Coins and Energy Consumption
Many coins require a lot of energy to mine. Bitcoin is highly intensive on electricity because the mining require a lot of computing power and thus electricity. It has been estimated that bitcoin already require the same amount of energy as a country such as Ireland.
Luckily there are some alternatives of coins that require less energy.
One of them is Burstcoin.
Proof of Capacity (PoC)
Burstcoin is coin that doesn't use the Proof of Work (PoW) concept such as bitcoin and most coins do.
Instead they have developed a quite unique Proof of Capacity concept. Instead of using computing power to secure transaction, hard drive space is used. Hard drive space is much more easily accessible and thus the network is much more decentralised. It also make mining with consumer hardware much more easy because it doesn't take all of your computing power to it would be possible to mine and still use a computer.
Another great benefit is that hard drives require much less energy than the energy intensive GPU mining for bitcoin or ethereum.
All in all a very interesting coin to keep a close eye on!