The whole "Bitcoin uses too much energy" myth was built on an utterly false premise that environmentalists advocate for less energy use across industries.
Not true!
Very few people believe that industries should "use less energy".
The ones who do believe this are known as degrowthers, and do not represent the majority of the environmental movement.
The consensus view within mainstream environmental science and policymaking holds that labeling any large energy user as automatically harmful is reductive because it ignores critical factors:
The Energy Source: Emissions from 1 kWh of coal power and 1 kWh of wind or nuclear power are vastly different. The consensus focuses on decarbonizing the supply.
The Value and Flexibility of Demand: As discussed previously, some large loads (like certain industrial processes or data centers) can be highly flexible. This demand-side flexibility is a key asset for integrating variable renewables like wind and solar into the grid, a cornerstone of the mainstream transition plan.
Technological and Efficiency Gains: The consensus argues that innovation driven by economic activity can lead to "dematerialization", using fewer resources and less energy to produce the same or greater value.
Bitcoin mining, precisely because of its high (flexible) energy use, has been shown in multiple peer-reviewed studies to offer a number of decarbonization benefits that are extremely appealing to both environmentalists and grid operators.
These benefits include grid stabilization (Rudd et al), methane mitigation (Sechrest et al), obviation of gas peaker plants (Bruno et al), and accelerating the renewable energy transition (Lal et al, 2023). Bitcoin mining is only able to offer those benefits due to its high and flexible energy consumption pattern.
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/changing-narrative-bitcoin-mining-daniel-batten-gkmwc/
It is for this reason that a number of leading sustainability periodicals have in the last year come out in favor of Bitcoin mining’s environmental benefits.
Further, a whitepaper by Rhodes et al concluded that flexible load centers (aka: Bitcoin mining) allows grid operators to build out the grid using renewable energy, whereas inflexible load centers (AI Inference datacenters) encourage the proliferation of fossil fuel based power on the grid.
Not true!
Very few people believe that industries should "use less energy".
The ones who do believe this are known as degrowthers, and do not represent the majority of the environmental movement.
The consensus view within mainstream environmental science and policymaking holds that labeling any large energy user as automatically harmful is reductive because it ignores critical factors:
The Energy Source: Emissions from 1 kWh of coal power and 1 kWh of wind or nuclear power are vastly different. The consensus focuses on decarbonizing the supply.
The Value and Flexibility of Demand: As discussed previously, some large loads (like certain industrial processes or data centers) can be highly flexible. This demand-side flexibility is a key asset for integrating variable renewables like wind and solar into the grid, a cornerstone of the mainstream transition plan.
Technological and Efficiency Gains: The consensus argues that innovation driven by economic activity can lead to "dematerialization", using fewer resources and less energy to produce the same or greater value.
Bitcoin mining, precisely because of its high (flexible) energy use, has been shown in multiple peer-reviewed studies to offer a number of decarbonization benefits that are extremely appealing to both environmentalists and grid operators.
These benefits include grid stabilization (Rudd et al), methane mitigation (Sechrest et al), obviation of gas peaker plants (Bruno et al), and accelerating the renewable energy transition (Lal et al, 2023). Bitcoin mining is only able to offer those benefits due to its high and flexible energy consumption pattern.
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/changing-narrative-bitcoin-mining-daniel-batten-gkmwc/
It is for this reason that a number of leading sustainability periodicals have in the last year come out in favor of Bitcoin mining’s environmental benefits.
Further, a whitepaper by Rhodes et al concluded that flexible load centers (aka: Bitcoin mining) allows grid operators to build out the grid using renewable energy, whereas inflexible load centers (AI Inference datacenters) encourage the proliferation of fossil fuel based power on the grid.