Crypto miners used the same amount of electricity as all of Australia last year

• Crypto miners around the world used as much electricity as all of Australia in 2023, the EIA found.
• In the US alone, crypto mining takes up 0.6% to 2.3% of the country's electricity demand — as much as states like Utah or West Virginia.

In 2023, crypto miners around the world used as much electricity as the entirety of Australia.

That's according to a new report from the Energy Information Administration. In an analysis posted last week, the EIA said global electricity use in cryptocurrency mining accounts for 0.2% to 0.9% of global electricity demand.

In the US alone, crypto mining takes up 0.6% to 2.3% of the country's electricity demand. That's about the same as the state of Utah or West Virginia.

"Mining" cryptocurrencies like bitcoin is essentially solving complex cryptographic puzzles to add new tokens to the blockchain. Those problems are solved on big, powerful computers — which explains why they gobble up a lot of electricity.

That the crypto industry uses a massive amount of power has been known for a while. In September last year, a New York Times analysis found that bitcoin mining uses 7 times as much energy as Google uses in a year — about 91 terawatt-hours. And it's received a lot of flak for it.

"As cryptocurrency mining has increased in the United States, concerns have grown about the energy-intensive nature of the business and its effects on the U.S. electric power industry," the EIA report stated. "Concerns expressed to EIA include strains to the electricity grid during periods of peak demand, the potential for higher electricity prices, as well as effects on energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions."

The crypto mining industry also seems to be growing at a rapid clip in the US. According to calculations by the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, the share of bitcoin mining taking place in the country rose from 3.4% in January 2020 to 37.8% in January 2022. There are a total of about 137 mining facilities across 21 states in the US, the EIA found, with most of them clustered in Texas, Georgia, and New York.

The US government seems to want to take a closer look at the industry's energy use. An emergency request from the EIA to collect data from commercial crypto miners was approved last week. The survey will require "identified" facilities to report details about their energy use.