Ethereum energy use drops 99.9% after The Merge

Ethereum’s electricity consumption now sits at about 7.87 GWh per year—a drop of more than 99.9% from its pre‑Merge proof‑of‑work level—silencing many ESG critics of the network’s carbon footprint [3].

Post‑Merge power profile

The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) measured Ethereum’s post‑Merge power draw at roughly 0.90 megawatts, compared with a pre‑Merge baseline of about 2.4 gigawatts. That translates to an annual demand of 7.87 GWh, less than half the British Museum’s 16.18 GWh yearly consumption, illustrating the scale of the reduction [3]. The audit, based on wall‑plug measurements from 20 client combinations and hosting data, found an average of 105 watts per node, with residential setups using as little as 18 watts.

Emissions and node geography

CCAF estimated Ethereum’s yearly emissions at 2.37 kilotonnes of CO₂e, representing a roughly 99.98% decline from the network’s final proof‑of‑work emissions level [3]. The report notes that 56.4% of the network’s electricity now comes from sustainable sources—39.4% renewables and 17.0% nuclear—while natural gas remains the largest single source at 27.7%. Geographically, the United States hosts 31% of full nodes, Germany 16%, Finland 8% and France 6%, together accounting for about 62% of the node ecosystem. Approximately 36% of nodes run on residential hardware, with the remaining 64% in cloud or enterprise data centers, the latter concentrated among providers such as Hetzner, AWS and OVH [3].

What to watch

• Monitor the share of renewable electricity in the node mix; a rise could further lower the network’s carbon intensity.
• Track any policy or regulatory developments that reference Ethereum’s post‑Merge emissions, especially in jurisdictions evaluating ESG compliance.
• Watch the upcoming node‑hosting reports for changes in the residential‑vs‑cloud split, which could shift the overall energy profile.

The near‑total reduction in energy use demonstrates that Ethereum’s shift to proof‑of‑stake has fundamentally altered its environmental impact, but the network’s carbon footprint now hinges on the local grid mix of the nodes that continue to run. Future sustainability will depend on where those nodes are located and how they are powered.