Ben my apologies, I might have misinterpreted your point. The reason why solar makes such a big difference is that it is the only actually creative energy source, the only one we can use to fix all the damage we've done by use of energy extracted from the planet.
I agree with you many ecologists talk about circular economies and ecologies as if they are closed boxes, and it is tempting to think like this because so far we use money in a way that it is always envisioned as coming from a closed box of economic capital, but very few seem to have accepted that there is very valuable economic product being created using solar energy, and that has to add to economic capital, actually it is physically no longer a constant, it is a constantly expanding quantity, physically devaluing all capital by dilution.
Generation of hydrogen by electrolysis shows what can be done with it, we can generate that fuel at rates which are almost instant compared with how long it took nature to create fossil fuels, or even nuclear fuels. A domestic or community solar farm of modest capacity can generate a kg per 24 hrs. Imagine how much could be generated if all domestic and community solar was backed up by hydrogen, it would be enough to power all transportation even including aircraft. The tech to do it is all mature, all the hardware of all shapes and sizes are available on alibaba, I think the extent to which China is using it has to be heavily underestimated, maybe even by the Chinese govt, because they have the same conflict of interest as governments and elites everywhere, how do they allow enough of it to be used to fix the environment, whilst not empowering the people to create their own wealth?
Governments and elites need money to remain as something they can use as a weapon, to retain their hold on political power, and privilege. They lose control of it after it becomes for free yet still valuable, actually more valuable, since at last it finally would be representing energy put to creative use, instead of always energy put to destructive use, as it has to be, to be used as a weapon, and to make profit.
So the answer on how to store all the energy is by hydrogen, which would come with many beneficial side effects, use of it in transportation will filtrate and circulate both drinking water and air, and hydrogen also converts to human consumable food (See "Solein"), which would remove a lot of our burden from the conventional food chain, allowing that to recover.
Best of all, all of this activity will serve to reduce temperature. The more of it we could do the more positive multipliers apply, the benefits we would see. Creation leads to more creation whilst destruction leads to more destruction - we either get busy living, with mathematically positive energy, or stay busy dying, with mathematically negative energy.
We start using mathematically positive energy the instant we start issuing money on it, which means rewarding the use of it, (as opposed to the negative move of penalising for overuse of negative energy, or generation of carbon), we need to switch our mindset from one of imposing scarcity, to rewarding abundance, and creation.
See the issue relating to energy polarity now?