Hardware energy efficiency is, but software has been getting less efficient for decades, at least on average.
Idle power usage is what matters.
The 15 seconds it takes to launch Discord and install updates isn't going to be driving the overall efficiency of your PC.
Not when Windows gets its grubby mitts on them. I will frequently hear the fans spin up on my Win10 laptop when it should be doing nothing, only to find the Windows Telemetry process or the Search Indexer using an entire fucking CPU core.