How would we know if that were too much? What if you were to describe the amount of energy consumed by the airline industry? Or all of the world's motorcycles? Would that be more or less than Denmark? And if it were more than Denmark's energy consumption, is that okay? Certainly more people benefit from the world's motorcycles or airplanes than just the population of Denmark, so why is that the reference? IMO including an arbitrary reference like some country's power consumption is the stuff of clickbait headlines, not useful discussion.
IMO a more constructive discussion point might be: "the power consumption required for Bitcoin's proof-of-work is 15x that of the power consumption of: { the equities markets + banking + US Treasury + EU Treasury }." The number I've cited is arbitrary, it could easily be 1/15 of that, for all I know. But normalizing the energy in terms of the related/baseline industry makes sense and would make for a clearer conversation on the topic.
IMO a more constructive discussion point might be: "the power consumption required for Bitcoin's proof-of-work is 15x that of the power consumption of: { the equities markets + banking + US Treasury + EU Treasury }." The number I've cited is arbitrary, it could easily be 1/15 of that, for all I know. But normalizing the energy in terms of the related/baseline industry makes sense and would make for a clearer conversation on the topic.