There are scenarios where a multi-party ledger can be useful in business... Think about a logistics chain where everybody needs to know that a record wasn't modified in retrospect.

But then you only need a mini-blockchain along the lines of what IBM calls blockchain, you may have a few industry players and say a customs agency agree to sign the entries and then there will be no dispute about whether an entry was signed on a particular day. Energy cost of that is negligible. (and you don't need to put the actual transaction info into the ledger... just the signature is enough so everyone on the chain can confirm later that it wasn't modified).

All of this is also pretty ancient tech by now... IBM just basically jumped on the blockchain branding bandwagon I'd say...