Ethereum’s entire global network now consumes less energy in a year than a single mid-sized museum. That’s the kind of stat that makes you do a double-take, but the numbers from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance back it up.
The network’s annual electricity consumption sits at approximately 7.87 GWh as of mid-2026, with associated carbon emissions of just 2.37 ktCO2e. For context, that’s less than half what the British Museum uses annually to keep its lights on and its ancient artifacts properly climate-controlled.
From country-sized to museum-sized
Before The Merge on September 15, 2022, Ethereum’s energy appetite was comparable to that of mid-sized countries. The network’s lifetime energy consumption from 2015 to 2022, its entire proof-of-work era, totaled about 58.26 TWh.
Then Ethereum switched from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. In English: it stopped requiring thousands of specialized computers to race each other solving math puzzles and instead let token holders validate transactions by putting their ETH up as collateral.
