Contriving

First, as DeSilver puts it, this suggests the "growing girth" of US homes has wiped out basically all the savings from our hard-earned efficiency improvements. Not great news from, say, a climate change perspective.

Or there's a more optimistic gloss: All those efficiency gains have allowed us to own much bigger houses (and more stuff in those houses) without a corresponding explosion in energy use. It's a net boon for consumers, you might say.