A CCAF report confirms Ethereum’s energy use dropped 99.98% after the Merge, but node centralization now poses the key institutional risk to examine.
Ethereum News: The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) published Ethereum After the Merge – A Change in Power in June 2026, examining the advances and effects that The Merge had on Ethereum’s network dynamics, confirming annual power demand collapsed from 2.4 GW to 7.87 GWh per year (~0.90 MW continuous) and CO₂ emissions fell from 10.3 MtCO₂e to 2.37 ktCO₂e, a 99.98% reduction achieved through a single architecture software change.
This is not simply a sustainability milestone. It is empirical confirmation that The Merge, Ethereum’s September 15, 2022 transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus, delivered one of the most dramatic reductions in energy consumption ever recorded for a major public blockchain, and one that repositions Ethereum materially within ESG screening frameworks used by institutional allocators.
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Ethereum News: ETH After The Merge, What the CCAF Report Found
CCAF’s methodology is based on a network-weighted average of 105 watts per node, producing figures the report presents as empirical rather than modeled projections.
The scale of the reduction is best read against real-world comparators the report provides. Pre-Merge Ethereum consumed energy comparable to Iceland’s national grid; post-Merge, the network’s footprint reaches half of what the British Museum needs, and is roughly equivalent to the energy the Eiffel Tower consumes annually.
Against the legacy banking system, which CCAF estimates at approximately 260 TWh/year across data centers, branches, and ATM infrastructure, Ethereum’s 7.87 GWh footprint is 4.5 orders of magnitude smaller, a ratio the report describes as “roughly 33,000 to one.”
Cambridge Report: Ethereum’s Annual Power Use Falls to 7.87 GWh After The Merge
According to a new report from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF), Ethereum consumes approximately 7.87 GWh of electricity annually following The Merge, a decline of more than 99.9%… pic.twitter.com/W2vWJW7BO8
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) July 10, 2026
On the carbon side, 2.37 ktCO₂e represents a 99.98% reduction from pre-Merge levels.
In the cross-chain comparison, post-Merge Ethereum sits below Solana (which registers over 13.4 GWh/year) in absolute consumption, but above NEAR (5.11 GWh/year). CCAF noted that “while Ethereum is one of the larger consumers in absolute terms, it is comparatively efficient relative to its economic weight.”
Node Infrastructure: The Risk Profile Has Shifted, Not Disappeared
The analytical question is no longer whether Ethereum’s energy consumption meets ESG thresholds; it does, by a wide margin. It is whether the node infrastructure sustaining that low-energy footprint is structurally sound enough to justify the institutional confidence the carbon numbers invite.
Secondary reporting on the CCAF audit flags a concentration problem that the emissions data obscures. According to reporting drawing on the CCAF findings, a significant share of full nodes is concentrated across a small number of countries, while a notable portion of audited nodes are hosted by a small group of cloud providers.
Ethereum whole energy footprint is less than famous landmarks such as the British Museum.
The result is 'Ethereum after the Merge – A Change in Power', out today from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Cambridge Judge Business School at Cambridge Judge Business School… pic.twitter.com/743UoBflQh
— James | Snapcrackle (@Snapcrackle) July 10, 2026
These dynamics, validator geography, and hosting choices represent the network’s primary infrastructure risk going forward, shifting focus from environmental impact to structural resilience.
That centralization risk sits alongside ongoing questions about developer funding sustainability, explored in a separate analysis of Ethereum developer funding. We suspect the CCAF report will accelerate Ethereum’s passage through ESG screens at institutional asset managers who previously flagged proof-of-work energy consumption as a barrier, but the centralization data gives risk committees a second line of due diligence to work through before treating those screens as cleared.
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