Transcoding is only guaranteed for twitch partners, and the cdn doesn't actually distribute the video to a given datacenter until at least one viewer using that datacenter requests it.

ya but 99% of streamers have their stream up in their dashboard or on a side monitor, so its always going to be sending and transcoding something

Twitch can forward the stream as is without transcoding it. That's what transcoding not being guaranteed means. It will be a worse experience for viewers but it can work. Few years ago they even announced working with OBS on feature where streamers themselves can transcode and send multiple streams further reducing need for twitch to spend their compute resources on unprofitable streamers.

That feature exists by now, called "Enhanced Broadcasting".

In addition to the other reply, forwarding to one region in the cdn is not the same as forwarding to every region.

Maybe they just don’t do that if you don’t have any streamers.