There a lot of very large mining operations that cannot afford to scale down, and they won't sell their mined Bitcoin at a loss. If there are fewer transaction fees, this smaller amount of BTC would have to pay for all of the electricity that was used to mine a block.
Maybe everything would change if the mining operations started to run their own power plants that use free and renewable energy. They could buy some land next to a river and set up a hydroelectric power generator. That would just be a capital cost, and if you do it right, then it could cost very little to maintain. The operational cost would be maintenance, the internet bill, and fixing/replacing broken miners. Even if the mining doesn't work out, I've just been reading about some people who do this and sell excess power to their power company.