A new study suggests that Bitcoin has already used more power so far this year than it did in all of 2022.

By the end of the year, the Bitcoin network will accept consumed 91 terawatt-hours (TWh), and it has already consumed more than the estimated 67 TWh for all of 2022, co-ordinate to a Monday Bloomberg study.

The precise energy consumption figures are variable and not piece of cake to calculate accurately, but the trend is clear — they are increasing. The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index currently estimates that Bitcoin is prepare to swallow an even greater 95.68 TWh by the end of the year. This is well-nigh the same as the power consumption of the Philippines.

A separate study past Scientific discipline Direct has highlighted another upshot — electronic waste matter. East-waste product generally refers to discarded computer equipment and electronics. The study suggests that one transaction on the Bitcoin network produces 272 grams of e-waste product, which mostly comprises old mining equipment.

It added that Bitcoin miners "cycle through a growing amount of short-lived hardware that could exacerbate the growth in global electronic waste," adding that its annual e-waste generation totaled 30.7 metric kilotons as of May 2022.

Projecting that through to the cease of the year, the study stated:

"Bitcoin could produce upwards to 64.4 metric kilotons [64,400 tons] of e-waste at top Bitcoin price levels seen in early 2022."

The e-waste matter per transaction is about half the weight of the latest iPad. Just to put that in context, Apple itself could be facing a massive eastward-waste problem with over i.65 billion devices running on the ecosystem as of last year according to CEO Tim Cook. This could result in every bit much every bit 250,000 metric tons of e-waste when they become obsolete co-ordinate to ZDNet.

Bitcoin accounts for around 0.11% of the estimated global total for e-waste in 2022, which is 57.4 million metric tons, according to Statista.

Related: Green Bitcoin: The touch and importance of energy utilisation for PoW

Bitcoin's energy usage is also small in context, depending on your perspective. As a percent of the total global electricity consumption, Bitcoin (BTC) mining accounts for just 0.43%. That'due south less than the estimated 104 TWh used by refrigerators in the The states lonely, co-ordinate to Cambridge Academy.

A more humorous viewpoint on Bitcoin's power consumption was taken by The Onion, which said that calculating power used for BTC mining is really saving humanity from destruction. The logic backside the sardonic premise is that freed from the demands of mining crypto, the world's computers would otherwise "well-nigh likely employ that computational power toward condign self-aware and, ultimately, exterminating the human race."

While Bitcoin mining does consume a mammoth corporeality of energy, always since the great miner migration out of China, more of it is renewable every bit new and relocated farms and factories come up online in the U.S. and Canada powered by dark-green energy.