Electricity Consumption and Environmental Impact Reduction Measures in Public Blockchain

Abstract

Public blockchains are increasing proof-of-work (PoW) workloads and consume more electricity because of the growing use of products, such as cryptocurrencies, security tokens, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Companies are increasingly required to visualize the electricity consumption of the products and services they use to plan and promote measures to reduce Scope 3 emissions to achieve green transformation. However, the electricity consumption of public blockchain-based products and services is not well known to practitioners, and progress in this area has been slow. This study elucidates the electricity consumption of major public blockchains and the share of renewable energy they consumed. In addition, it describes the problems inherent in the blockchain mining process, which is the main cause of this problem, and how to address them. This study also examines possible methods that could be adopted to reduce the environmental impact from the perspective of the public blockchain, miners, and users.