The problem is not only cleanness but also scale and sustainability: we need continuous power so if we go for solar panels we need to imaging a earth-wide electrical network with veeeeeery small losses.
IMVHO solar panel are interested in modern houses (well insulated) as thermal source to heat both sanitary water to head the house itself with a good ventilation system. Photovoltaic may be interested a small scale local backup for low power devices like emergency illumination, communications and perhaps as a companion to thermo-solar for small pumps to make water circulation and perhaps home ventilation. Nothing more.
Your opinion is poorly informed. In the future we will still need high-exergy energy sources. PV provides this; thermal tech doesn't.
Also, storage solutions for electricity exist, and these are not fringe/academic technology. For example, electrical vehicles exist today. Once everyone has an EV, that'll add ~50 kWh of storage capacity per EV to the grid.
Thinking li-ion battery as a solution for PV electricity storage means confuse marketing bullshit with technology. Today's EV battery in 5/6 years will be good to augment African's and Asian's waste cargo business. Nothing more.
You are right saying that we need and we will need more electricity, not because of EV BTW, but PV is NOT an answers being an inconstant and low efficiency power source.
And I speak not basing my assumption on someone else unverified publication but due a semi-direct experience (few friends of mine in the recent past transform their roofs for PV, myself having recently build my new house I choose solar thermal to heat the house via a MCV and for sanitary water production with a 1000l + 800l cumulus. I have few friends/relatives that bought few EV, including two with a Tesla model S and I see how satisfy they are(n't) and how they'r EV range decrease in a very short time.
What about physical energy storage? Flywheels, weights, water-dams, molten-salts, etc. When it's sunny, you store the electricity in one of these systems, then you can draw it out anytime you want.
Few solutions (like water-dams) prove to be really effective at a reasonably big scale, however cost balance do not justify PV... It's far more interesting wind power + water-dams or simply classic hydroelectric but again it's feasible only in certain orthographic areas so it doesn't really scale for the entire world... It's nice for Swiss, Austria, Norway, other all-mountains countries but not for Germany, Russia, Australia, vast part of the USA etc.
Essentially with renewable energy the sole viable option is a mix of solutions varying from place to place, scenario to scenario and while this can cover a lot can't meet our entire energy requirements so it's good to invest but still as a complement of other solutions.
That's why, beside bullshits, we try to suppress fossil energy production but keep nuclear (any country say "we will ditch it, in a far future) and keep researching on nuclear fusion.
In today's world people like to dream at any news but, unfortunately, most of those news are pure marketing and even genuine ideas hardly scale. For instance vast majority of people think that self-driving vehicles are already there and it's only a matter of time to see them at scale; the truth is that we can have autonomous driving only in simple scenarios like properly urbanized towns and highway but we can't self-drive in harsh conditions like when it snow, on unclear roads etc.
We advance a bit regularly, both on EV and self-drive, many country start to install "helpers" on roads like specific reflective rods around road intersections, radar-reflective asphalt (few aluminum debris in the asphalt mix) and side-protections etc, we slowly start to provide few recharging stations around, few country (like France for individual new homes garages) mandate for newer constructions a recharge point for any private parking etc but it's far from "being there" and for now it does not scale at all nor we know how to made it scale.
And the same is for energy, few country strongly push domestic PVs to a point they start ceasing to accept "exchange in place" of electricity because the grind can't receive nor properly use peak production and costs of exchange are higher than classic pyramidal distribution. Essentially we do not know how to actually create a "smart grid", there are many ideas on the table but none that prove to be complete and effective.
At a small, domestic, scale I recently built my new house and carefully evaluate all options I here about and in the end the sole real cost-effective, practical application of PV I found is a limited power production just to backup my home ventilation and pump thermic-solar water but nothing more. I can't use electric inconstant power, using it to heat water (the sole form of usable storage in a modern house) is LESS effective and far expensive than classic solar thermal vacuum panels, I can produce enough in summer to power air-conditioning at peak time but the overall cost of PV panels+inverter/microinverters due to their expected lifetime surpass electricity cost of the net (it's relatively cheap here in France and having a well insulated, and airtight and well oriented/designed house I do not need much power)...
At larger scale I know few "big" PV power plants both classic, (high) concentration photovoltaics etc but none of them are profitable without big incentives simply because classic panel efficiency and lifetime is too low to justify big investments, concentrated solutions are far better but they last very little time, power production degrade really quickly and maintenance costs climb at a very high rate. Other kind of solar power production like high-concentration to produce vapor and power a classic turbine do a better job but still have skyrocketing high maintenance costs and still inconstant power production...
Long-story short: for now we do not have any definitive electric storage viable solution except for very limited application. Researching on that topic is a super-important priority but we have to keep up other options. For one time it's not a political/commercial/reactionary move but a simple engineering reason.
IMVHO solar panel are interested in modern houses (well insulated) as thermal source to heat both sanitary water to head the house itself with a good ventilation system. Photovoltaic may be interested a small scale local backup for low power devices like emergency illumination, communications and perhaps as a companion to thermo-solar for small pumps to make water circulation and perhaps home ventilation. Nothing more.