Quote from: aardvark15 on December 04, 2017, 09:20:31 PM

Im not a miner, but the energy costs are part of the miners costs along with the cost of their computers, other equipment, and their time. We as users pay fees to the miners for their costs. As the costs of energy rise, most likely the fees we pay will rise. At some point the fees could get so high that we send fewer transactions. We may end up only using Bitcoin as a store of value. If this happens, other more energy efficient altcoins will have to be used for every day functions like method of payment, etc.

That is not how the fee system works, so electricity costs and mining fees are not really related. Miners don't set the fees, we are the ones that set the fees. Miners simply give priority to transactions that are paying higher fees, so fees actually increase or decrease based on what the users are willing to pay to get their transactions through, and are not dependent on the costs that miners have in maintaining the network safe.

According to recent statistics, miners annualized global revenues are around $9bln, and their annualized global mining costs are just $1bln, so mining costs are not really a concern to them. Although the scenario you described should not really be a problem, the energy consumption related to mining should of course be addressed, and miners should try to use renewable sources of energy. Apparently a Tesla S owner, decided to use his car's supercharger to mine bitcoin. I don't think electric car owners should do this, because they will probably damage their car in the long run, but at least people are trying different approaches when it comes to mining, so I'm sure we will be just fine in the future, and we won't even need to change to POS like ethererum is planning.