They really won't need to. With the transition to Proof of Stake, ETH isn't going to use any appreciable energy. Proof of Work is going to be an existential threat for Bitcoin.
While that's true in the long term for ETH I can still see room for somebody else in the nation-state-scale-crypto space until the change gets made, which I understand won't be for a year or two. And the smaller, more agile actors are preferentially positioned to profit, in my opinion.
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has issued an opinion saying settlements layers have to be public blockchains. So someone would need to stand up a nonprofit AND beat the first movers. AND beat a dedicated pack of self-motivated researchers who have been grappling with this problem for five years.
Unless things go awry after the London hardfork next month, the plan is all-hands-on-deck will be working on the Merge, which AFAIK is actually not as complex as it sounds. I expect February or March 2022, although it could be sooner. It is very likely to happen within the next year.