Compared to that, I'm not aware that the Swift Network or Visa/Mastercard would run whole power plants to support their energy needs. They just need a medium sized data center to support hundreds of millions of payments a day.
People, offices and everything related requires power and physical location too.
The problem was the original poster in this thread setting up the strawman that bitcoin is for every single transaction (or even a decent fraction of them).
But to answer your direct question: because the security and processing of it's transactions depends on the security of a nation state. That nation state's security stems from the military among other things. The energy expenditure is enormous and the influence of the nation state's desires on what transactions are processed is an everyday factor. This is obvious in watching the Justice Dept. interact with the major credit card companies.
https://www.reddit.com/r/buttcoin contains good reading
And the good it brings to the world in being a non-nation state controlled currency is obvious. From enabling continuation of money transfer in failing or restrictive governments to allowing for capital exchange between individuals directly without rent seeking or censorship it provides good every day.