Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
Merge pull request #6832 from jmcook1186/energy-image
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
adds energy expenditure graph to energy page
  • Loading branch information
minimalsm authored Jun 30, 2022
2 parents fe59e60 + c832d37 commit f646e18
Show file tree
Hide file tree
Showing 2 changed files with 6 additions and 0 deletions.
Binary file added src/content/energy-consumption/energy.png
Loading
Sorry, something went wrong. Reload?
Sorry, we cannot display this file.
Sorry, this file is invalid so it cannot be displayed.
6 changes: 6 additions & 0 deletions src/content/energy-consumption/index.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -38,6 +38,12 @@ More relevant is the overall energy consumption and carbon footprint of the netw

[Digiconomist provides whole-network energy consumption and carbon footprints for Bitcoin and Ethereum](https://digiconomist.net/ethereum-energy-consumption). At the time of writing this article, Ethereum's total energy consumption is ~112 TWh/yr, comparable to that of the Netherlands, with a Carbon emission equivalent to that of Singapore (53 MT/yr). For comparison, Bitcoin currently expends about 200 TWh/yr of energy and emits about 100 MT/yr C, while generating about 32,000 T of electrical waste from obsolete hardware annually. Switching off Ethereum's proof-of-work in favor of proof-of-stake will reduce this energy expenditure by more than 99.95%, implying that the total energy expenditure for securing Ethereum is closer to **0.01 TWh/yr**.

![Comparison of energy expenditure across industries](./energy.png)

The figure above shows the annual energy consumption in TWh/yr for various industries (retrieved in June 2022).
_Note that the estimates presented in the plot are from publicly available sources that have been linked to in the text below. They are
illustrative and do not represent an official estimate, promise or forecast._

To put Ethereum's energy consumption in context, we can compare annualized estimates for other industries. If we take Ethereum to be a platform for securely holding digital assets as investments, perhaps we can compare to mining gold, which has been estimated to expend about [240 TWh/yr](https://www.kitco.com/news/2021-05-17/Gold-s-energy-consumption-doubles-that-of-bitcoin-Galaxy-Digital.html). As a digital payments platform we could perhaps compare to PayPal (about [0.26 TWh/yr](https://app.impaakt.com/analyses/paypal-consumed-264100-mwh-of-energy-in-2020-24-from-non-renewable-sources-27261)). As an entertainment platform we could perhaps compare to the gaming industry which has been estimated to expend about [34 TW/yr](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336909520_Toward_Greener_Gaming_Estimating_National_Energy_Use_and_Energy_Efficiency_Potential), or Netflix which expends about [94 TWh/yr](https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-what-is-the-carbon-footprint-of-streaming-video-on-netflix), or Youtube which has been estimated to expend about [244 TWh/yr](https://thefactsource.com/how-much-electricity-does-youtube-use/). Estimates of Youtube's energy expenditure have been broken down by channel and individual videos. [Those estimates](https://thefactsource.com/how-much-electricity-does-youtube-use/) imply that people consumed 45 times more energy watching Gangnam Style in 2019 than proof-of-stake Ethereum will use in a year.

## A greener Ethereum {#green-ethereum}
Expand Down

0 comments on commit f646e18

Please sign in to comment.