Has blockchain outgrown its ESG stigma?
Source: The Star
Published on: 2026-10-18 23:31
FEW technologies have undergone a quieter environmental, social and governance (ESG) re-rating than blockchain. Not long ago, it ranked among the worst polluting digital sectors. Much of it has since moved on. The industry has not solved every ESG problem, but it has earned a second hearing. At the start of this decade, bitcoin alone burned through 143 TWh of electricity a year - more than most countries. Today, many leading blockchains consume less than 10 GWh annually (1 TWh = 1,000 GWh), marking a near-vertical collapse. The main reason is blockchain's consensus algorithm: When you change this, the energy bill changes drastically. Under the Proof-of-Work (PoW) model used by bitcoin, miners compete to approve a block of transactions through sheer computing brute force. Newer ones such as Proof-of-Stake (PoS), by contrast, assign this task to nodes that commit tokens as a stake. Et...
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