In November 2022, the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum published a Report about Proof-of-work (PoW) energy consumption in the EU. The report identifies a high-intensity group of Bitcoin-mining countries consisting of Germany and Ireland, noting that this can be at least partially attributed to foreign miners masking their IP location through virtual private networks (VPNs) and other tools. The group of medium-intensity countries consists of Italy, France, the Netherlands, Finland, Romania, Sweden, and Austria. Spain leads the group of low-intensity Bitcoin-mining countries. The report notes that, during 2020, Germany and Ireland’s percentages of energy consumption dedicated to Bitcoin mining are relatively low. Then, in 2021, these percentages tripled, with 30% of Germany’s and 35% of Ireland’s energy being consumed by Bitcoin mining. However, the report stresses that there is little evidence of enough mining operations in either country to justify such big numbers, which are more likely attributable to foreign miners with VPNs. With regard to the status of EU Member States in the mining industry, Sweden has one of Europe’s top three Bitcoin mining sectors, while Germany is active in mining, too. Furthermore, due to the cryptocurrency’s design focus on privacy, there is no clear indicator of how many new coins are created from which location. Finally, the report notes that mining pools differ substantially from mining facilities. Mining facilities can engage in proprietary or agent mining. In the former case, they use their own resources to generate PoW and benefit from the rewards of validating transactions. In the latter, they sell ‘mining as a service’ to customers in exchange for a fee. However, mining pools operate by bringing miners together to work on the same PoW. This means that they are not directly responsible for any energy consumption. As a result, the location of a mining pool operator does not provide any information on where the mining takes place, since pools can (and do) contain miners from all over the world.
