Why Bitcoin is Getting Greener: Renewables Power 52% of Mining
By: crypto news|2025/05/15 19:15:05
0
Share
Key Takeaways:New Cambridge University data shows that 52% of Bitcoin mining is now powered by renewable energy sources.Over the last three years, emissions from the industry have remained steady at 39.8MtCO2e.Mining hardware efficiency also improved, rising 24% year-on-year. Researchers at Cambridge University recently released their latest report on Bitcoin mining, showing that over 52% of the network is now powered by renewable energy sources, up from 37% in their last report, in 2022.It is a dramatic shift in the Bitcoin industry’s carbon footprint, which has long been criticized for damaging the climate.The study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) shows that more miners are switching to cheaper, off-grid power. It says the 52.4% sustainable power used in BTC mining includes 9.8% nuclear and 42.6% renewables like hydro, solar, and wind.For the first time, natural gas has replaced coal as the single largest energy source in Bitcoin mining – a process that involves solving complex mathematical puzzles to verify transactions and add them to the blockchain.According to the report, natural gas, a cleaner burning fuel, now accounts for 38.2% of the electricity used to mine Bitcoin, up from 25% three years ago. Coal usage has dropped to 8.9% from 36.6% during the same period.Bitcoin-Linked Greenhouse Gas Emissions DeclineFor its study, the CCAF, which is based at the Cambridge Judge Business School, surveyed 49 Bitcoin mining firms from 23 countries. Some 41% of the companies are publicly listed, while the remainder are privately owned.The companies surveyed include Bitfury, Hut8, Blockware, Mara, Riot, and Bitdeer. Together, they represent 48% of global mining activity.CCAF used the data it collected from the firms to examine the operational intricacies of Bitcoin mining, market dynamics, and its environmental impact. Previously, it used publicly available data to estimate the ecological footprint of mining Bitcoin.It found that Bitcoin is becoming greener, with more than 70% of the companies surveyed actively undertaking climate mitigation measures.The report said Bitcoin-related emissions have remained steady over the last three years, stabilizing at 39.8MtCO2e (megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent), thanks to improved machine efficiency and a switch to renewable power.Source: CCAF The emissions come from an estimated network-wide annual electricity consumption of 138 TWh (terawatt-hours), or 0.5% of global electricity consumption. The figure represents an increase of 17% year-on-year.When accounting for the impact of Bitcoin mining using cleaner power sources, such as flared gas – excess gas from industrial activity that would have gone to waste – net emissions drop to about 37.6 MtCO2e.Climate tech investor Daniel Batten expected Bitcoin’s emissions to be 42 MtCO2e during the period under review. Analysts say the growing use of renewables could boost BTC’s adoption as a sustainable asset.Tesla infamously dropped Bitcoin payments on environmental grounds in 2021. People on social media have wondered whether the electric vehicle maker will now reconsider its position in light of the Cambridge findings.One promising area for mining is landfills, a major source of methane. A few firms have now started using power generated from landfill methane gas to mine Bitcoin. The gas is often vented directly into the air.According to CCAF, mitigation from methane alone offsets 5.5% of total Bitcoin network emissions. Scientists say methane gas has a global warming potential over 20 years that is 80 times higher than that of carbon dioxide.Improved Bitcoin Mining Hardware EfficiencyThe report says the Bitcoin network’s emission intensity—the amount of carbon emissions it releases into the atmosphere per unit of power used—has dropped sharply since 2022, falling to 288.2 gCO2e per kilowatt-hour.Source: CCAF The figures dovetail with those from the Bitcoin Mining Council, which estimates that Bitcoin’s emission intensity has declined by around 50% during the four years to 2024.It means that every time someone sends a transaction over the Bitcoin blockchain or uses the asset as a store of value, they are “net emission reducing”, Batten, who is also an environmentalist, previously told Cryptonews.In addition, Bitcoin’s hash rate – or computational power used to mine and process transactions on a proof-of-work blockchain – has risen fourfold.The researchers say BTC’s existing total emissions account for 0.08% of the global greenhouse gas emissions per year. For context, they say the figure is similar to the annual emissions of Slovakia and half that of the global tobacco industry.However, critics have argued that any comparison should contextualize Bitcoin’s electricity consumption and environmental footprint with that of the industry it is directly disrupting – traditional finance, or TradFi.TradFi relies on extensive physical infrastructure that uses vast amounts of electricity from burning fossil fuels. Meanwhile, BTC mining operations can relocate to regions with abundant renewable energy sources.Estimates put the banking sector’s annual electricity usage at 4,981TWh. Critics also point to gold mining, which consumed 265TWh in 2023, nearly twice as much as the power used in Bitcoin mining, the digital equivalent of gold.Apart from switching to sustainable energy sources, the Bitcoin mining industry’s efficiency is also improving. As at the end of June 2024, the energy efficiency of mining hardware like application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) miners was at 28.2 joules per terahash (J/TH), up 24% from a year ago, per the Cambridge report.Miner hardware efficiency is expected to drop to 11.5 joules per terahash during this second quarter before falling further to 5.5 J/TH by the end of the year, it said.Oleksandr Lutskevych, CEO of crypto exchange CEX.io, has told Cryptonews that the efficiency of ASIC miners improved by up to 1,000 times over the past decade.Majority of Mining Equipment is RecyclableThe Cambridge University researchers said 87% of Bitcoin ASIC miners that were due to be phased out at the end of 2024 can be repurposed, recycled, or sold, with the actual e-waste approximated at about 2.3 kilotonnes.This is “significantly lower” than the electronic waste generated in other competing industries, the study says. Of the Bitcoin mining companies surveyed, only 3.2% did not have a dedicated plan for e-waste.ASICs are built specifically to mine Bitcoin more efficiently. They perform the calculations needed to verify transactions on the network a lot faster than graphics processing units (GPUs) or central processing units (CPUs).Alexander Neumueller, research lead, digital assets energy, and climate impact at the CCAF, said:“This report directly addresses a persistent data gap by relying on direct practitioner insights rather than abstractions. By offering a granular perspective based on data covering nearly half the global mining activity, we aim to anchor the debate on robust, transparent evidence and inform grounded policy discussions about this rapidly evolving industry.”Bitcoin mining is concentrated in North America, with the U.S. accounting for 75.4% of total reported mining activity, followed by Canada at 7.1%.The post Why Bitcoin is Getting Greener: Renewables Power 52% of Mining appeared first on Cryptonews.
You may also like

