Bitcoin alone isn’t the driver.
Bitcoin is, however, consuming some of that new energy generation with a new consumption: Doing useless calculations to mine Bitcoin.
Bitcoin increases energy demand which also drives an increase in supply. We can’t take old power plants offline if the new hydro power is taken up by new mining operations.
It’s silly that we’re going to such lengths to try to respin Bitcoin’s absurd energy inefficiency.
The Bitcoin network is literally designed to incentivize, with payment, bringing new energy-inefficient operations online to “mine”.
The efficiency of the network gets worse and worse all the time, all while processing the same limited number of transactions.
Worse yet, Bitcoiners seem to like it this way. Proposals to increase block size have not been welcomed, and they go to great lengths to discourage switching to other protocols with better energy efficiency (because it would harm their investment).
The entire system revolves around inefficiency, and unfortunately we pay for that inefficiency with energy consumption.
That's exactly why the Bitcoin Cash fork happened.
Energy on earth is not a finite, limited resource. Fossil fuels are finite, but energy is not.
The earth is bombarded with more potential energy every day then we could ever spend, aka solar energy.
Yes, the Earth is bombarded with a lot of sunlight. So what? Doesn’t change the fact that Bitcoin is consuming existing electricity infrastructure that we could be using for something else.
What problems do you want to throw energy at that is economically viable?
:-o
Is this... a joke? Your claim is that production exists, regardless of demand?
That simply isn't the case.
They consume energy in the form of electricity during the day. At night, they have no need for it shut off the turbines. This is unused and uncaptured energy that could have been put to use. The potential energy is "wasted" because the infrastructure is underutilized, the energy could not be preserved. This is starting to change as battery technology improves and makes it economically feasible to store energy. Otherwise, energy consuming applications could consume this supply, providing return to the townspeople's investment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Control_Dam
And then most of the rest of the time, cheap, reliable power would get consumed by the grid.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight#Total_solar_irradianc...