Ethereum’s (ETH) energy footprint before the merger was as much as Switzerland’s annual use
Ethereum’s energy consumption from the blockchain’s inception in 2015 until it switched to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism late last year is roughly equivalent to that used by the whole of Switzerland in just one year, according to the University of Cambridge’s Center for Alternative Finance (CCAF ).
It is not only the Bitcoin network’s energy consumption that is a concern for the environmentally conscious. For example, artists exploring the craze for non-fungible token (NFT)-based collectibles have expressed their concern over the amount of power needed to mint works on Ethereum.
To this end, CCAF has cast its net wider and released the Cambridge Blockchain Network Sustainability Index (CBNSI), and with it an in-depth study of Ethereum’s electricity usage from a modern and historical perspective.
The transition to PoS reduced Ethereum’s consumption by over 99%. To illustrate the impact of the change, CCAF provided a comparison with the height of some famous buildings.
If, for example, Bitcoin’s energy use is represented by Kuala Lumpur’s Merdeka building, the second tallest in the world at around 678.9 meters (2,230 feet), Ethereum’s previous proof-of-work (PoW) mining consensus system would stand at the same level. the height of the London Eye, a 135 meter high observation wheel. As a PoS power consumer, Ethereum has shrunk to the size of a raspberry, according to CCAF.
As a not-for-profit institute, CCAF aims to provide public value, hence the creative approach to illustrating energy use, explained Alexander Neumüller, CCAF’s research leader for digital assets and energy consumption.
“If I go out on the street now and ask, ‘Hey, what’s 100 terawatt hours? What’s six gigawatt hours? people don’t know,'” Neumüller said in an interview with CoinDesk. “So we’ve tried to contextualize it in terms of images, especially with the buildings and of course the raspberry. This makes these quantities very clear without an understanding of energy notation.”
While Ethereum’s energy consumption is now orders of magnitude less than Bitcoin’s, CCAF is cautious about taking a view on which algorithm might be better or worse, Neumüller said. He told CoinDesk that in his opinion, proof of stake is not a perfect substitute for proof of work, and that many additional factors come into play.
“When you talk about PoW, for example, it’s very difficult to attack the network, even if you have extensive financial resources, because you actually need to buy and use hardware as well as access energy,” he said. “PoS is really more financially based. So if your main goal was to disrupt the network, it would just be a case of getting the native tokens.”
CCAF estimates that Ethereum will consume 6.56 GWh of electricity annually. To put that into perspective, the annual electricity consumption of the Eiffel Tower is 6.70 GWh, while keeping the lights on for a year at the British Museum requires 14.48 GWh.
Providing an estimate of Ethereum’s historical energy footprint is useful for projects that might want to start offsetting that debt, which happens to be a post-merger project underway at ConsenSys. This balancing process is being addressed by a group of Web3 firms now called the Ethereum Climate Platform.
“We decided to look back at the seven years of proof of work Ethereum,” ConsenSys head of partnerships Steven Haft said in an interview. “We looked at our so-called historical carbon debt to see what we could do to clean up our emissions over these past few years.”
