Surprising facts about energy consumption in PoW@BTC

I read 3 lucid articles in the last 24 hrs which repudiates in great length the general impression that PoW miners are using up gargantuan amounts of electricity. And consequently, these miners are depriving the world of energy and/or are the antithesis of ESG.

TLDR: 1) Biggest expense for miners is their energy bill.

2) They are literally lift-and-shift industry and co-locate to where they can find the cheapest electricity.

3) Their superpowers of a combination of extreme electricity price sensitivity along with easily accommodative of downtime makes them great "balance" customers. This is because they can be supplied energy that would otherwise be wasted ( at times of low demand and prices or just because that energy cant be sent to the grid ) and can be disconnected at times of demand and price surge.

Crypto, especially BTC has a bad rep as using up a massive amount of electricity that could ( theoretically) be used for the betterment of the world.

Put together these 3 articles show that BTC mining actually consumes less than 0.1% of actual-world energy usage and consumes less than most other random industries or even our daily work. E.g. using the July 21 Cambridge Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, BTC's CO2 emissions are comparable to domestic tumble dryers and significantly less than other mining e.g. copper/Zinc/Gold.

The cheapest source of energy is often one that is too costly to send to the grid and is hence wasted e.g. Natural Gas flares or is the one for which there is no immediate demand ( and hence will also be wasted ). Combined with the fact that miners move to wherever they can find the cheapest source of energy, they tend to use these kinds of energy sources that would otherwise have been lost to the world anyways.

Further with the biggest US Miners ( MARA/HUT ) apparently, in talks with Utilities to co-locate with them (the idea being to consume their surplus energy during normal electricity demand and disconnect during surge demands), this should make them good for the Utilities and the grid resiliency.

If you have the time ( a bit lengthy reads ) and interest, I would strongly recommend these articles. In fact, I also saw the 2nd one referenced in one of the posts from Kyle Downey

https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/bitcoin-mining-fits-texas-energy-grid