It's hard to disentangle the rise of wealth in the world from increased consumption caused by cheaper energy. Certainly in the west capacity has become larger and...
> the link doesn't show that even that cherry-picked measure is falling
If you look again, they absolutely are.
Peak vs now in Mwh: US: 105 (2005) vs 97 Norway: 93 (2008) vs 78 Sweden: 69 (2001) vs 57 Australia: 80 (2011) vs 55 Germany: 63 (2006) vs 59 France: 61 (2005) vs 54
I could manually do this for the rest, but I shouldn't need to. You can see it for yourself. Here's the chart as line graphs (this option isn't obvious in the UI)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/consumption-based-energy-...
The only outlier I see here, in terms of developed countries, is South Korea, but that's perhaps as the country is still unevenly developed. In terms of developing countries, we of course see the uptake of HVAC, refrigeration, vehicles and other automation appliances to match the living standards of the developing world. But crucially, developed countries are showing that at the highest living standards, energy consumption is coming down.