so this is all rumours and nothing is going to happen like this.

I think Yes, even its consuming 1% of electricity it is still worth it. Bitcoin is only one that exist for many years and its sustain its existence until now. Also possible to Bitcoin to have changing because many people are now using it. If it continue to be like that possible Bitcoin will be more stronger and successful this time. The only need to do is keep believing to it to continue its legacy of being a best crypto.

In my opinion, this is not critical and the fact that such energy consumption goes up takes a certain percentage, regardless of which they pay for it. I think if it will cause damage, it will immediately be prohibited to conduct such operations.

The media, politicians and others consider wasting electricity due to the significant bitcoin mining in the world when there are too many other energy-wasting jobs in the world such as pollution and lighting. Other main areas. The issue of energy is not just about exploiting electronic money. In general, electricity consumption has accelerated. We can get energy from many different sources here on our planet, we have to think of ways to have energy or electricity in other ways so that we do not consume most of the main energy sources. The environmental problems arising from the consumption of electricity will not be reversible as long as the exploitation of bitcoin is increasingly difficult. Many farms use solar panels but it is always "wasted" energy.

Electricity consumption is indeed a matter of bitcoin, unlike paper money. Bitcoin transactions and mining are very wasteful of electricity, but the solutions offered are not all able to solve the current problem. Maybe one day renewable energy can be a solution, because fossil energy will one day run out. If  don't find an alternative and fossil energy runs out, bitcoin ends because the internet cannot be used without electricity.

I very much doubt the 1% figure, itb would be interesting to get more on this and the sources of the information. Just for example lighting-at some point at some where it is  dark think of the electricity that alone will use. For me i can't believe in the 1% senario.   

I don't think that's something to be afraid of firstly I highly doubt that bitcoin is now consuming 1% of the world's electricity like some other members pointed and even calculated it and it does not seem that way secondly since mining is having a bad effect on the environment several initiatives are shining   to  switch and reverse this situation. many bitcoin farms are starting to use renewable energy using solar and wind-powered mining.

no its actually embarassing,

that 1 bitcoin transaction needs the electricity of a european houshold in 2.5 weeks

More than embarassing that is unsustainable. And when something is unsustainable, it usually doesn't last forever.

If society does not find stronger sources of electricity, over time, Bitcoin will consume an even greater percentage of world electricity. The banking system and gold mining consume energy several times more energy than Bitcoin.

1% of all electricity usage in the world seems as a large percentage. Besides, if so and it's seen as a investment like now, it's not worth it. So, the passion of people making money isn't important from global warming. But using Bitcoin and Blockchain for the benefit of humanity will protect our future and i will support it accordingly.

you dont say,

i even think entire market will decentralise away from bitcoin,

there will be institution managers with their own coins like "graphene coin" or "fusion coin", people have an interest supporting those coins, those coins are being released with economic consumption for doing certain products not for wasting electricity.

and they will matter much more

besides this forum lost 24% viewers in septembers thats a loss of 4 million from 16.8 to 12.8 million viewers per month

https://www.similarweb.com/website/bitcointalk.org#referrals

i think the market will forget bitcoin, because the problem is that no one has an interest to support it, except those that own a lot of miners, or those that can build miners.

and thats the main problem, why the people stop caring about that coin.

if the amount of minner continues to increase, the electricity costs will continue to increase. it can even reach 5%. because Minner Bitcoin costs the highest electricity than others.

I agree with you, and the fall will probably be spectacular. In fact, I think that the high prices of BTC are mainly caused EXACTLY by the fact that the network consumes so much electricity and for the miners it is necessary that the price rises to pay for their consumption, and with their wealth they can influence the price.

It will be interesting to see what will happen to mining now that the price of Bitcoin is tanking. It's a very delicate mechanism, in this very moment mining BTC has turned more expensive than actually buying Bitcoins - so basically a lot of energy is really thrown away right now since it would be more profitable to switch the moners off - we'll see.

