Good question. Of course it can, and does, as does life in general. I suspect most of us know instinctively even as kids, hence your question.
I would argue the author of the article, given maybe an initial nihilistic ideological belief, seems to have lost a little of what life is about, by focusing a little too much on what can't really be understood in isolation, the 2nd law of thermodynamics on its own.
Attempting to use just it by itself to explain all the things we see in the environment, far less in the universe, is not very clever, though it might make a popular, hence maybe profitable story on a for-profit platform, knowing a little about the 2nd law of thermodynamics by itself and trying to expand this out to infer knowledge of all things just exposes lack of knowledge, imho.
It is especially dangerous when this results in propagation of a false sense of hopelessness, characterised by the "Doomer" mentality, imho, this is one of the biggest threats to us fully understanding the nature of the existential problem facing us as a species, fooling us into thinking we have no choice, nothing we might do different, which would make a difference one way or another, this is a way of trying to shrug off all blame that we might put on ourselves for where we are now. Why change anything if it won't make any difference?
It makes profit to think that way, but there is an ultimate price to pay for that profit, as I will try to explain, since you seem interested to know.
The energy of the sun, rather than anything harmful, should be seen for what it is, the provider of energy for all of life, it gives it all with nothing asked in return.
This seemingly unscientific statement is very important, because we should be learning by it how to most effectively propagate energy, which absolutely has to be propagated to all of life needing it, life that puts it to use, reducing the heat impulse of the sun by converting the energy to things other than heat, therefore doing what you identified, the reverse of adding to entropy.
There we should see a formal definition of creation, if we are thinking fairly, giving credit where credit is due, to the processes of life, and the real value of sunlight.
Notice this is the opposite of what we do when we extract energy from Earth, there we take materials and force fields created by other life in nature, and convert them ultimately to heat, and toxic pollution. There we should see a definition of destruction.
Notice that profit itself is systemically linked to energy extracted from Earth, since for the profitable transaction to exist in terms of energy, something has to have been asked in return for the energy yielded.
Work is the thing demanded by Earth, for every Joule extracted, it never gives energy for free, not even from the wind, there is always a price to pay, and since the cumulative effect of that work, being actually destruction, is the end of all life, the ultimate price could not be higher.
By presenting this as something "Good" by all of business and even some religions twisted by profit, we are literally destroying ourselves and all of life for profit, at the cost of life for even our kids and descendents.
Sounds more like religion than science, but this is where science should have stepped up, imho.
Personally I am from a very heavily scientific background and started studying this at PhD candidate level around 2017, and have been researching it unfunded since then, obviously no profit driven entity wishes to fund it because ultimately it spells the end of profit.
But it's survival, and life.
Which do we think is more important?
This is a small part of the reasoning behind my conclusion as a long practicing Systems Engineer that very soon, much sooner than most people might realise, we can, must, and are moving to a fully solar hydrogen ecology.
It has more benefits than we can shake a stick at, way beyond our wildest dreams actually, I honestly can't overstate that.