What you're really just describing is nuclear fusion, which is currently being actively worked on. Photons just contain as much energy as proportional to their momentum (as they don't have any mass). With nuclear fusion they collide two atoms, usually hydrogen, with enough force to make them combine and become a heavier element like helium. The process releases huge amounts of energy and is completely clean as there's no radiation. The major issue we're having with fusion is that we've only had one instance where we've had a successful reaction where we got more energy out than we put in. This is because perticles really don't want to fuse due to the small nuclear forces and the classic addage "Opposites attract, similarities repel".
The reason we get energy from photos is purely because of them interracting with other particles and their potentially wave based nature. Photon energy is already a thing we access on a regular basis, we just don't hear about it as it was such an old discovery. The reality of photon energy is that it is what we use to get solar power, microwaves, and xrays. This is because the energy we get from a photon is based around it's frequency and momentum which, when high enough, can affect other particles when they interract. However, this energy we get prom a photon is only as effective as that which you can get from a gamma ray, ot maybe a really high power laser.
I'm sorry if I've just spouted a tonne of stuff you already knew, I just thought it might be helpful just in case you didn't already know about fusion and the properties of light.
Also sorry for any spelling mistakes, I'm doing this without my glasses cause I walked into a wall and broke them XD