I hoped the one liner was enough to illustrate my point. Here is it explained: Pretty much everything electric has become more efficient during the last say 10

I hoped the one liner was enough to illustrate my point. Here is it explained: Pretty much everything electric has become more efficient during the last say 10-15 years: powerful LEDs instead of early LEDs or even CCFLs, more efficient motors in vehicles (in some models engines and wheels being the same thing for instance), bigger integration in chips bringing to more computing power per watt and less wasted power etc. So in theory (in theory) keeping the work demand steady, we should have had less demand for energy, which of course can't be the case because of continuous development in many fields (which indeed is a good thing), so an increase in energy demand would be always expected and normal. But why 3-4 years ago we weren't talking about it with this urgency and suddenly we have such a spike in demand now, especially now when, due to the pandemic, some industries still run at reduced pace? (chip shortage anyone?) What changed in the last 3-4 years? For what I can see in my absolutely insufficient experience and knowledge (and hoping to be proven wrong), two things became widespread: AI and cryptocurrecies, and both require some serious computing power. AI, however, is still confined in research labs or at some specific companies or few experimenters while the cryptocurrency trend is absolutely booming, with everyone and their horse wanting to set up their mining farm to make money. Just look at what the market offers: https://m.bitmain.com/ https://m.bitmain.com/ Look at the power consumption of these things, and keep in mind that they're intended to be kept on 24/7, in the thousands at each mining farm, and mining farms are sprouting pretty much everywhere. Again, look at the power consumption and multiply it by the thousands, then again by the thousands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9J0NdV0u9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9J0NdV0u9k https://hothardware.com/news/a-look-inside-a-massive-rtx-3070-mining-farm-may-trigger-you https://hothardware.com/news/a-look-inside-a-massive-rtx-307... https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/future-fintech-signs-agreement-to-build-cryptocurrency-mining-farm-in-the-us-301447134.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/future-fintech-sign... Some are also set up illegally, where the energy costs are still low. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/12/22/bitcoin-miners-exploiting-cheap-electricity-siberian-cryptocurrency/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/12/22/bitcoin-mi... And some also by clueless people who set up less efficient used ones snatched off Ebay and kept on 24/7 where they think they can waste electricity. Old cryptomining hardware prices in fact drop very fast for being less and less efficient with time wrt value produced, but their energy demand has been always the same. https://www.minerupdate.com/news/trending-news/antminer-s9-drops-91-in-value-in-a-little-over-a-year https://www.minerupdate.com/news/trending-news/antminer-s9-d... https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?&_nkw=antminer https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?&_nkw=antminer Keep in mind that mining becomes harder and harder with time, so the demand for more and more energy and resources allocated to this field isn't going away anytime soon. It simply is never going to stop. That's what happened during the last 3-4 years, and the solution to the energy shortage isn't to produce more but to waste less. And extremely strong regulation, or complete banning if not possible otherwise, of cryptocurrencies is the only way to achieve that in my very humble opinion. I don't care at all about downvotes, but please accompany them with solid arguments that prove me wrong, if there's any.