Bitcoin Mining Energy Usage Surges 41% Year-on-Year

Bitcoin (BTC) has witnessed a 41% rise in its power consumption Year-over-Year (YoY), despite significant advances in power efficiency and an increasingly diversified and environmentally sustainable power mix; yet, there are fears that the growth might prompt authorities to restrict mining.

The statistic comes from a study compiled by the Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC), which accounts for 51 of the world’s major Bitcoin mining businesses, for the third quarter of 2022. Bitcoin mining consumes 0.16% of worldwide energy output, which is somewhat lower than the energy spent in pc games, said the BMC, and is regarded “an insignificant quantity of worldwide energy generation” by the BMC.

Bitcoin mining was also responsible for 0.10 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, which the BMC found “negligibly small.”
The rise in Bitcoin energy usage is a result of the blockchain network’s hashrate increasing by 8.34% in Q3 2022 and 73% year-over-year, in spite of a fewer blocks being created and sharp drop on the price of Bitcoin.

Glassnode, a company that analyzes blockchain data, believes that the hashrate increase is attributable to the introduction of additionally efficient mining gear and/or a greater proportion of the network’s hashing power being controlled by miners with better financial standing.

Despite the report’s assertion that Bitcoin mining effectiveness has grown 23% year-over-year and 5,814% in the past eight years, additional rises in total energy use may infuriate officials investigating the matter.

Environmental activists are exerting mounting pressure on Bitcoin miners on the grounds that their energy use is harmful to the planet. Greenpeace is now promoting the “fix the code, not the weather patterns” initiative to persuade the Bitcoin network to transition to proof of stake (PoS), although the official account has just 1,100 supporters as of this writing.
The European Union (EU) published on October 18 papers describing an action plan to execute the European Green Deal and the REPowerEU Plan, both of which intend to closely monitor
cryptocurrency mining operations and their ecological impacts.

The European Blockchain Observatory and Forum (EUBOG) has urged that the EU take preventative steps to mitigate the crypto currency industry’s negative climate effect.
This idea has been already partially implemented, with the EU requesting that its member states “take focused and appropriate steps to reduce the energy usage of crypto-asset miners” in response to Russia’s drastic reduction in energy exports.

The desire for more regulation came amid the European Union’s March rejection of a plan that would have imposed a blanket prohibition on cryptocurrency mining. Concerning the United States, regulatory developments tend to lag behind those of the European Union. The White House Science Office produced a 46-page report last month that examined the environmental and energy ramifications of crypto-assets; nevertheless, contradictory results were obtained and no meaningful strategy is currently in the works.