If you're 80% self-sufficient, you're not self-sufficient.

If a kid lives on their own but their mom buys them groceries once per month and their dad swings by on thursdays with pizza and beer, that kid's still pretty darn self sufficient.

Similarly, if a country can use 80% less oil or imported fuel than they would have without renewable energy, I think they're pretty self-sufficient. They don't have to be isolated from trade, it's okay to import some things and export others. Energy sources can be one of those things. But if they rely on energy imports, then when something disrupts their supply then they are in trouble. However if they get 80% of their energy from renewable sources, then they have significantly less of a problem.

They have significantly less of a problem with regards to their balance of trade, but any meaningful dependency on imports means that electricity prices will still be entirely dependent on the price of whatever is imported, at any point in time imports are happening. Still not great, and I wouldn't call that sovereignty!

Also, highly depending on what metric we mean by "80% self-sufficient" (peak capacity? long-time average?), there might either be a lot of work left, or this might be "effective sovereignty".

But the dependency turns from a stop the world calamity to an annoyance.

If you’re 95% self sufficient it will stay at headlines in the local press.

Losing 20% of your electricity supply is a calamity, not an annoyance. So unless you want the calamity, you're still dependent on imports.

Personally, I don't see an issue with that, as long as the neighboring countries you're importing from are reliable and will be able to supply at the times you need (i.e., they don't have the same possibly spiky import dependency as yourself). The other option is massive storage capacity.

I just don't think it makes sense to just equate renewables with automatic sovereignty.

Dunno about you, but losing 20% of my electricity supply is an annoyance. I just don't run the clothes dryer and hang my clothes on a rack instead.

(And yes, I have solar + battery, and have lost 100% of my outside electricity supply on a half dozen occasions since having it installed, and my actual response has been to not run the clothes dryer.)

That would be the situation in an integrated/"smart" grid. The grid could tell your washer/dryer to defer or worst case shed their load.

In the grid we have, where most people don't have batteries, nor a way to react to (or even perceive) network-side load shedding commands, you get rolling blackouts at best, and brownouts, damaged devices etc. at worst.

That's the point I'm making with my second paragraph. I'm not dependent on the grid. If we get into the situation you're describing, I just throw the main breaker (actually don't need to do that, the inverters switch over automatically) and my home generates its own electricity. It doesn't quite cover all my usage, but it covers all my usage except the clothes dryer, so I just don't run the clothes dryer.

It's true that there are tragedy-of-the-commons situations where not everybody has a battery, but it's also true that there are higher-level but subnational entities within the U.S. that have invested significantly in renewables + battery storage. This chart of where electricity comes from on a state-by-state level is illustrative:

https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/state-electricity-g...

California, Connecticut, DC, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington are > 95% renewables + natural gas, all of which is produced in North America. If it comes to the point where it's "keep the lights on or sever ties with fossil-fuel states", I'd bet that they choose the latter.

(Note that the table kinda refutes your point anyway: the only states that are > 1% dependent upon oil for electricity are Alaska and Hawaii. Other than natural gas, which is largely produced domestically [1], the other big fossil fuel source is coal, which is also produced domestically.)

[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/where-our-na...

If a country were in your individual position, I'd definitely call that self-sovereign, but I don't think that's how "80% self-sufficient" would actually look like. (I don't think that 20% of most countries' consumption is entirely discretionary, for one thing, whether measured by peak or average load.)

At >95%, it's probably a very different story. At that point, you basically turn off your aluminium smelter and you're good :) (And note how GP said "renewables", which gas isn't.)

And my point really isn't about oil specifically, it's about GPs "renewables increase sovereignty" thesis in general.

These 20% will still make you dependent on foreign country.

For example Germany was dependent on Russian gas (before year 2022), which they later swapped for dependency on US LNG. In addition, Germany is dependent on China for PV panels.

> Germany is dependent on China for PV panels

This is gas brain thinking.

Panels aren't burned to make electricity. If literally everyone stops selling you panels (nearly impossible) you continue generating electricity the old way. Nothing bad happens. The panels you already have continue working.

Other countries make panels too. India has a glut right now.

https://solarmagazine.com/2025/08/india-solar-supply-chain-f...

You can't base energy of an modern industrial country on purely solar panels alone, they don't produce any electricity in the night and have electric output reduced by weather. You have always to combine them with other power sources for backup.

For Germany it's domestic wind + domestic coal + imported gas.

In case you ask for energy storage in Germany, the amounts are quite low. https://openenergytracker.org/en/docs/germany/storage/

So you admit then that using as much solar and wind and storage as possible reduces the need for imported gas. As such it should be a national priority.

It should be a national priority to use as much already installed solar and wind and storage as possible, when the operating costs are low. The big question is: where should the future investments be made, who will pay them? How much further investments in solar, wind and storage will decrease the need for gas? 2x, 10x, 100x of current yearly spending? Because gas is already very expensive in Europe, it's used precisely when renewable don't produce enough electric energy.

The German decision to phase out nuclear power was a very big and very costly mistake. The French almost made the same mistake.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/renewables-up-nuclear-down-in-fren...

> The German decision to phase out nuclear power was a very big and very costly mistake

It's time to stop talking about it. It's done. Unless the stopped plants can be restarted (which I'd support) this is completely useless. It doesn't mean anything.

> How much further investments in solar, wind and storage will decrease the need for gas?

The upper bound today (keep in mind battery tech gets cheaper all the time) it would cost $5tn to power Germany on batteries for 6 months. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45446112

You don't need to run Germany on batteries for 6 months. Even 1 month is more than plenty.

> Germany was dependent on Russian gas (before year 2022), which they later swapped for dependency on US LNG. In addition, Germany is dependent on China for PV panels

There is merit to putting one's energy policy on autopilot by doing the opposite of whatever Berlin is up to.

> doing the opposite of whatever Berlin is up to

So you're suggesting to cut solar incentives and never discuss SMRs?

I think you might be predicting future performance from past returns here.

but much less dependent. Its way easier to stockpile a big buffer supply of LNG if its only 20% of your supply, for example. Its way easier to trim some 20% demand and still keep the country largely running, for example.

"much less dependent" is still a huge win. Sure 100% independent is better. Isnt this obvious? i dont understand the point.