Wishful thinking, on at least two counts: 1. very little oil is used to power the electrical grid, so solar power does nohing to reduce the amount of imports; 2. since oil is fungible, any amount we don't buy will simply lower the price others pay, by reducing demand. If we stop using imported oil for transportation, and shift to using some substitute at twice, or three times the cost, we have hurt no one but ourselves.
Actually, shifting transport onto the grid - even if coal powered - is more efficient. Electric rail, vehicles, etc. Internal combustion engines convert about 25% of the gasoline's energy into mechanical power. You're better off energy-wise burning gas in a utility's power plant than in your car engine.
Of course, there's massive infrastructure upgrading costs. I'm just speaking about energy costs.
Oh I didn’t say that there wouldn’t be a need for petroleum products for manufacturing or large scale transport...I was emphasizing the fact that much of our smaller transportation/utility issues at the home and family could be met with some of these emerging alternative technologies, free up much petroleum reserves for the “bigger players” such as trucks, planes, tranes and manufacturing. I am aware that most electrical sources aren’t oil based any more(coal, natural gas, hydro, nuclear, ect are most often used but I was trying to emphasize the liberationg effects of home-owners who became more self sufficient in their energy needs as well as the benefits the nation would enjoy as well.
“since oil is fungible, any amount we don’t buy will simply lower the price others pay, by reducing demand. If we stop using imported oil for transportation, and shift to using some substitute at twice, or three times the cost, we have hurt no one but ourselves.”
Actually, it will lower the price we pay for traditional crude oil by reducing demand as you say. Whether it would hurt or not would depend on the exact effect of the reduction in demand.
Suppose that we could produce 1/4 of our oil needs synthetically, and that 4M bpd reduction in demand was enough to drop the price of crude from $100/bbl to $50/bbl. The 3/4 of our demand that was still supplied by crude would cost us 37.5% of our old total cost for crude. The synthetic could cost $250/bbl and our total cost would be the same as it was originally.
Other customers would benefit more than we would because they wouldn’t be buying the expensive synthetic but still getting the lower price for crude. It might be worth it from a security standpoint to reduce the flow of money into OPEC countries.