It's indeed something to be concerned of. Any research and development may need to try and find out how to make it less energy consuming to mine bitcoin. It will be in demand after all, nobody want outrageous transaction fees. Me personally I would like to see this worked on really quickly so we can be sure that we aren't in for a crazy ride.
If the issue with the absurd transaction fees are not fixed any time from now, i doubt that people are going to keep patronizing bitcoins as we do now, I will not be surprised if we start paying $100 as transactions fees because of the greed of some miners.