A few things in their defense though - newer workstations like z230 from HP generate much less heat noise and have lower power consumption. They are not $200 cheap but they cost a lot less than a loaded MBP for sure - even more so when bought refurbished or on eBay.
These workstations can be put in sleep mode with Windows or Linux and they wake up pretty quick - saves you lot of power consumption by not needing to keep it always on. Wake on LAN is your friend.
Next everything is easily replaceable which is great for the environment as these have much longer lifespans than a glued-in laptop.
Lastly the performance is just much better than a thermally constrained laptop.
Yeah. There are workstations and workstations. Why would the original poster's single Haswell- or Skylake-based Core i7 CPU in his workstation waste more energy than a single Skylake-based Core i7 CPU on a new gaming machine? Also, his storage and GPU seemed quite modest, so I don't think his HP is more wasteful than a new gaming PC.
Of course, 28 cores and eight spinning hard drives is a different story.
These workstations can be put in sleep mode with Windows or Linux and they wake up pretty quick - saves you lot of power consumption by not needing to keep it always on. Wake on LAN is your friend.
Next everything is easily replaceable which is great for the environment as these have much longer lifespans than a glued-in laptop.
Lastly the performance is just much better than a thermally constrained laptop.