Mining Energy Consumption

Mining energy consumption refers to the electricity that proof-of-work networks use to secure themselves. That power cost is not accidental: it is precisely what makes rewriting history expensive, since an attacker would have to match it. In practice it means the price of electricity is the biggest factor in whether mining is profitable, and it pushes operations toward cheap, often surplus or stranded generation, and toward regions with low tariffs or demand-response programmes. Estimates of total network usage come from research groups and vary widely depending on assumptions about the mix of hardware and its efficiency, so figures should be read as ranges rather than exact numbers. Proof-of-stake avoids this cost by replacing computation with bonded capital.