Have you heard about mining pools? I think the future of PoW coins is huge payment commissions and payment pools which make the commission acceptable, this is what needed to make Satoshi's claim a reality.
I think I understand how a mining pool works. How would "huge payment commissions and payment pools" reduce the high PoW energy costs which the research claims? (I won't say the theory in the original post is correct. I am agnostic about that, as it's a hard equation to resolve)