Still complaining about the electricity consumption of BTC mining? You may not know how much you are wasting

Author | Long Yue, please indicate the source for reprinting

The excessive energy consumption of Bitcoin mining has always been a topic of great concern. On July 2, the Center for Emerging Finance (CCAF) of the University of Cambridge in the UK launched an index to track the total electricity consumption of the Bitcoin network - CBECI.

As of press time, CBECI estimates that the Bitcoin network consumes 7.15 GW of electricity (1 GW = 1 million kilowatts), with an average annual total power consumption of 53.01 TWh (1 TWh terawatt-hour = 10 to the ninth power kilowatts). The lower and upper limits of the annual total power consumption are 2.79 GW (21.46 TWh) and 22.10 GW (146.45 TWh), respectively.

So how much electricity do these numbers represent? The following intuitive data may leave you stunned.

A study by CCAF at the University of Cambridge found that the amount of electricity consumed by the Bitcoin network in one year could power all the hot water kettles in the UK for 11 years, power Europe (including the UK) for 1.5 years, or meet the energy needs of Cambridge University for 365 years.

However, CCAF found that the amount of electricity wasted each year in the United States alone due to household devices that are always on but not working could power the Bitcoin network for four years.

In other words, although Bitcoin mining consumes a lot of electricity, the amount of electricity wasted when you use household appliances may be more shocking than BTC mining!

From this, we can infer that the electricity consumption of idle equipment in the United States in one year = the electricity consumption of the Bitcoin network in four years = the electricity used for hot water in the United Kingdom in 44 years = the electricity used for hot water in Europe in six years = the energy consumption of Cambridge University in 4x365 years.

In addition, according to CBECI's research data, the Bitcoin network's electricity consumption accounts for approximately 0.24% (20,863 terawatt-hours) of the world's total annual electricity consumption.

If the total power consumption of the Internet in countries around the world is ranked, Bitcoin ranks 43rd. Bitcoin's power consumption is higher than that of Romania, Denmark, Israel, Singapore and Uzbekistan.

CBECI Model

The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) provides a real-time estimate of the total electricity consumption of the Bitcoin network. The model is based on a bottom-up approach first developed by Marc Bevand in 2017, which mainly calculates the electricity consumed by Bitcoin mining.

The CBECI model is built on a series of parameters, including the Bitcoin network hash value, mining power consumption, network data processing power consumption, etc.

(The image has been translated by Google, so there may be some discrepancies in the meaning)