Put another way - each validated block helps secure every single transaction that came before it.
I'm not going to argue that the energy consumption is worth it (I don't think it's sustainable myself). I'm only pointing out that energy per transaction is a bad metric if you want to have an honest debate. It's much more complicated than that.
If you mean that the same amount of power would be used whether the blocks are full or empty, you are technically correct but in practice it's not relevant until blocks are consistently not full.
If transactions are critical for everyone, wouldn't that mean that keeping bitcoin mining alive is a fundamental part of transactions?
We could argue that fiat keeps databases running (if we ignore physical money) and bitcoin is keeping blocks mining active.
I don't think it is wrong to say megatwatts per transactions. We could ignore this completly and say 'the baseload of just keeping btc running is x megawatts per hour' and that would just ring the same bells.
I'm pondering if we could also say something like "btc itself as a cryptosystem motivates actors to consume megawatts per hour due to the interest in btc and the current fiat<>btc exchange value"?
Two glaring gaps in that concept...
First, energy use is not tied to transactions. An empty block uses the same amount as a full block.
And second, the transaction count we’re discussing is the count of settled base layer transactions. This doesn’t include the majority of transactions of value: those that occur off chain or through second layer transactions. An infinite amount of off chain and L2 transactions only need a single on chain transaction to settle.