[qwertox]

Probably. The energy could have been available to any energy intensive industry, helping them if the resource is too scarce and eventually lowering production prices if it wasn't scarce. You notice it in Germany where energy has become very costly in the last couple of years, where it then makes more sense to limit production or even close all together.

[ericd]

My impression is that transmission capacity is often the limiting factor, so you can’t really think of eg solar energy as being fully fungible. At least in the US, there are frequently multi-year delays on solar deployments because the transmission capacity to where it could be reasonably used isn’t there. The interconnection queue is extremely long in many places.

As something that’s eminently portable, I think crypto mining might actually have a use in derisking building out solar deployments, as a sort of buyer of last resort.

It might be nice to have other very portable energy sinks to eat up temporarily cheap locally available electricity. I think this might be part of the dream of the hydrogen proponents.