[rufusroflpunch]

No, think of it like burning oil. Imagine it took >1 barrel of oil's worth of energy to burn a barrel of oil. That would be inefficient. So, we're trying to find solutions to trigger that burning with less input energy.

They're not creating energy, they're basically releasing energy stored over from the Big Bang. Triggering that release with less input energy than output energy is an engineering problem.

[throwaway4aday]

Oil is a pretty good example here, some oils do require a lot of energy to burn if they are just sitting there in a puddle. They don't become efficient to burn until you make a modification like aerosolizing the oil and mixing with air or introducing a wick.