[CydeWeys]

> More electricity is being burned to do the same amount of work.

Not true at all. The total hash rate has gone up a factor of 10^11 since the early days of Bitcoin, but total electricity consumption certainly hasn't gone up by that much. Data here: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-ever.png

Most of that can be attributed to efficiency gains. More efficient miners are coming on the market all the time, and in any given year, the vast majority of increased hash rate can be explained by better hardware, not another 100-1000X in electricity consumption.

This latest hash rate increase is most likely caused by the release of the latest batch of mining hardware, see, e.g., Antminer: https://bitmaintech.com/productDetail.htm?pid=00020150827084...