edit: checked out the whitepaper, its not even about the blockchain saving any energy itself. instead you save energy somewhere and record it on blockchain... for ... ?
Because the new system is completely unusable there was absolutely no legitimate purpose to start this lockup at this time as a public system rather than just some fake-money test network.
Once (if?) it becomes usable it will have the additional ultimate property of further enriching the beneficiaries of Ethereum's 72 million coin pre-mine, since those super large positions are effectively illiquid (can't sell more than a small share without crashing the price), its low risk for those parties to place large amounts in lockup.
The concept of "proof of stake" has fundamental soundness problems which have not been addressed except by obscuring it with deceptive obfuscation and protecting it against peer review through sheer complexity. https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf
Its not hard to understand: "if X has green and non-green options, and you choose non-green, that doesn't mean you can claim X is non-green."
Solana is clearly BFT, unlike what Emin claims.
To be fair, I don't expect Solana to be as centralised as other chains only for the reason that you need a gaming rig to run a consensus node. Solana is not centralised for the reasons you mention.