Saudi Arabia going solar – so that we won’t

saud-solareditors-blog-entry3Here’s evidence of how single-minded, short-sighted, and just plain ridiculous our addiction to oil has become.

Elites in oil rich countries are investing heavily in renewable energy forms in part because selling oil to addicts like Americans makes them a lot more money than selling that same oil to their own citizens.

Take Saudi Arabia, for example. The Saudi government recently announced a $100 billion investment in nuclear and renewable energy — with the stated goal of increasing the amount of oil available for export.

By 2030, the Saudis will attempt to replace 20 percent of their energy generation with renewables, making up the rest of the difference with nuclear power.

More $$ for future Saudi generations
“The use of alternative sustainable and reliable resources reduces dependency on hydrocarbons and keeps them as a source for income for future [Saudi] generations,” Khalid Al Sulaiman of the King Abdullah City Center for Atomic and Renewable Energy recently told Forbes.

Basically, every gallon of gas the Saudis and other oil-producing countries save at home means one more gallon to sell on the world market — and more money in Saudi government coffers.

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I’m all for Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries going solar. But I’m not going to play my appointed role as a sucker for paying high oil prices to line the pockets of rich elites in the Persian Gulf.

What would you prefer to do: Subsidize solar in far off Saudi Arabia so that Saudi elites can make more money off of you by selling their oil to us to feed our oil addiction, or put solar up here and drive an oil-free, solar-charged, locally fueled car that keeps lots more money in your own pocket?

Call me an “out-of-touch Lefty” who just doesn’t get how “patriotic” sucking down foreign oil is, but I’d prefer to fuel my car with home-grown solar electricity that travels a few feet from our rooftop to our car’s batteries rather than thousands of miles from an oil-rich country going solar in part to make money off of the fact that so few people in the U.S., and in other industrialized countries, are going solar, or, to be exact, solar + EV.

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