A lot of the energy consumption argument against bitcoin stems from this study [1]. Some have pointed out flaws in the study that over inflate the consumption numbers. This has sparked various indexes that have tried to measure the consumption in an unbiased way [2].

Additional studies [3] have shown that 39% of bitcoin miners are using renewables.

The energy consumption argument has led some to investigate the energy consumption of other assets such as gold with some estimating the energy requirements for gold to be 50x that of mining bitcoin [4].

Whenever energy consumption of other assets are pointed out to be higher than bitcoin the debate then shifts to utility; e.g it’s ok if Y consumes X energy because Y provides Z to society.

Some bitcoin miners are finding interesting way to utilize the heat produced by their mining equipment [5]. And some say that bitcoin mining can help reduce the cost of producing new green energy infrastructure since excess power that would’ve been wasted could be used for bitcoin mining to offset costs.

I agree with you that it is tough to find unbiased info on the subject.

- [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328581842_Bitcoin_e...

- [2] https://cbeci.org/

- [3] https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2021-cc...

- [4] https://simon.medium.com/bitcoin-and-pollution-the-definitiv...

- [5] https://braiins.com/blog/green-innovation-in-bitcoin-mining-...