Oh, yeah, metamagic. Probably, it'll just be that you can apply metamagic feats for free until the modified spell level is the highest you can cast, metamagic reducers don't exist, and it doesn't take an additional action. It gives you something to do with all your lower level spells that you know, and even an evoker can find something more interesting to do with higher level spells known than taking blast after blast if they can just Twin a scorching ray every now and again or whatever.
Since Energy Bolt is based on caster level, anything that advances that advances it. It's by design, so that the class is multiclass-friendly and allows you to have a level-relevant ability at all time (even if you lose out on the nice things other than damage that get added).
