The one in the best position to supplant proof of work is called proof of stake.
It is still possible to reduce this huge energy consumption by adopting proof-of-stake algorithm where coin owners create blocks rather than miners instead of proof-of-work.
It's unlikely that you could convince Bitcoiners to fork to PoS.
But even if you could, this is a genuinely free market; some Bitcoiners would reject a proof-of-stake fork regardless of how convincing anyone's PoS rhetoric is. And because this is a market for cryptocurrencies, and because no PoS design has been shown to compete with PoW, we'd be right back where we are now really.