Forbes Special Report: The Embrace of AI Agents in the Cryptocurrency Industry
AI agents are becoming the true native users of cryptocurrency; they do not need a beautiful interface, just a wallet and a payment track. This wave of "machine commerce" may be the most rational narrative in the crypto industry for years, or it may just be another round of hype in a new bottle.

Bitpanda, Vision Web3 Foundation, and Optimism Partner to Onboard European Financial Institutions to the Global Blockchain Economy
Vision Chain aims to address the long-standing infrastructure bottlenecks in the European financial sector

What will the early Hyperliquid prediction market look like?
Unleash the Imagination Space of On-chain Finance

Overseas VC's Two-Week Trip to China AI Leaves Them in Awe of Shenzhen Hardware
Delphi Labs founder's two-week deep dive into China's AI ecosystem: More bullish on hardware than expected, more bearish on software than expected, and observations on Chinese founders that flipped his prior beliefs.

Was CZ Also Rug Pulled? BNB Treasury CEA Industries Control Battle
CEA Industries' mNAV drops to 0.68, YZi Labs personally steps in to clean up the mess

A transaction in 7 seconds, earning tens of millions of dollars, he's seen as the "cancer of meme coins."
The belief that "Day Trading Shitcoins is the Only Way to Make Money" has become their go-to strategy.

