Bitcoin Mining Now Most Sustainably-Powered Global Industry: Data

Data shows that the Bitcoin mining sector has become the most sustainably-powered global industry, as more than 50% of it uses clean energy.

One of the main criticisms against BTC is that the sector uses a considerable amount of energy and, thus, releases a notable amount of emissions.

Things appear to be developing for the better and quite fast. In a new post on X, the co-founder of CH4Capital, Daniel Batten, has shared a few charts that look into the sustainability of the BTC network and how it compares with other sectors.

The first chart displays the trend in the percentage of sustainable energy used by Bitcoin mining and other industries over the last four years.

As shown in the above chart, most industries have seen minimal growth in using sustainable energy during this period. The Banking Sector, the second largest in terms of clean energy usage, saw a rise of 2.6%.

On the other hand, the Bitcoin mining sector has observed an increase of a whopping 38%, which has taken the share of sustainable energy powering the blockchain to 52.6%. This growth has naturally made BTC mining the most sustainable among these global industries.

An even more interesting chart is this one that compares the emissions of the network (in terms of megatons of CO2 emitted) with the various indicators related to the blockchain’s growth.

Three Bitcoin metrics are being considered here: the mining hashrate, the price, and the total number of users. The first has grown by 475% during the past four years, the second by 164%, and the third by 289%.

Despite these growths, however, the emissions of the mining sector have gone down almost 10% in the same period. Batten notes that even if you double these metrics during any four-year cycle, the emissions will be the same as at the start, which no other industry has achieved.

The fact that the hashrate, which is a measure of the total amount of computing power that miners have connected to the blockchain, has been able to rise while total emissions go down would imply that the emission intensity (that is, the emissions per kWh of power used) has declined.

Indeed, as the data would confirm, the BTC network’s emission intensity has dropped by more than 50% in the last four years, making the mining sector the most emission-efficient among the global industries.

Finally, Batten has also shared the energy composition of the network, noting that the largest power source is hydro.

This means that the Bitcoin mining sector is also the only one that doesn’t have its largest source of power coal.

Bitcoin has been stagnant for a while now, and the asset is only continuing this sideways trend as its price trades around the $26,100 level.