That's a misconception based on flawed logic. Power consumption is a total non issue. They can put 32 full cores and it wouldn't change a thing. I have no idea why people keep propagating this idea, it's a bunch of horse manure. You do realize cpu's have power limits? You can dictate exactly how much power you want them to consume. So they can have a 32 full power cored CPU drawing 100 watts if they want to. I mean, it's the exact same thing AMD is doing. The 5950x has more cores than the 5800x, but these cores run at a lower frequency to stay within the TDP. It's not magic, it's common sense. I mean the existence of a 12900 non k @ 65w base TDP is proof of that.
They are not going full P cores cause they are worse for performance per die space. Basically, for the same size of a P core, they can extract more performance by using 4 E cores. It's as simple as that. In the future, when for example games start utilizing 12 cores, Intel will increase the P core count. But for now, there is no application out there that would run faster on a fully P cored CPU compared to a P + E core one.