Sustainable energy use for Bitcoin mining grows nearly 60% in a year

Bitcoin (BTC) mining companies are further adopting green energy as the sustainable energy mix of the global Bitcoin mining industry has grown approximately 59% year-over-year.

The Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC) is made up of 44 Bitcoin mining companies claiming to represent 50% of the global Bitcoin network, or 100.9 exahash (EH). It released a new report on Monday, April 25, which included the findings. The group is also led by Bitcoin proponent and MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor.

The latest survey of BMC member companies asked how much electricity their companies consumed, how much of that electricity was generated by hydro, wind, solar, nuclear or geothermal sources, and what computing power they operated.

BMC estimates that 58.4% of the electricity used for Bitcoin mining is sustainable electricity, down 0.1% from the previous quarter. Perhaps more importantly, this is a significant increase from the estimated 36.8% renewable energy in the first quarter of 2021.

It's worth noting, however, that BMC was only established in June 2021, so it's not clear how it calculated the 36.8% renewables for Q1 2021.

The data for the new report, self-reported by BMC members, shows that 64.6% of the electricity they use is sustainable. The data for global Bitcoin mining comes from the data of BMC members.

Bitcoin has come under fire for its massive energy use and high carbon footprint, and the mining industry is eager to counter criticism by showing it uses greener energy or other wasteful by-products of its business.

The data presented by BMC contradicts a study published in the scientific journal Joules in February that highlighted that China’s ban on cryptocurrency mining led to a 17 percent increase in carbon emissions from maintaining the Bitcoin network’s operations.

The report, which breaks down estimated total energy use by industry, claims that global bitcoin mining operations use 247 terawatt hours (TWh), less than half that consumed by gold mining operations and 0.16 compared to total world energy use %.

Bitcoin mining efficiency is improving

The results of self-reported electricity consumption and company hash rate seem to point to an increase in mining efficiency.

In the past 12 months, the electricity consumption of the Bitcoin mining industry has decreased by 25%, while the computing power has increased from 164.9 to 202.1, an increase of 23%, which is equivalent to the increase in mining efficiency since the first quarter of 2021 63%. BMC claims that Bitcoin mining is 5,814% more efficient than it was eight years ago.