No Bitcoin does not need to change its power consumption ways. It literally incentivises the build out of renewable energy. It will fix itself in time.
As a counterpoint: A recent study from Cambridge [0] estimates most of Bitcoins energy consumption still to be from fossil fuels.
[0] https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/insight/2022/a-deep-dive-into-bitc...
Looks to me like GHG emissions are going down this year, from that report. I would expect that to continue going forward as more miners are deployed on top of cheap electricity sources :)
Perhaps miners have an advantage over a city in that they can move or disable mining rigs in times when renewables are scarce. But from what I understand Asics are expensive, and running them is big business. Which probably means they will continue running while it is financially feasible, even when a nearby dam runs dry or there is not enough wind or solar to go about.
When there's a constant energy source like a flare, it must be used in realtime.
Too much energy is even a problem for the grid (see negative electricity prices that have occurred in, e.g. China).
The only alternative is batteries, which are expensive and have their own problems.
May as well use that energy for securing a neutral public utility financial network/money system.
By the way, check out how much energy the traditional financial systems use:
- Data centers - Trucks/logistics - Security - Military (to secure national currencies such as USD) - etc.
To be honest I know too little about mining costs to dispute this. The Cambridge article about BTC mining using mostly fossils supports my point though. Having said that, I hope you guys are right in Bitcoin mining making energy greener.
Bitcoin mining has a whole host of pretty cool properties that help stabilize the grid as well. Here's a two part article about it: https://braiins.com/blog/bitcoin-mining-the-grid-generators