Tons are mining alt coins with them. These stories never include the rather sizable market for alt-coins, almost all of which use the same energy-sucking design that bitcoin does.
I’ve never seen an article like this for the entire crypto space as a whole but I imagine it is much, much worse.
No, energy expenditure for bitcoin mining is larger than that of all altcoins combined. Despite the considerable technical innovations of some altcoins, bitcoin remains king in this world for now.
The energy consumption of the next closest altcoin is almost an order of magnitude less even with ASICs. After that, you'll find the security model of almost every altcoin to be total garbage (low energy consumption).