It's the same difference as buying a house now and owning it until it collapses vs. renting a house and being at the mercy of your landlord, or buying a piece of shrink-wrapped software and using it for the next 18 years vs. renting a SaaS subscription that provides a different product next month.
Self sufficiency exists on a spectrum. On the idiot end is autarky, which only works to keep a small group in power at the expense of massive national weakness. On the other end is a lack of stockpiles and domestic production that essentially negates sovereighty.
A country running a solar grid with EVs can withstand more economic shocks for longer than one importing oil. And while mining metals is geographically limited, making solar panels and batteries and cars is not.
Sure China. But unless they send in an army to retreive previously sold panels, or block the sun they can only harm future increases to supply.
Depends on the country.
> UK power grid doesn't give a fuck about this war.
Power grid =/= economy. You're missing the point. Rising prices affect the United Kingdom economy even if it was fully run on renewables. The ships bringing products to the country don't run on renewables, the cars mostly don't, your fighter jets don't, your fertilizer doesn't. &c.
It's important to not be dogmatic and be practical about this stuff. Every country on the planet needs and utilizes oil and gas and that will remain true for the foreseeable future because of globalized supply chains.
> Sure China. But unless they send in an army to retreive previously sold panels, or block the sun they can only harm future increases to supply.
Which, in the case of a war with the US would be true because the UK will be involved and sided with the US and/or certainly assumed to be by China. (This is indisputable). So sure you build up those panels, but then you see a war and now you lose access to those materials and if it isn't solved in the near term you have to switch all of your energy back to fossil fuels. No new EVs during the war, for example.
1. It’s closer to 50 years, and even a partially degraded panel will work, just with less output
2. Even if we say 20 years, that means that you only need to buy panels once every 20 years! Not continuously. A complete and total interruption of solar panel production lasting 4 years will only mildly interrupt current output. How long can we last with a total disruption to oil supply chains?
When Russia invades Ukraine or Iran cuts the straight of Ormuz energy prize go up instantly, chocking the entire world economy in the course of a few weeks. Even if China stops exporting rare earths, it would take years before it affects the energy market.
It's absolutely incomparable.
Cuba is a good example by the way: a country can survive for decades while being cut from most technology import due to sanctions, but if you cut its access to oil, it becomes dirty real quick. And because Cuba has been stuck in the middle of the 20th century, it's actually much less dependent on energy than most developed or even developing countries.
That's not the entire point. You still rely on global supply chains. Those semiconductors in your MacBook Pro are made in Taiwan - many steps (perhaps most) in that supply chain to go from raw material to MacBook Pro, or EV, or fresh produce rely on oil. When Iran holds 20% of the world's oil supply hostage then prices go up for you too. Even if you are 100% renewables you are still dependent on oil for your economy.
Even the renewable power grid relies on fossil fuels for maintenance and service, many parts and components are built using materials made from oil (hello plastic), &c.
The key would be to simply not ignore all the other dimensions of dependency.
It's also important to note that the US also produces oil[0]. There are some quirks of the market and refineries that make it difficult to consume our own oil, but we could potentially build more domestic processing. The real problem is that pesky global market that puts costs on the state's ambitions for power. To put it bluntly, American oil is expensive. We can survive an oil crisis iff we are willing to pay astronomical prices at the pump; but if we are doing this assuming we can just enjoy cheap gas while the world burns, we are going to get a rude awakening.
Think about it this way: buying your energy in the form of oil is like exclusively using streaming services for your entertainment needs. It's cheap, easy, convenient - until the plug gets pulled and it suddenly stops being those things. Buying solar is like buying physical media - you have to pay up front and it's more of a hassle to get started, but it can't be turned off on a whim.
[0] It also used to produce rare earths, too. The mines closed down because they were too expensive to operate - not because rare earths are actually rare.