I've written a comment in a similar previous thread on why bitcoin / PoW's energy usage is different from other seemingly wasteful uses of energy. That was over

I've written a comment in a similar previous thread on why bitcoin / PoW's energy usage is different from other seemingly wasteful uses of energy. That was over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367100 Not to repeat it in full, but the short of it is that bitcoin's usage of energy is not for the amount of energy, but because it must expend a certain economic value of energy in order to keep the network secure. If energy becomes cheaper or more efficient, bitcoin must burn more. Bitcoin's energy usage has an adversarial relationship with efficiency. Practically every other use of energy does not have an adversarial relationship, and will accept the same total amount of cheaper energy to do the exact same work with no complaints. A helicopter will not require twice as much gas to fly the same distance if we happen to make gas twice as cheap. As a result, yes I think we should single out PoW.