The world bloats storage by 50% which harm user experience and ecology. That's a lot of regress while all it take is one symbolic dollar for a lifetime license..
H.265 isn't interested in being royalty-free. But, luckily, AV1 is very interested in being royalty-free. So this time around we don't need to repeat the mistakes and compromises of the past.
Look at LED lighting, it's more energy efficient, so now we deploy more of it, ending up using exactly as much energy as before (but now everything is well lit).
The same with video codecs, as they get better, we generate more video.
Though with LED lighting, it really depends. I still am using far less power for all of my lighting vs 1 incandescent light bulb. I am thinking specifically of the room/desk lamp of my childhood. Though I haven't counted the blinkenlights on my router, switch, etc. Maybe all of those added up will tip the balance.
No way those total over a watt.
For last, say, 25 years I've seen many parties trying to hamper that, even in non-commercial setting (e.g. the original mp3 format encoder). If they don't, good!
These closed formats are typically patent protected, not kept secret through proprietary encoding/decoding software. As you probably know: (1) Those patents will eventually expire, (2) The price of a patent is immediate and complete disclosure of the technical method underpinning the claims.