Bitcoin & Energy

BLOG POST DRAFT — WEEK 16

Bitcoin and Energy: The Honest Truth About Mining

Publish Date: Friday 26 June 2026

Introduction

Few topics generate more heat and less light than Bitcoin's energy use. One side calls it an environmental catastrophe; the other insists it is a net positive for the grid and for renewables. Most coverage picks a side and argues it loudly.

This post does something different. It lays out the facts honestly and leaves the verdict to you.

The starting position, stated plainly: Bitcoin mining does use a significant amount of energy. That is not in dispute, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. The interesting questions are not "a lot or a little," but what that energy is buying, how it compares to other things we spend energy on, what kind of energy is used, and whether the consumption is a pure cost or carries offsetting benefits that rarely make headlines. As always, this is general education and not financial or environmental advice.

What Mining Actually Does

Before debating whether Bitcoin's energy use is justified, you have to understand what that energy does — the part most of the debate skips.

Bitcoin mining performs two essential functions. First, it secures the network: mining validates transactions and adds them to Bitcoin's permanent record in a way that is extraordinarily difficult to tamper with, so that the energy expended is effectively converted into security and makes rewriting Bitcoin's history economically impractical. Second, it issues new Bitcoin in a fair, predictable way, on the fixed schedule discussed in earlier weeks, with no central authority printing it.

This is the concept critics most often miss and supporters most often fail to explain: the energy is not a bug or a side effect, it is the mechanism. Bitcoin's security model is called proof of work, and the "work" is real, physical energy expenditure. That cost is precisely what makes the network trustworthy without a trusted central party — it is the thing that replaces banks, governments, and intermediaries with mathematics and physics.

You can reasonably debate whether that security is worth the energy; that is a fair argument. But you cannot understand the debate at all without first recognising that the energy buys something specific and valuable: a monetary network that no one controls and no one can quietly corrupt. It is also worth noting that some other cryptocurrencies use designs that consume far less energy, and whether those achieve the same security and decentralisation as Bitcoin's proof of work is itself a genuine, ongoing debate.

How Much Energy, in Context

"Bitcoin uses as much energy as a small country" is one of the most repeated lines in the debate. It is broadly true — and, on its own, almost meaningless without context.

Bitcoin's global energy consumption has been estimated at a level comparable to that of a mid-sized country, which is genuinely large and deserves to be taken seriously rather than waved away. But raw figures only become meaningful through comparison. The global banking system — branches, data centres, card networks, ATMs, offices — also consumes a very large amount of energy, though it is rarely measured the same way; Bitcoin is sometimes criticised in isolation while the energy cost of the systems it competes with goes uncounted. Other large-scale uses of energy that society broadly accepts, from heavy industry to entire categories of consumer electronics and entertainment, consume comparable or greater amounts. And the figure changes constantly as mining efficiency improves and the energy mix shifts, so any single number should be treated as an approximation rather than a fixed fact.

The honest framing is this. If you believe Bitcoin provides little of value, then any energy it uses looks wasteful and the "small country" comparison is damning. If you believe Bitcoin provides something genuinely valuable — a neutral, decentralised, fixed-supply monetary network — then its energy use is a cost weighed against a benefit, exactly as we do for every other large energy consumer. The number itself does not settle the argument; what settles it, for each person, is how they value what the energy is buying.

Renewables, Wasted Energy, and Grid Balancing

The more interesting question than how much energy Bitcoin uses is what kind of energy it uses — and whether mining could play a useful role in the energy system. This is where the debate gets genuinely nuanced, and where both sides tend to overstate their case.

Several things are true and underappreciated. Bitcoin mining is uniquely flexible: a mine can be switched on or off almost instantly and located anywhere with power and an internet connection, which few other large energy consumers can match. Because of that flexibility, miners increasingly seek out stranded or wasted energy — for example, renewable electricity generated when supply exceeds demand and the grid cannot use or store it, which would otherwise be curtailed. Flared gas is another example: oil extraction often releases gas that is simply burned off because capturing it is uneconomic, and some mining operations use that gas to generate electricity instead, which can reduce emissions relative to flaring. And because miners can power down instantly during peak demand, they can in some cases act as a flexible load that helps stabilise grids and improve the economics of building more renewable capacity.

But the honest counterweight matters, because this is not a one-sided story. Not all mining uses clean or wasted energy; a meaningful share still draws on fossil-fuel grids, and the claim that Bitcoin "mostly uses renewables" is often overstated by advocates. The energy mix varies enormously by region and changes over time, so sweeping statements in either direction tend to be wrong. And even beneficial uses do not erase the fact that mining adds real demand to energy systems that, in many places, remain far from clean.

Conclusion

The honest conclusion is the uncomfortable one for partisans on both sides: Bitcoin mining is neither an environmental disaster nor a green miracle. It is a flexible, mobile energy consumer that can be genuinely useful for monetising wasted energy and supporting grids, and that can also draw on dirty energy where that happens to be cheapest. The outcome depends on choices, incentives, and policy rather than on the technology being inherently clean or dirty.

If you have only ever heard one side of this debate — whichever side that is — the goal of this post has been to hand you the other half, so that your view is an informed one. A week ago, many people held strong opinions on this topic while holding only half the picture. That was true on both sides.

You do not have to land anywhere in particular. "Undecided, but better informed" is a perfectly respectable place to be on a question this genuinely nuanced.

Stack wisdom, not just sats.

— BTC Skool