Why Solana's energy number changed, and why that's good news
If you’ve ever defended blockchain in a dinner-table argument, you’ve probably quoted it: a Solana transaction uses 0.00412 Wh, less energy than a Google search. It’s on slides, in threads, in articles. It’s also two years out of date.
The current figure, from the Solana Climate Dashboard, is 0.00878 Wh per transaction (as of 27 August 2026). Roughly double the number everyone still quotes.
So did Solana get dirtier? No. The measurement got better.
What actually changed
Solana’s energy accounting is done independently by the Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute (CCRI), which physically measures validator hardware in a lab in Munich, models the marginal cost of throughput, and applies a geographically weighted carbon-intensity profile based on where validators actually run.
Since the September 2024 report, CCRI revised its methodology: hardware e-waste is now accounted for, and validator power measurement was updated to reflect the network’s real machine mix. The network also changed: validator counts, hardware generations, and transaction volumes all moved.
The result is a bigger per-transaction number that describes reality more honestly.
The numbers that matter, dated and sourced
As of 2026-08-27, via Carbonara/CCRI:
- 0.00878 Wh of electricity per transaction
- 0.00278 g CO₂e emitted per transaction
- 7.08 GWh annualized network electricity, about the consumption of a few thousand households
- 2,264 tonnes CO₂e annualized network footprint
For scale: that per-transaction energy is still thousands of times smaller than legacy payment infrastructure per transaction, and the entire global network’s annual footprint is comparable to a few hundred round-trip transatlantic flights.
Why we’re publishing the bigger number
Because the alternative is worse. A community that quotes a stale, flattering figure eventually gets corrected in public, and loses the argument it should have won. The honest number is still an extraordinary story: a global settlement layer processing billions of transactions on the energy budget of a small town.
Under the EU’s MiCA regulation, sustainability indicators for crypto assets are now a disclosure requirement, not a marketing choice. Solana’s dashboard already publishes them. The ecosystem should get used to leading with measured numbers. They’re good enough to stand on their own.
Figures update daily at climate.solana.com. We date every number we publish, and update this page when the data moves.