Banking consumes three times more energy than Bitcoin mining

According to Katrina Kelly-Pitou, the popular debate about whether the electricity consumption of the Bitcoin network is causing serious damage to our climate is not going in the right direction. Kelly-Pitou is a researcher in clean energy technology at the University of Pittsburgh.

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Citing recent studies, which suggest that Bitcoin dramatically increases electricity consumption on a global scale, Kelly-Pitou asserts that experts are not understanding some of the basic principles of renewable energy systems.

It indicates that the production of electricity can increase while having a minimal impact on the environment. He asserts that instead of focusing on the amount of energy Bitcoin uses, the discussion should focus on who is actually producing it and where its power comes from.

While not neglecting the substantial amount of electricity used for Bitcoin mining, it also notes that banking alone consumes "an estimated 100 terawatts."

This is a little more than three times the energy consumed by Bitcoin mining. She also makes an interesting claim, assuming a 100-fold increase in the current size of the Bitcoin market. Kelly-Pitou adds:

"If Bitcoin's technology matured more than 100 times its current market size, it would still equal 2 percent of all energy consumption."

According to Kelly-Pitou, the focus should not be on Bitcoin's network power consumption but on Bitcoin carbon production and how it could be reduced.

As recently reported through CryptoTendence in previous article, a study concludes that Bitcoin mining has an energy problem that could affect climate change due to the high energies used and the consequent problem of carbon emission into the atmosphere.

According to Kelly-Pitou, however, there is not enough information to support these types of claims. The same opinion is shared by Stanford professor Jonathan Koomey, who noted:

"For two decades, people have been eager to overestimate the use of electricity through information technology. My concern is that we just do not have the right data to arrive at the solid conclusions we are reaching.