A new study from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance has placed Ethereum near the lower end of energy use among major proof-of-stake blockchains, even though its total electricity consumption remains higher than that of most networks in the comparison. The research estimated that Ethereum uses about 7.87 gigawatt-hours of electricity each year.
When the figures were adjusted for market value, Ethereum’s energy intensity came out at roughly 33 kilowatt-hours per $1 million. That was the second-lowest reading among the proof-of-stake networks Cambridge examined, with BNB Chain ranking lower. By contrast, Solana was estimated to consume about 13.48 gigawatt-hours annually and recorded an energy intensity of around 283 kilowatt-hours per $1 million, or about 8.5 times Ethereum’s level. The networks in the comparison together used about 38 gigawatt-hours.
How Cambridge estimated the footprint
According to the report, researchers measured the electricity used by Ethereum nodes at the wall across 20 combinations of the network’s main software clients. They estimated a typical home setup at about 18 watts and a more powerful workstation at around 153 watts, then used Ethereum’s mix of residential and professionally hosted nodes to arrive at an average draw of roughly 105 watts per node.
Cambridge said it identified about 8,522 discoverable full nodes, with 64% operating in cloud or enterprise facilities and 36% on residential connections. The study also found that Ethereum’s electricity supply is now shaped largely by the power grids serving those nodes, estimating that 56.4% of the network’s energy mix came from renewable and nuclear sources and 43.6% from fossil fuels. Ethereum’s switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake in the September 2022 Merge cut the network’s electricity use by more than 99.9%, according to the report.
Source: cointelegraph.com
