Bitcoin uses about 0.5% of the world’s electricity, more than half of it from sustainable sources, and modern Bitcoin miners do the same work on a tenth of the energy.
Bitcoin energy consumption is one of the most argued-about numbers in technology. Critics call it wasteful, fans call it green, and both sides tend to quote whichever figure suits them. This article does something simpler: it takes the best independent data, mainly from the University of Cambridge and the International Energy Agency (IEA), and explains what it means in plain words. The headline: Cambridge estimates that Bitcoin uses about 138 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity a year, roughly 0.5% of global consumption. One TWh is a billion kilowatt-hours, the unit on a household power bill.
We are not a neutral observer. OneMiners sells Bitcoin miners and runs hosting sites in several countries, so electricity is our single biggest cost and the main driver of mining profitability. That gives us a practical reason to care about efficiency and clean power, and also a reason to be honest: greenwashing helps nobody. Here are the real numbers, the real progress, and the real trade-offs.
Key takeaways (October 2026)
- Cambridge’s April 2025 industry report put Bitcoin’s electricity use at about 138 TWh a year, roughly 0.5% of the global total.
- 52.4% of mining electricity came from sustainable sources: 42.6% renewables and 9.8% nuclear. Natural gas was the largest single source at 38.2%.
- Data centres worldwide used about 415 TWh in 2024 (IEA), around three times Bitcoin’s estimate, and are set to more than double by 2030.
- Bitcoin miners are about ten times more efficient than a decade ago: 98 J/TH for the Antminer S9 versus 9.5 J/TH for the S23 Hyd.
- Mining is a flexible load: it can power down within minutes, which grid operators such as Texas’s ERCOT now use to balance supply and demand.
How much energy does Bitcoin use in 2026?
Bitcoin uses electricity because of mining. Specialised computers called Bitcoin miners compete to add the next block of transactions to the shared ledger, and that competition is what makes the record expensive to attack. Today the network performs about 970 EH/s, or 970 billion billion guesses per second, and every guess costs a tiny amount of energy.
The most widely cited estimates come from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF). Its Digital Mining Industry Report, published on 29 April 2025 and based on a survey of 49 mining firms operating in 23 countries, estimated annual consumption at about 138 TWh, around 0.5% of the world’s electricity, with emissions of about 39.8 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. Cambridge also runs the live Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), which models power use from hashrate and hardware efficiency. Network hashrate has kept rising since that survey, so today’s figure is likely higher, and different models land on different numbers. A fair reading: Bitcoin uses well over 100 TWh a year, around half a percent of global electricity.
Bitcoin energy consumption compared with data centres
Context matters more than the raw number. The IEA’s Energy and AI report, published in April 2025, found that data centres worldwide used about 415 TWh in 2024, or roughly 1.5% of global electricity, and projected that this would more than double to around 945 TWh by 2030, driven largely by artificial intelligence. On those figures, Bitcoin uses roughly one third as much electricity as the world’s data centres today.
None of that makes Bitcoin’s footprint small. Half a percent of world electricity is a real amount of power, and it deserves scrutiny. But it is also not the outlier it is sometimes painted as. The more useful questions are how efficiently that energy is used, where it comes from, and whether mining can do something useful for the grid. Those are the questions the rest of this article answers.
Bitcoin mining efficiency: J/TH has fallen about tenfold
The key measure of a Bitcoin miner is efficiency in joules per terahash (J/TH): how much energy it uses for each trillion guesses. Lower is better. The Antminer S9, the workhorse of the late 2010s, was rated by its maker Bitmain at about 98 J/TH. Today’s Antminer S23 Hyd is rated at 9.5 J/TH, and the air-cooled Antminer S23 at 11.0 J/TH. That is roughly a tenfold gain in work done per unit of electricity.
To see why that matters, run a simple thought experiment. Doing today’s 970 EH/s of work entirely on S9-era hardware would need about 95 gigawatts of power around the clock. Doing it entirely on S23 Hyd hardware would need about 9.2 gigawatts. The real network is a mix of old and new Bitcoin miners, but economics push it steadily towards the efficient end, because older models stop covering their power bill. The table below shows how efficiency has improved by generation, and how much power each one needs to produce one petahash per second (PH/s), which is 1,000 TH/s.
Where does Bitcoin’s electricity come from?
