Amid struggle by many countries to regulate digital assets energy mining consumption, the leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin has recorded a 41% surge in its energy consumption within the 12 months time-frame as per report.
This portends a great sign that more regulations will likely be rolled-out and executed in a bid to mitigate the environmental impacts of crypto mining.
However, the report established the fact that Bitcoin made an increase in energy consumption on a year-on-year (YoY) assessment despite concerted efforts towards ensuring energy efficiency and sustainability.
The data, which was produced by Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC) was captured in the Q3 2022 report. It is noteworthy that BMC is the largest Bitcoin mining company, which accounts for 51% total mining worldwide.
The report further envisages that Bitcoin mining will consume 0.16% of worldwide energy production, which is partly less than the volume of energy consumed by computer games.
In the same vein, Bitcoin mining has emitted 0.10% of the world’s carbon emissions in which miners have shown negligible attitudes.
It was said that the increase in Bitcoin energy consumption is due to an increase in network hashrate from 8.34% in Q3 2022 and 73% YoY.
Blockchain data analytics firm Glassnode corroborated the claim that the rise in hashrate is due to more efficient mining hardware coming into the space and this has led to the rise in energy consumption.
Clampdown on Increasing Energy Consumption
There is an increasing effort by governments and environmentalists to clampdown on the increasing Bitcoin energy consumption. Greenpeace has launched the campaign for change in the code and not the climate.
Similarly, the European Union (EU) released a comprehensive document on Oct. 18 containing an action plan for executing the European Green Deal and the REPowerEU Plan.
The ultimate medium and long-term goal is to promote energy savings by digitising the energy sector.
Meanwhile, an Investment and research company CoinShares argued that 77% of bitcoin miners use renewable energy.
