Of course, there is what SHOULD happen and what probably WILL happen. My take written last year: https://medium.com/a-look-back-to-that-critical-year-2020

1) You made a good point about habitat crowding being a somewhat separate and possibly larger problem than climate change. Yes, we should be mindful of this while creating better energy sources.

2) If you consider that solar may someday be much better and cheaper, plus in orbiting arrays, it has an almost limitless future. Wind energy growth seems much more limited.

3) After full electrification, net energy demand may go down (ala better distribution, less reason to travel via online interaction and highly efficient deliveries, air-source heat pumps, etc). I would like to see some sort of maglev "floating cars" in the future (much more efficient).

4) Ag stands to become much more efficient (and use less land) as we transition to a more fruit/veggie diet. There may be more vertical hothouse kind of things, more energy but less water.

5) Short term, there seems to be many "blue hydrogen" things on the table, gas and coal CCS type things (to give Big Energy a seat at the lucrative alternative energy table). Big challenge to cap leaky methane from fracking, but as polar ice recedes there is also naturally occurring methane leakage https://scottvern.medium.com/fighting-cow-flatulence-2f641a7cd4f2

6) Hydro good but dams are being decommissioned for environmental reasons. Biomass has lately received a kind of black eye, but has some place at energy table.

7) Energy storage is currently problematic, but if society wants to pay all that $$ for expensive EV batteries its a kind of weird short-term fix. Storage side is really the big problem for renewables, is molten-salt the answer for utility scale solar? Perhaps a super battery, recyclable/cheap/ commonly available materials will be invented. Until then your questions have much merit (ie the dubious value of batteries that cause us to chew up precious land and create rivalries among nations?)

8) Yes, many arrows point to nuclear as a kind of "lesser of the evils" clean energy, especially with Next Generation technology or emergence of fusion power as you say (of course this has been "around the corner" for about 80 years)

Anyway, it hurts us career greenies to consider nuclear but here we are. Thanks for pointing out some of the renewable elephants in the living room.