Bitcoin’s power consumption this year exceeds all of 2020

A new study shows that Bitcoin has used more energy so far this year than it did in all of 2020.

By the end of the year, the Bitcoin network will be consuming 91 TW / h (terawatt hour or one trillion watts per hour) and on September 13th it was consuming more than the estimated 67 TW / h for all of 2020.

Precise information on energy consumption is subject to change and is not easy to calculate accurately, but the trends are clear – they are increasing. The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index currently estimates that BTC will consume 95.68 TW / h by the end of the year. This number corresponds to the electricity consumption of the Philippines.

A separate study by Science Direct highlighted another problem – e-waste. E-waste generally refers to discarded electronic and computer equipment. The report shows that a single transaction on the Bitcoin network generates 272 grams of e-waste, mostly made up of old mining equipment.

It added that bitcoin miners are “processing more and more e-waste hardware that could exacerbate the growth of global e-waste,” adding that their annual e-waste totaled 30.7 kilotons as of May 2021.

Expected by the end of the year, the study says:

“Bitcoin can metrically generate up to 64.4 kilotons [64,400 tons] E-waste at the highest Bitcoin price in early 2021. “

E-waste per transaction is half the weight of the latest iPad. But to put that in context, Apple itself could face a major e-waste problem with more than 1.65 billion devices operating in the ecosystem last year, according to CEO Tim Cook. According to Zdnet, this could lead to 250,000 tonnes of e-waste as it is out of date.

According to Statista, Bitcoin will account for around 0.11% of all estimated global e-waste in 2021, which is 57.4 million tons.

Related: Green Bitcoin: Influence and Significance of Energy Consumption for PoW

Bitcoin’s energy consumption is also low in context, depending on your point of view. As a percentage of total global electricity consumption, Bitcoin mining accounts for only 0.43%. That’s less than the estimated 104 TW / h that refrigerators consume in the US alone, according to the University of Cambridge.

A more humorous take on Bitcoin’s power consumption is The Onion, which states that the computing power used to mine BTC is actually saving humanity from destruction. The logic behind the ironic premise is that the world’s computers, freed from the need to dig for cryptocurrencies, “will most likely use this computing power to become self-aware and ultimately destroy species”.

Although bitcoin mining uses a tremendous amount of energy, much of it has been renewable since the great miners left China as new farms and factories are being relocated to green energy operations in the US and Canada.