not true, read on...
I am not going to pin you up as a fool and shoot you down to make me feel good, but you don't have the correct conception of where that energy is actually stored & released from.
As far as combustion goes, the energy you are "storing" and "releasing" is locked in the bonds between H-H in the case of hydrogen, O-O in oxygen, and H-O-H in water.
The energy is not stored in the atoms themselves. Here's the equation for hydrogen combustion:
(2x) H-H + O-O ---> (2x) H-O-H
the atoms themselves do not store or release energy, and there are the same number of atoms before and after combustion.
What is different is the configuration of which atoms are bonded to which other atoms.
Bonds require a certain amount of energy to form, and they release a certain amount of energy when they're broken. Every bond corresponds with a different amount of energy.
The amount of energy released when the molecules on the left are broken is greater than the amount of energy you lose by putting the molecules on the right together, therefore you get energy out of combusting hydrogen & oxygen. Unfortunately for us, going backwards requires putting the same amount of energy back in.
That was a little simplified, but hits the heart of the issue.