> And then the article discusses that even if Jevons paradox doesn't hold, we'd reasonably expect more efficient energy use to lead to more energy consumption.

That's still the Jevons paradox.

> There isn't any reason to use less energy; if there are efficiency improvements then all else equal it makes the most sense to produce the same amount of energy and trade the excess into higher real living standards. Economies are good at sniffing that equilibrium out.

Massively wrong. Using more energy gives you sub-linear returns in value; you already got the lowest hanging fruit. For many uses you ramp up and use more power than before, but many uses you let your power bill drop.

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To put it differently, read your own article. Right at the top it says "if demand is sufficiently price elastic".

Demand is often not sufficiently price elastic.

And then as you get through the article you get down to the section on the Khazzoom–Brookes postulate where start getting observations out of the academy that energy use goes up on efficiency increases even if Jevons' paradox doesn't trigger, and the section on energy conservation policy where the situation gets muddy but there isn't any reason to believe that improving energy efficiency would lead to lower energy use.

There is no way that the dropping per capita energy efficiency in the UK is being driven by efficiency gains, there is no theoretical reason to expect the two to pair up in the first place and it is clearly an energy squeeze when you look at the situation in context of the political and other real economic indicators. If the UK could drop 33% of its electricity use while maintaining a healthy economy that'd be a miracle on par if not exceeding what China managed in the last 50 years. That is simply not the situation, nobody seems to be talking about the vast improvements to QoL being driven by their vast surplus that has theoretically developed in the efficiency scenario [0]. Any industry that needs electricity is considering leaving. As I learned in this comments section the UKians are literally rioting in the streets which is, sadly, not a surprise given their energy statistics and the head-in-sand strategy that seems to go hand in hand.

[0] I also feel great temptation to allege that people in the UK have been forced into straits so dire that they subsist on a diet of lightbulbs, but my will is strong.