On this note, reading Vaclav Smil's "Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate" [1] has been sobering. I had a similar presumption that this isn't a technological problem but rather of a policy conflicts (and subsequent perverse mechanisms including corruption).

In fact, it is actually a technologically challenging problem. This book is a decade old but I would assume that nothing has drastically changed over the past decade, and the energy demand has probably only gone up. Highly recommended read, if not already!

[1]: https://www.librarything.com/work/10653100