Bittensor Ecosystem Token SN Surges 5x in March, What's Behind Richard Heart's One-Liner?
What did Andrew Ng say? Did he say anything? Is Distributed AI Training Feasible?

The economy is entering a new cycle, how can the average person prepare?
The key is not how much you earn, but whether you have cash flow, low leverage, and the ability to earn consistently

Access Binance Alpha Box: Sigma.Money to Launch BNB Chain Ecosystem Yield Farming Gateway
Sigma.Money's innovation is now translating into tangible market momentum.

Kimi, Chip, and Bean come together for a Crypto Hackathon: What did AI developers build on Monad?
Monad Ecosystem AI Deployment, More Than Just a Hackathon.

How to Trade Crypto on Mobile Browser & Win LALIGA Tickets (2026 Guide)
Discover how AI automation, natural language trading, and mobile browser trading platforms are shaping automated trading in 2026. Join the WEEX live trading event for early access and rewards like LALIGA VIP tickets.

Connecting encryption, TradFi, and payments, is Gate completing the final puzzle of the "super APP"?
Why is it said that TradFi is not a short-term narrative?

a16z Crypto Operating Partner: Wall Street is undergoing its biggest infrastructure upgrade in 30 years
What is currently happening is the largest infrastructure upgrade in the capital market since the rise of electronic trading thirty years ago.

a16z Crypto's latest research: What is the key to the large-scale application of DeFi?
The widespread adoption of on-chain financial applications still faces an invisible barrier: the lack of transaction order certainty. Under a single leader architecture, nodes can delay, censor, or even front-run user transactions, thus completely distorting the game among market makers, bidders, an...

Founder of Delphi Labs: My observations and feelings about the AI ecosystem in China in two weeks
Delphi Labs co-founded a deep observation of China's AI ecosystem: hardware manufacturing is quietly winning the global war at an astonishing speed, but the software sector is mired in an overvaluation bubble and the homogenization of founders.

AI Seating Chart Released | Rewire News Morning Brief
Musk and Ultraman are not above

Is the era of Embodied AI's "GPT Moment" Approaching? Axis Robotics Announces End of Testing, Set to Launch on Base Chain
Axis's answer is yes - provided that a thorough reshaping of the scale-up production of robotic data is required, and a redefinition of the deployment paradigm in the physical world.

Meta Layoff Explained: On the same day as laying off 700 people, they handed out $90 billion in retention bonuses to executives
The money saved from laying off 700 people is approximately equivalent to Meta's 1.5 days of AI infrastructure spending
Forbes Special Report: The Embrace of AI Agents in the Cryptocurrency Industry
AI agents are becoming the true native users of cryptocurrency; they do not need a beautiful interface, just a wallet and a payment track. This wave of "machine commerce" may be the most rational narrative in the crypto industry for years, or it may just be another round of hype in a new bottle.
Bitpanda, Vision Web3 Foundation, and Optimism Partner to Onboard European Financial Institutions to the Global Blockchain Economy
Vision Chain aims to address the long-standing infrastructure bottlenecks in the European financial sector
What will the early Hyperliquid prediction market look like?
Unleash the Imagination Space of On-chain Finance
Overseas VC's Two-Week Trip to China AI Leaves Them in Awe of Shenzhen Hardware
Delphi Labs founder's two-week deep dive into China's AI ecosystem: More bullish on hardware than expected, more bearish on software than expected, and observations on Chinese founders that flipped his prior beliefs.
Was CZ Also Rug Pulled? BNB Treasury CEA Industries Control Battle
CEA Industries' mNAV drops to 0.68, YZi Labs personally steps in to clean up the mess
A transaction in 7 seconds, earning tens of millions of dollars, he's seen as the "cancer of meme coins."
The belief that "Day Trading Shitcoins is the Only Way to Make Money" has become their go-to strategy.
