To be provably secure, it has to utilise 51% of matter-energy kinda like a black hole. If the energy consumption is figured out then it needs something else i.e. matter. I can't see a way out of this circle. Then there's the famous formula E=mc².
Could using non-computing devices solve this problem? Such as storage devices?
Of course, I know that there have been hard disk mining before, but in my opinion they were not successful. There seemed to be some loopholes in the design of the mining algorithm, which caused the storage capacity of the entire network to reach an unrealistic value.
maybe we can solve this problem
You want to adjust the fundamental laws of physics to suit you. The very definition of electric current, without which mining is impossible, implies the release of thermal energy. From own example, we know that we have gone from miniature USB block eruptors and VGA to “monstrous” ASICs. First there was scaling (increasing the number of transaction processing devices), and then combining the set into one device and reducing its size. Of course, we are faced with an increase in electrical energy and an increase in heat generation.
If we change the BTC algorithm, we can process transactions even on calculators and smart watches, but then we will face a threat to the existence of the blockchain itself. What is important is the speed of transaction processing (and of course decentralization), and not just the fact that such processing is possible.