Oh, I know Monero uses proof of work and therefore uses power. However, my thought is that Monero can replace the banks and so you’ve got to consider how much power it takes to run bank buildings and bank employees cars and armored trucks etc. Also, since Monero is mined with CPUs instead of application-specific integrated circuits, you don’t get a bunch of miners in one place. They are much more distributed throughout the entire power grid. So like we don’t have giant mining farms located in Texas that is causing noise pollution to the nearby towns and stuff like that. We also don’t have big mining companies causing drama in the news.

Edit: Proof of work is truly required because it literally backs the value of your currency with energy. And proof of stake has no physical backing.