Bitcoin Could Use Otherwise-Wasted Energy

Bitcoin Could Use Otherwise-Wasted Energy

Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.Editor OilPrice.comMay 29, 2021, 10:00 AM·4 min readOops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.

Bitcoin uses more energy per year than many entire countries. Nestled between the Netherlands (110.68 Terawatt hours per year) and the United Arab Emirates (119.45 Terawatt hours per year), Bitcoin miners are collectively eating up a whopping 112.57 Terawatt hours annually, compromising an incredible 0.52% of the entire world's consumption. This is according to the University of Cambridge, which has created a special online tool dedicated solely to the purpose of tracking the still-skyrocketing consumption of the resource-ravenous cryptocurrency. 

While a good chunk of Bitcoin's energy -- an estimated 39% -- comes from renewable energy sources, most notably hydropower, the cryptocurrency's carbon footprint is massive and rapidly expanding. In fact, Bitcoin's overall carbon dioxide emissions have ballooned to 60 million tons (the equivalent of the exhaust produced by approximately 9 million cars). A huge amount of Bitcoin mining -- about 75% of the global total -- is taking place in China, where emissions-intensive coal still makes up the majority of the nation's energy mix. This number has tripled in just two years as Bitcoin mining has become more widely adopted around the world at