10GBase-T has high power draw because the original ICs that implemented it were old; modern nbaset transceivers consume much less power at 10gbit than they used

10GBase-T has high power draw because the original ICs that implemented it were old; modern nbaset transceivers consume much less power at 10gbit than they used to. The problem is mitigated to a great degree by economies of scale and being able to make new transciever ICs with new process nodes has good benefit. Unfortunately manufactures seem to be content to stall at the existing 2.5gbit skus, so there is not much incentive to produce power efficient 10gbase-t products; those markets are already served by SFP+ direct attach. For applications where power is actually a concern and bandwidth needs are not high, you can always simply run a lower rate. It's not necessary to completely kill the higher rates in hardware.