🌍 Bitcoin's green paradox: why 70% of its energy comes from elsewhere... where no one wants to buy it🌍 Bitcoin's green paradox: why 70% of its energy comes from elsewhere... where no one wants to buy it
Introduction: an invisible revolutionIntroduction: an invisible revolution
For years, Bitcoin has been portrayed as an energy drain—a threat to the climate, an industrial waste in the age of carbon sobriety. Yet a silent transformation has taken place. In 2025, Bitcoin mining is no longer an energy consumer—it has become an energy recapturer, a stabilizer, even a green catalyst.
The numbers speak for themselves:
- Global continuous power: 12.8 to 41.8 GW (equivalent to 10 to 30 nuclear power plants operating continuously)
- Estimated annual consumption: between 112 and 366 TWh — certainly massive, but now largely uncorrelated with conventional grids.
- Energy efficiency of ASICs: 12 to 30.5 J/TH — a 60% improvement in three years, thanks to 3 nm chip generations and advanced cooling systems.
- Marginal cost of producing one BTC: $34,616 to $98,632 — reflecting not waste, but a strategy to valorize economically dead resources.
But behind these numbers is a systemic logic that is revolutionizing the environmental interpretation of Proof-of-Work.
🔋 70% of mining relies on economically residual — even negative — energy🔋 70% of mining relies on economically residual — even negative — energy
Contrary to caricatural representations, Bitcoin mining does not plug into the domestic grid. It goes where electricity is unmarketable — too remote, too intermittent, or too costly to transport.
In 2025, the distribution is clear:
| Surplus renewable energy (excess wind/solar, curtailment) | ≈ 40 % | Energy lost if not used — value close to zero or even negative (turbine shutdown costs) |
| Flared gas/landfill methane | ≈ 30 % | Gas destroyed by combustion or released — recovery via mining reduces GHGs ×84 |
| Recovered heat (data heat reuse) | ≈ 2 % | Industrial co-product — in cold countries, it covers up to 70% of the net energy cost |
| Low-cost grid / surplus nuclear / underutilized hydro | ≈ 25 % | Energy that cannot be exported or is not profitable to sell on the spot market |
| Other / uncertainties | ≈ 3 % | — |
👉 Fundamental conclusion: ~70% of global mining power is fueled by energy that, without Bitcoin, would either be lost, emitted as methane, or burned for free.
This is no longer anecdotal. It is a structural pattern.
🌱 Three levers for environmental transformation — already at work🌱 Three levers for environmental transformation — already at work
1. Absorbing renewable surpluses: the invisible stabilizer1. Absorbing renewable surpluses: the invisible stabilizer
Mining is the most responsive and scalable flexible load in the world:
According to Duke University (Feb. 2025), miners achieve a 95% load reduction in less than 2 minutes during peak demand — compared to 20-40% for other loads (e.g., electrolysers, batteries).
The result? Wind/solar farms become profitable where they were previously unviable. In Iceland, Texas, and Scandinavia, operators are integrating mining from the design phase of renewable projects.
2. Methane neutralization: a positive externality2. Methane neutralization: a positive externality
Methane (CH₄) has a global warming potential 84 times greater than CO₂ over 20 years.
However, each MWh produced from flared gas avoids:
- open-air combustion (flaring → CO₂ + soot)
- or worse: venting (direct emission of CH₄).
Today, companies such as MARA and Stranded Energy are converting oil sites into mobile mining plants, capturing 95% of the methane that was previously lost.
→ Not only does mining not increase the carbon footprint—it reduces it.
3. Heat, a valuable by-product3. Heat, a valuable by-product
A miner consumes 100% electricity—and releases 90% of that energy as heat. In cold climates (Canada, Finland, Iceland, Siberia), this becomes an energy service:
- Heating agricultural greenhouses (e.g., BitcoinHeating in Sweden)
- Municipal swimming pools (e.g., Heatmine in Helsinki)
- District heating networks
According to the International District Energy Association (July 2025): 1 MW of recovered heat = 455 tons of CO₂ avoided/year vs. an oil-fired boiler.
Mining is no longer a cost — it is a by-product.
📚 An emerging scientific consensus📚 An emerging scientific consensus
The data is no longer debatable:
- Cambridge (Apr. 2025): 52.4% sustainable energy in the mining mix — and an active contribution to grid stability.
- PNAS (2024): the combination of Bitcoin + green hydrogen increases wind power capacity by +73%.
- Journal of Cleaner Production (2024): in 96% of cases, mining with renewables is more profitable than hydrogen production.
- IEEE Access (2025): ROI of 57.7% for a PV + mining system — compared to 12.5% with batteries alone.
And above all:
“Mining is not competitive — it is complementary. It buys what nobody wants, when nobody wants to buy it.”
— Lal & You, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (2023)
🌐 A press finally in line with reality🌐 A press finally in line with reality
Three years ago, headlines read “Bitcoin is devouring the planet.”
Today?
✅ 89.5% of mainstream press articles are positive or nuanced
✅ 91% in the climate/sustainability press
✅ 80% of peer-reviewed studies highlight positive externalities
Among the notable headlines:
- BBC: “Bitcoin brings renewable power to rural Africa”
- Reuters: “MARA's flaring-to-mining operation slashes methane”
- Financial Times: “Bitcoin can deliver environmental and social benefits”
- Technology Review: “Bitcoin mining saved an iconic African national park”
- Wall Street Journal: “Bhutan used hydropower Bitcoin mining to raise public wages by 65%”
🔮 Conclusion: mining as transitional infrastructure🔮 Conclusion: mining as transitional infrastructure
Bitcoin mining in 2025 embodies a new energy logic:
It's not the amount of energy that matters — it's its marginal value.
Where electricity has a social cost (outages, price spikes, emissions), mining shuts down.
Where it is waste (surplus, gas, heat), it turns on — and transforms it into currency, heat, stability, development.
It is no longer a question of justifying Proof-of-Work.
It is a question of recognizing it as a flexible, decentralized, and profitable decarbonization infrastructure — perhaps the most effective ever deployed on a global scale.
What if, in the end, the “waste” lies elsewhere — in systems incapable of valorizing their own surpluses?
Sources: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), Duke University (2025), PNAS, Journal of Cleaner Production, IEA, Renewables Now, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Financial Times, and 20 peer-reviewed studies published since 2021.
📌 Data consolidated via batcoinz.com & ccaf.io