…the current global power consumption for the servers that run bitcoin’s software is a minimum of 2.55 gigawatts (GW), which amounts to energy consumption of 22 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year—almost the same as Ireland. Google, by comparison, used 5.7 TWh worldwide in 2015.
If the cryptocurrency were to stay at its recent price of $8,000, power usage of the bitcoin network would peak at 7.67 gigawatts (67 terrawatt hours of energy on an annual basis, or one-fifth of Britain’s energy use).