Also, unfortunately for our climate, fossil fuels are easy to store, even for decades (potentially forever, they don't decay) and transport and require no advanced technology to be useful, you simply need a way to set them on fire.

There was a discussion few days ago about fossil fuels bootstrapping the industrial revolution(s), one of the theories is that without them we wouldn't be talking about renewable energy at all (except in very basic ways like running a watermill)