Most of the estimates of power consumption are problematic. Some are better than others but Alex de Vries's numbers are the most quoted and quite questionable.

Most of the estimates of power consumption are problematic. Some are better than others but Alex de Vries's numbers are the most quoted and quite questionable. The article you linked to refers to https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/8A1CECD1-157C-45D4-A1AB-B894E913737D https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/8A1CECD1-157C-4... which contains "An accepted method for deriving an estimate of the energy consumption of mining is to assume that all miners use the most energy efficient mining device available on the market.(3) Commercial devices are accompanied by published specifications listing the number of hashes that can be computed per second using the device, as well as the power consumption of the device in watts. It is then straightforward to calculate how much power is required to compute 50 billion billion hashes per second using the most energy efficient devices available. I performed such a calculation and obtained an estimate of around 5 gigawatts for Bitcoin mining alone today.(4) This is slightly under 1% of world electricity consumption, or slightly more than the electricity consumption of the state of Ohio or that of the state of New York." The footnotes in turn refer back to Alex de Vries. The numbers rely on the assumption that the majority of mining is using hardware with efficiency similar to the published specifications upon which they made their calculations. Given the nature of the rate of development and the immediate financial benefit to higher efficiency, it is likely that any published hash-per-joule number is obsolete by the time it is read. Nevertheless It can be accurately said that Bitcoin miners consume a _lot_ of power and as long as the value of Bitcoin increases at an average rate of about 20% per year, that consumption will stay high. On the other hand, you shouldn't expect Bitcoin to increase in value at 20% per year forever. In that respect the fix to the energy consumption problem is embedded within Bitcoin halving itself. Eventually the value will not be increasing at a rate that will keep up with halving