According to the same Cambridge report, 52.4% of the electricity used by surveyed miners came from sustainable sources, made up of 42.6% renewables such as hydropower and wind, and 9.8% nuclear. That is up from Cambridge’s 2022 estimate of 37.6%. The biggest single change was coal falling from 36.6% in 2022 to 8.9%, while natural gas rose from 25.0% to 38.2% and became the largest single source.
The balanced view: more than half sustainable is real progress, and the shift away from coal matters for emissions. But almost half of mining power still comes from fossil fuels, and a survey of 49 firms cannot capture every operator. Anyone claiming Bitcoin is fully green is overselling, and anyone claiming it runs on coal is quoting old data.
Stranded and flared gas: turning waste into work
Oil fields often produce natural gas with no pipeline to carry it away. Operators frequently burn it off in a flare, wasting the energy. The World Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Tracker, published on 23 June 2026, found that flaring rose for a third year in a row to about 167 billion cubic metres in 2025, the highest level since 2019, producing around 429 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, including about 50 million tonnes from methane that flares fail to burn.
Bitcoin miners can be trucked to the well site and run on generators fuelled by that gas. Because mining needs no customers nearby, only a power source and an internet link, it can use energy that would otherwise go to waste, and a generator can burn the gas more completely than an open flare. This is a useful niche, not a cure: it uses a small share of flared gas and still produces emissions. It is, however, a practical example of mining using energy nobody else can reach.
How Bitcoin mining helps balance power grids
Most large power users cannot switch off on demand: a hospital or a factory needs electricity when it needs it. Bitcoin miners can stop within minutes and restart later with no lasting harm. That makes them a flexible load that grid operators can call on when demand spikes. In Texas, the grid operator ERCOT has run a programme for large flexible loads since 2022, under which crypto mines and other big users agree to cut consumption during periods of high demand.
The best-known example came in August 2023. During a Texas heatwave, Riot Platforms curtailed its mining operations and, according to the company’s own production report, earned about $31.7 million in power credits, including around $7.4 million from ERCOT’s demand response programme. Freeing that power for homes and businesses at peak demand is a real service. In regions with lots of wind and solar, the same flexibility lets miners soak up surplus power when it would otherwise be curtailed.
Hydro-powered mining: the OneMiners approach
Hydropower is the cleanest steady source a miner can plug into, and much of our network is built around it. OneMiners hosting locations include Ethiopia (hydro), Norway (100% hydro), Paraguay (hydropower from the Itaipu dam), Canada (hydro) and Brazil (hydro), alongside sites in Nigeria, Dubai, Texas and Georgia, USA, across 15 locations in total. Our rates start from $0.048 per kWh at our Nigeria site, and hosted miners carry a 7-year warranty that covers defects, not normal wear.
Our verdict on Bitcoin energy consumption: it is large but not extreme, it is getting cleaner, and the hardware is getting far more efficient. For anyone mining, the practical lesson is the same as the environmental one. Choose an efficient Bitcoin miner, such as the Antminer S23 at 11.0 J/TH, put it on cheap and preferably renewable power, and check the numbers with a profitability calculator at today’s bitcoin price of about $85,700 before you buy.
Frequently asked questions
How much energy does Bitcoin use in 2026?
Cambridge’s most recent industry report estimated about 138 TWh a year, roughly 0.5% of global electricity. Hashrate has grown since, so the current figure is likely somewhat higher.
Does Bitcoin use more electricity than data centres?
No. The IEA estimated global data centres used about 415 TWh in 2024, roughly three times Cambridge’s estimate for Bitcoin.
Is Bitcoin mining mostly renewable?
Just over half. Cambridge found 52.4% sustainable energy (42.6% renewables plus 9.8% nuclear), while natural gas was the largest single source at 38.2%.
Are Bitcoin miners getting more efficient?
Yes. Efficiency has improved about tenfold, from around 98 J/TH for the Antminer S9 to 9.5 J/TH for the Antminer S23 Hyd.
Can Bitcoin mining help the power grid?
It can. Miners can switch off within minutes during demand peaks, and in Texas they take part in ERCOT programmes for large flexible loads.
Mine on cleaner, cheaper power: explore efficient Bitcoin miners and hydro hosting at OneMiners.
This article is for information only and is not financial, legal or tax advice. Bitcoin mining involves risk, and figures such as Bitcoin’s price, network difficulty, electricity costs and energy-mix estimates change constantly. Data as of 5 October 2026.