It seems clear, as said by gentlemand (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4976730.msg44886750#msg44886750), the amount of electricity consumed by miners has triggered the emergence of some creative ideas among electricity developers, both by individual companies and by the people themselves. With renewable energy, I don't think this has become a problem for the government or society. Honestly, at the moment I don't know the state of the number of miners, are they currently experiencing an increase or even the opposite?

If we talk about the benefits, in my opinion bitcoin is the only best alternative for countries with weak economies especially for countries affected by hyper-inflation. Meanwhile bitcoin hasn't been completed in solving the economic problems of the community, I'm very confident this condition will make the existence of bitcoin more calculated, and go further (long life). Because basically, bitcoin can we rely upon more its positive benefits and can provide maximum benefits for its users.

At the moment if it is sustainable, but when the consumption continues to rise, measures will be taken to reduce it, right now the miners are developing other types of mining protocols, to be able to work more efficiently with the energy, perhaps in the future a fork will be necessary to choose other forms of mining to replace the pow, as pos or other that comes new.

In my opinion. bitcoin consumes more than 1 percent of electricity in the world because currently users of bitcoin or altcoin are so large that the amount of electricity consumption will definitely increase. and the majority of electricity consumption occurs in crypto currency miners, because they need a large amount of electricity to operate mining equipment for 24 hours a day.

People too often forget that whatever happens is in fact the only thing that could have happened.

Electricity consume % may be far-fetched. And even if it doesn't and mining ends, btc will still be used.

Even if Bitcoin (mining) uses 1% of the electricity, it is not something critical. The cryptocurrency has more pros than cons. People realize that it helps them to live better. BTC is the chance to start a new life.

bitcoin is sustainable entergetically? my answer is: yes. Based on a research, almost 80% of the energy used to mine bitcoins comes from renewable sources
sources: https://coinshares.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Mining-Whitepaper-Final.pdf (page 9)

of course not its just short term populistic.

You forgot to remove your blinkers  ;)  instead of bitcoin mining, this green energy you talk here, could replace some coal power plants for real world electricity needs instead  >:(  its useless, don't try to greenwash bitcoin, it is not sustainable. point.

it would be great when all farming /mining centers using there produced heat to regenerate electricity power.
Becourse we still making so much heat and blast it unused in the air -.-


regards

We have also to consider that some percent of this energy is green energy. Bitcoin changed life of a lot of people, personally I think we can't blame miners because they consume so much energy. Some may come and say what the hell is bitcoin, why is electricity wasted in such a shit but they don't know economy well, have no imagination what is crypto, what is decentralized system and what is blockchain.

I agree that the source of power for Bitcoin mining is irrelevant, which is why Bitcoin mining itself doesn't have a carbon footprint.

However, your point appears to be that Bitcoin is not worth the amount of energy spent on it. What about the amount of energy spent on entertainment: video games, youtube, netflix, music, automobile racing, driving to a football game? Are those activities sustainable? Surely, all the energy spent on those activities is wasted, too.

Bitcoin does consume a lot of electricity, but we should just accept it. A lot of objects in the world consume a large amount of electricity - shops, advertising signs, houses and so on. So there's nothing we can do about it, not to stop do we get bitcoin?

I also believe that bitcoin is not the worst thing we spend energy on. This benefits society, so such use of natural resources is necessary. In the world, a huge number of useless items that people spend electricity on, and bitcoin is the least of the evils.

Bitcoin consumes a lot of energy for mining, you can not argue with that. But if you are really worried about this, then you should be reassured by the idea that bitcoin mining is not infinite, so sooner or later it will stop.

I do not think that this can be attributed to serious global problems. Now the number of environmental problems is growing, and the use of electricity for the extraction of such a useful resource as the cryptocurrency is not the worst thing that exists now. So I don't think we should make a problem out of it.

more electric is used to keep bottles of soda chilled, than bitcoin uses

cocacola have 10million coolers.
and thats before you count the other brands

32exa bitcoin hashrate is only 1.1m S15 or 2.2m S9's
3 coolers = 1 s9
so if bitcoin was only mined using S9's would need 3.3m S9's just to match cocacola
or
4 coolers = 1 s15
so is bitcoin was only mined using s15's would need 2.5m S15's just to match cocacola

again. this is just the coolers of cocacola. its not including the non branded coolers fastfood/grocery stores buy themselves
again this is not including the coolers of the cocacola trucks used to deliver the bottles and cans
again this is not including the coolers of the cocacola warehouses before delivery

this is not including the other brands (pepsi, etc) branded coolers either

To be fair, I'm sure if you compared to the current banking infrastructure, that may be using quite a bit of power as well in contrast.
It may not be at 1%, but it may be quite a large amount.

