Thank you for your response. I understand that you are trying to find the good in this, but your argument is based on this one big assumption: that we require additional incentives to make energy cheaper.

We really, really don't. There are literally millions of incentives for cheaper energy already. All of our food depends on cheap(er) energy: fertilizer production alone is a huge energy consumer, along with the processing machinery and transportation. Transportation and industry consume humongous amounts of energy. So do computing centers of Google, Amazon, etc, even without bitcoin. Each and every one of those fields has been looking at reducing energy costs for as long as they have existed, as part of normal, capitalist reduction of cost. The existence of Bitcoin is not going to create new, wonderous incentives to reduce energy cost. No more so, than the existence of cigarettes has accelerated the development of a cure for lung cancer: while we still don't have a cure, we have now made the use of cigarettes sufficiently difficult that the cancer rates are going back.

Though maybe this would be the solution to energy prices vs. Bitcoin as well: Globally ban proof of work algorithms as environmentally harmful -- and suddenly, a huge emount of energy will become available, and the prices will sink a little.