Overview
- The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance’s mid-2026 audit estimates Ethereum’s annual electricity use at about 7.87 GWh and annual emissions at roughly 2.37 ktCO2e, a decline of more than 99.9% from its pre-Merge footprint.
- Researchers reached the figure by directly measuring power draw on roughly 8,522 discoverable full nodes and calculating a network-weighted average of about 105 watts per node across tested client and hardware combinations.
- Cambridge reports a continuous power demand near 0.90 MW and finds that 56.4% of the network’s electricity comes from sustainable sources, so the remaining emissions are driven mainly by local grid mixes.
- The audit shows geographic and hosting concentration: about 62% of counted nodes sit in the United States, Germany, Finland and France, and roughly 40% of nodes are hosted by Hetzner, AWS or OVH, creating structural resilience risks.
- When adjusted for market value, Ethereum ranks near the low end of major proof-of-stake networks in energy intensity, a shift that reduces a common ESG barrier to institutional adoption but leaves room for policy scrutiny and further technical changes to hardware needs.