If so, then as the price of bitcoin goes up, increasing the returns to mining, we would expect to see people generating energy for mining in whatever ways they can, with no view to green credentials.
It seems exciting because it could incentivise some beneficial behaviour given current market conditions, but it isn't obvious to me why it isn't just a transient phenomenon.
Separately, aren't batteries still preferable, at least in principle, as a form of managing excess supply, because they do not throw the energy away? If so, then supporting the price of bitcoin on the basis that it provides the social good of allowing us to have expanded energy infrastructure only works until battery technology is sufficiently advanced, at which point the price would crash (to the level supported by whatever other components make bitcoin valuable), correct?