The Minister of Economy Natia Turnava said at the parliamentary hearing that 2% of the electricity was consumed by companies engaged in cryptocurrency mining in 2020.
"According to 2020 data, 2% of our total electricity consumption accounts for the mining companies," Turnava said. The electricity volume consumed by mining companies was down in the previous year comparing to 2019.
According to ESCO, Bitfury bought the largest volume of electricity for mining in 2020. The data center consumed electricity of 132 million kWh.
Official figures show that other big data centers, including BlockPower, ITLabs and GeoMaintenance have not actually purchased electricity from the direct market. However, the total consumption of data centers registered as direct consumers amounted to 132 million kWh, which was 1.08% of the total electricity consumption in 2020.
In addition, small companies are also involved in the mining and they are not registered as direct consumers of the electricity market. Those companies consumed electricity of 100 million kWh last year.
However, mining companies bought electricity of 785.5 million kWh in 2019 and total consumption amounted to 6.15% of Georgian electricity consumption.
In 2019, Bitfury purchased electricity of 534.2 million kWh, BlockPower – 122 million kWh, ITLab – 73.5 million kWh and GeoMaintenance – 55.8 mgwt.
According to GNERC, due to the lack of meters and increased mining, "Energo Pro Georgia" suffers a loss of 13-14 million GEL per year.
