Also worth considering: Proof of Transfer consensus mechanisms like Stacks allow entire networks to run in paralleled with Bitcoin by piggybacking on Bitcoin's consensus mechanism. That's a whole big pile of transactions happening that go entirely unaccounted for by folks who just count the number of transactions in a block.
Re:The Ethereum merge is done
by kinakomochidayo on Sunday September 18, 2022 @11:12AM
(#32888191)
Looking at the Stacks block explorer, there’s very little activity on it.
No, because the energy consumption is the same regardless if a block contains zero or a thousand transactions. Therefore it is misleading to attribute mining energy as the "cost" of transactions. And Bitcoin doesn't operate at max capacity: its lightning network is very under-used at the moment.
As to the transaction fee, it is relevant: even though it was already "paid for", it is being redistributed to miners again, therefore drives energy consumption further up than if it was not being redistributed.