In my humble opinion, it all comes down to the link between energy and value, complex and inexplicable as it may be. Energy may or may not create value, but value requires energy. There is no "free lunch" in this universe.
This is one of those topics where the answer is "Yes, but..."
Yes to what you stated above.
But...there are so many "things" in this world today that took a lot of energy and manpower to create (and thus had high value when first created), but their value has now fallen to near zero.
This could happen to any "thing" created, because value is also subjective and is applied to thing by the emotions of human beings.