I don't think it's sustainable, I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years something changes with regards to this. Either power generation will become easier (plausible?) or Bitcoin *(and other cryptos) will have to adapt.

You seem not to realize that the adoption rate among the population of coca cola and other branded coolers is astronomically higher that the one experienced by Bitcoin. Should every coca cola drinker adopt Bitcoin and perhaps start to mine it too, there would be barely electricity left on Earth for anything else.

Large mining farms open in those regions where the energy balance is excessive and where electricity is cheap.
At the same time, there is no reliable method for estimating energy consumption for mining. In order to carry out the calculations correctly, you will need reliable data from data centers obtained from the miners themselves. But analysts have no such data. Therefore, no one can reliably assert.
Yes, mining really consumes very large amounts of electricity. But some mining companies use renewable sources for electricity production.A HydroMiner startup gets electricity from a hydroelectric power station. At the same time, the company pays only 4-6 cents per kWh, and earns $ 300,000 a month.
And energy costs all over the world are growing every year, so it’s not fair to blame only the work of miners o for all the troubles.

I guess that after the price decline and hashrate drop now Bitcoin's electricity consumption has been considerably lowered. A temporary relief. But this point remains crucial for the future, anyway: in a closed system like Earth with limited resources and climate change problems PoW cryptocurrencies are not sustainable and have no long term future. End of period.

It's not sustainable at all. It's pretty much going to destroy the planet if bitcoin experiences exponential growth in mining because there will be so many miners. I think in the future the bitcoin devs/team should consider switching to something more eco-friendly than PoW. For example like PoC coins like BURST whos mining is mostly on HDDs.

Look at PoS coins too, maybe some of their features are flawed, but most of the coins you can earn by just keeping the wallet open, so you can just basically use a Pi to power your wallet instead.
As the future gets more green, the future of bitcoin looks more grim as it just uses too much power unless they change that.

Bitcoin does consume enough energy for its production, but it seems to me that in the context of total energy consumption worldwide it is just a drop in the ocean. So I don't think this is a serious problem that we have to deal with. In addition, bitcoin mining will not last forever due to its limited amount.

That is not true. Bitcoin mining is an integral part of Bitcoin. It will continue forever, even after the subsidy goes to 0.

Consumption of electricity is very large in the use of bitcoin, especially mining, as evidence that bitcoin is one of the most attractive income for many people.
Advanced business is synonymous with large electricity consumption, and it is an attraction for energy investors to develop renewable technology which means saving the earth from energy shortages by recycling very positively.

The guy above you means that mining wont last because the supply of btc is only limited to 21 million  but you are right mate even if the supply runs out mining wont still end because btc will still circulate  due to the reasons that people constantly buy and sell a btc  .

Btc itself isnt also consuming electricity . people only uses electricity when they turn on their gadgets and process a transactions  , as well as mining  .

Not to forget most of the mining farm concentrate on the same country, I think the consumption per capita will be vastly biased too.

For as long as the means of achieving something good does not weigh more than what good we can get out of it, then it can still be considered bad. For what use would it be if we will in the end be part of our own destruction? So there should be some other way to do things around. Perhaps some solutions with using bitcoin can be implemented so as to minimize the use of electrical power. Humans are intelligent and I believe we can solve this problem in the future.

When Bitcoin hits the coin limit, which won't be for a long time, mining will still be necessary to process and secure new blocks of transactions. Unless they switch to Proof of Stake, which has a host of issues, there is no viable alternative. If Bitcoin isn't popular enough to generate fees comparable to what current miners get in rewards, that coin limit will need to be increased.

those are estimated data, no solid facts, I seriously doubt those data.