All wealth derives from finite, and therefore scarce (to one extent or another), natural resources. So on a global, macroeconomic level, wealth cannot be created. It can be aggregated, accumulated, redistributed, and even destroyed, but it cannot be created. The great economic systems of the world depend upon this axiom. If this were not true, if wealth could in fact be created from nothing, there would be no need for economic systems to exist. This is true virtually by definition, and therefore axiomatic as well. Economic systems concern themselves only with the finite and the scarce.
The raw materials used in manufacturing ultimately come from natural resources. These materials are transformed by the manufacturing process into goods that have value to human beings, where the raw materials themselves have no such value. Again, economic systems concern themselves with the exchange of values in the finite, material world.
Wealth cannot be derived from infinite, or virtually infinite, natural resources like sunlight and wind, because these are freely available to everyone and anyone in unlimited quantities and therefore are not scarce.
Certain possible exceptions to this rule may appear to exist. What about the wind farms that are used to generate electricity? This electricity is sold at a profit. Is this not deriving wealth from an infinite natural resource? It is not, because it is the capital investment (reallocation of accumulated wealth) in the great wind-driven generators that makes this wealth derivation possible. Without these machines, there can be no wealth derivation from wind. Moreover, the machines can be owned, and therefore controlled, but wind, the natural resource, cannot.
What about logging, and the associated industries around it? Aren't forests a renewable, and therefore essentially infinite, natural resource? No, in this case, the wealth derives initially from the exploitation of the forest, and then over time from the capital devoted to regrowing it. Without this reallocation of human and financial capital, the forest would not regenerate itself, or certainly not as quickly or profitably.
Wealth can indeed be aggregated, sometimes in enormous quantities, in the absence of any value exchange. The most expensive home ever sold in New York state was bought by a man who made a sizable fortune as an arbitrageur of large stocks of pharmaceuticals. He brought no more value to his drug transactions than the gambler does to the craps table, or the stockbroker does to the investor.
Isn't making a profit the same thing as creating wealth? No, profit is redistribution of wealth. It is the difference between the seller's cost, that is, what he paid to obtain the goods he's selling, or his cost of doing business if he's selling services, and what he can obtain by selling those goods or services. Essentially, profit is the value derived by the seller from being in the middle between the source and the destination. It need not involve adding any real value to the goods or services being sold. Profit is always derived by one individual or entity from the wealth of another.