How much energy is the wrong question, and hardly anyone has paused to ask why.

Traditional financial industry does not use stranded or otherwise underutilized energy sources. Bitcoin on the other hand.

What if a pacific island created a mining farm on thermal energy that doubled the energy consumption of the bitcoin network. Is that an environmental problem (except maybe the noise in that corner of the pacific..)? No. Does the network compete with other industry for that energy? No.