Glen if you read the original definition of the Kardashev scale carefully, you will see that it is all about the utilisation of solar energy.
Stage one, is where we utilise all of our human energy needs on Earth from solar.
This is a really important point, as to get things right, we need to correctly trace the path of energy, from its only source, the sun, to us and our planet.
Your article as stands appears misinformed, perhaps due to the usual conditioning that still exists in the vast majority of us, our need to always think in terms of profit, whether we know it or not.
That limitation results in us being literally unable to comprehend the idea of anything other than that which can be expressed in a framework of controlled scarcity.
Solar power in whichever way we choose to utilise it, is free after implementation, and infinitely scaleable beyond the point where we begin to create further implementation of it funded entirely from the energy received from previous installation.
The same infinite source is also freely expandable to include effective disposal / recycling / renewing older individual panels or other infrastructure that fails, a very small percentage of that still working, by landfills if that turns out to be desirable. After all the main ingredient of panels is silicon (sand), which is the same land used to create it.
Free money, “money-as-solar” comes about with things like Bitcoin, which shows us the way to generate funds directly from solar.
That changes everything in a way that can either be scary, or exciting, depending on whether or not we can expand our minds beyond the old ideas of profit.
Now, there is wealth being pumped directly into the world economy from the only source of energy, and it is extraterrestrial, added to the economy we always thought of as something based on a finite, fixed amount of precious earth-bound physical resources, like a quantity of gold, or oil.
Trying to sell power will soon become like trying to sell water to people standing under a waterfall. Why would we want to buy, if it is all around us for free? Converting energy to currency results in it being all around us, in the form of free money.
Why would we need to go work in jobs we might not like, if money is available for free?
You see, the real mindblowing change of moving from stage zero to stage one of the Kardashev scale is realising that with the infinite wealth of the sun finally utilised, also comes infinite wealth for all people.
Infinity divided by many billions of people, is still infinity.
To get our minds around that, we just need to realise when we are still thinking in terms of profit, which in the old world was literally 100 percent of our time.
For me personally that took about fifty years.
I am sure you can do it in much less.
