It consumes less electricity.
Miners or delegates or validators or whatever will expend
resources only to the extent justified by transaction processing profit margin, which delegates in DPoS will also do. In fact DPoS may well have high profit margins because the number of delegates is fixed, making it a closed market.
So perhaps less electricity, but if so then more resources expended on something else (politics most likely).
(This assumes that the coin distribution phase of Bitcoin is over or insignificant, which must be done to meaningfully compare with DPoS since DPoS is incapable of distributing coins at all.)
Since I already argued that one can't mine with lower economies-of-scale without losing hash rate share over time
I don't agree
with your argument that your argument is conclusive. You need to show that economies of scale are net positive
at the economically relevant scale, which depends greatly on many undetermined factors.
The number of delegates won't be fixed.. Hence why I posted about the n delegate model and how it prevents top down corrupt entities from retaining control within the voting framework. N is determined dynamically in the same way. I believe min is 101 and there is a max number that isn't outrageous.