[bena]

The problem is that bitcoin is greedy.

Every 10 minutes, a new coin is minted. That coin is given to the person who solved the correct hash. The chances of being the correct hash is 1/n where n is the number of miners active.

So if I fire up a miner and I'm the only one, I get a coin every 10 minutes. Life is good. Now, if you want bitcoins as well, you can fire up your own miner. Now we'll both get a coin every 20 minutes. But I was making 6 coins an hour, now I'm making 3. My production is halved. That sucks. But. I can spin up another miner. Now I have 2 to your 1. I get a coin roughly every 15 minutes, you get a coin roughly every 30.

You see where this is going, right? More miners, more coins. And the only way to get value out of these coins is to sell each coin for more than electricity used for all of your miners.

So you're incentivized to not only use every available unit of electricity to mine, you are also incentivized to sell at exorbitant prices. Bitcoin will not switch us over to renewables. It will also use renewables if and when they become available. Bitcoin has also caused long dormant fossil fuel generators to come online again.