“As an Engineer, I have known this for my entire professional career of 35 years.”
Best college course I took was thermodynamics. It was taught by a former astronaut. He had the class work through every idiot idea, all of which are still being pushed today. Even making wild assumptions about increases in efficiencies due to technology changes, none of the energy ideas made sense compared to oil, coal or natural gas. Even those technologies touting their cleanliness were not so clean when you took into consideration their entire lifecycle of dirt and destruction.
“Sustainability” is a scam.
The problem is often, the precise definition of “efficiency”.
Compared to what?
The classic study and example was heat pumps.
They’d state how “efficient” it was because they’d squeeze some heat out of whatever air was blowing by. But they were not measuring how much energy was going into even running the thing. Nor certainly, comparing how much genuine degrees were generated vs. something like a gas furnace.
The claims of “efficiency” by all these appliance standards and so on is largely the same smoke & mirrors.
I took two semesters of thermo getting my Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering in the mid-70’s. At that time, wind and solar were going to save of the world. Our professor had us go through the same drill in class with the same results you had.