NFT Energy Use | Project FUERZA

NFT Energy Use Info

Project FUERZA Energy Use Info

Let’s get the confusion out of the way, it’s not the actual NFT that uses energy. It is the transaction process associated with minting the NFT to the blockchain it will live on, which is known as proof-of-work (POW). And while the numbers may seem high, when you break it down and compare it to the energy we use every day, it puts things in a little bit of a different perspective. [8]

Let’s start with a little comparison, say for instance, motor vehicles. Cars were invented around 1886 and even in 1927, 41 years later cars were still only getting 7-8mpg. Now in 2022, as technology has slowly advanced in this area, we have fully gas-powered vehicles that can get around 40 mpg on the highway. Not a large increase to be honest in nearly 100 years of improvements. [2],[3],[4]

In 2009, Bitcoin was made available to the public, and now in 2022, 13 years later, Ethereum plans to cut 99% of its energy use by the end of the year. They plan to do this by changing the transaction process to what is called proof-of-stake. We wanted to make this comparison first to show you how fast this new technology is advancing. The carbon footprint of Ethereum was on everyone’s mind from the beginning and they have a plan and vision in place to reduce it. Now let’s look at some other comparisons of NFT transactions specifically Ethereum (ETH) to everyday life. [5],[6],[9],[10]

CHECK OUT Ethereum's plan to switch to Proof-of-Stake HERE!

Doing so will cut 99% of their energy use.

A Single Ethereum Transaction = 129.43 kWh = 72.19 kgCO2

There are over 1 million Ethereum (ETH) transactions a day. This includes buying, selling, and trading ETH, using ETH to buy and sell other items, and using ETH to buy, sell, and trade NFTs. Out of that million, there are currently on average only 2,300 NFT transactions per day. Or around 16,000 per week, that is as of writing this in June 2022 from nonfungible.com. [1], [6]

2,300 x 129.43kWh = 299,000kWh per day.

How does that compare with something you probably use every day?

YouTube Stats:

YouTube’s energy consumption is around 135kWh per 1000 views. It is estimated that there are 1.86 billion active users on YouTube, with 122+ million of them consuming more than a billion hours of video every day. From what The Fact Source put together in 2019, their math came out to 135kWh per 1000 views. This means that a single view is .135kWh. Multiplying that by 122 million users viewing one video a day, .135 x 122,000,000 and we get 16,470,000 kwh per day. Check out their article here where they breakdown the energy consumption from some of the most popular YouTube channels based on views. [14]

So, YouTube uses 55x (!) more energy PER DAY, than Ethereum NFT transactions.

YouTube 16,470,000kWh per day vs. ETH NFT Transactions 299,000kWh per day.[15]

Netflix:

In 2020 the International Energy Agency (IEA), reevaluated the numbers, and came up with one hour of Netflix streamed puts out about 0.08kWh [17]

It was reported back in 2009 that the total amount of Netflix hours watched PER DAY worldwide was 164 MILLION hours. [18]

Most recently it has been reported that their release of Stranger Things 4 has already been watched well over 1 BILLION hours in total. [19]

0.08kWh x 164 Million Hours Watched = 13,120,000kWh

0.08kWh x 1 Billion Hours Watched = 80,000,000kWh

On the low-end Netflix 13,120,000kWh PER DAY vs. ETH NFT Transactions 299,000kWh PER DAY!

Other Comparisons:

Air Conditioning and Heating: According to Direct Energy, the average central HVAC unit uses about 28-63kWh per day, resulting in 850-1,950 kWh per month, depending on the efficiency of your unit. 6% of ALL electricity in the United States is used by air conditioners. In 2020, the United States produced 4,007 billion kWh of electricity, which means that air conditioning systems alone used over 240 billion kWh of power, which accounts for roughly 117million metric tons of CO2 released into the air every year. [16]

Water Heating: The average household water heater will run about 3 hours a day using on average 13.5kWh per day, or 405kWh per month. [16]

If we compare these numbers to a single ETH NFT transaction, we see that at 129.43kWh per transaction is pretty miniscule compared to many of our everyday amenities.

References: