Paul it is impossible to understand using the language of "Renewables", net-zero, carbon mitigation etc. All that stuff is made redundant just by tracing through the energy flows in and out of Earth. One adds from the sun, hence positive, all the others subtract from Earth, hence negative. Everything done on one or the other is amplified by cascading effects, corresponding to the sign of the energy.
The diagram in my story titled "The reason degrowth is not what is needed" gives a graphical view of it. The same digram appears in my e-book on the energy polarity multiplier framework, which is a formalisation of the deeper implications of mathematically signing energy.
Looking back on this is frustrating it looks so simple in hindsight, but I know it does repel our heads initially, it is a kind of shock to realise we somehow missed this, all the time we've been using energy, so my apologies for maybe sounding frustrated.