That really isn't how most grids work. There are large times where prices are now negative because of oversupply of renewables. Mining by it's nature has energ

That really isn't how most grids work. There are large times where prices are now negative because of oversupply of renewables. Mining by it's nature has energy as its largest input cost, so it chases lower and more efficient sources of energy which are largely renewable energy Further, good renewable sources are often poorly located for electricity distribution. You have situations where the power wouldn't otherwise be used, so it is being tapped into Bitcoin. Iceland has a pretty much infinite supply of clean energy with geothermal. They're not interconnected to the grid so previously they would export that energy via aluminum, today they can export it with bitcoin and other processing (colo compute) Georgia has also become a destination for bitcoin mining and it is largely hydro power The reports on what bitcoin's proportion of renewable sources vary very widely from ~75%[0] and ~25%[1] You can debate the methodologies of these estimates all day - but one thing to note is that the worst case estimates take an emissions factor which is average _for an entire country_ - while large scale mining operations (which account for the vast majority of mining) are often colocated in specific cheaper regions, usually around hydro/renewable power The only X factor is that a lot of energy for bitcoin is sourced corruptly. The Chinese are already some way towards resolving that (they have an incentive to!) and shut down the heavily subsidized dirty mining that was happening[2] My main takeaway is that the trends points to bitcoin eventually becoming a lot more efficient, and potentially can be used as a regulating mechanism on grids or as a way to export energy from renewable sources that aren't well interconnected [0] https://coinshares.com/research/bitcoin-mining-network-december-2019#mailmunch-pop-849406 https://coinshares.com/research/bitcoin-mining-network-decem... [1] https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30255-7 https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30255-7 [2] https://www.coindesk.com/bitmain-ebang-bitcoin-mining-energy-china-inner-mongolia https://www.coindesk.com/bitmain-ebang-bitcoin-mining-energy...