[UncleMeat]

Energy is fungible. Unless those renewable-generated watts were unable to be used for other things, then all marginal use of energy uses emitting sources, since we are not yet at 100% green energy. There are a few exceptions where mining is done on grids that are at 100% green energy, but this is not the norm.

[throwaway19841]

Sure in theory. In reality not all energy is fungible because not all power generating systems in the world are connected. If I stand up a geo-thermal farm to run my crypto mining operation that power would not have been available to the grid anyway because the economic incentive to build the power station was crypto, not selling it to the grid.

[UncleMeat]

These cases exist, but they are not the dominant form of mining. If all mining was done in such circumstances (and the energy source couldn't be connected to a useful grid) then people wouldn't be as upset.