Solar's return-on-energy is quite large - on the order of 10x, so you could bootstrap the process of creating all the solar panels you would ever need with a trivially small investment of non solar energy. In practice, it will be higher, but given those economics, every solar panel you manufacture deters 10x the same amount of non-solar electrical consumption.
You need to be precise with how you talk about the shift in energy demand due to EVs. It's not a net energy increase. EVs are far more efficient than gas vehicles. I assume what you mean is increased electricity demand. You can back this out based on typical driving metrics - 250wh/mile is a typical efficiency for electric vehicles. If each driver does 10k miles/year and there are 200M drivers in the US, then this equates to a 13% increase in electrical demand for full adoption[1]. You could probably add on 2% more for efficiency losses in transmission and charging, so call it an additional 15%. That's effectively worst case as it assumes no reduction from the removal of the current infrastructure(ie pumps for gas pipelines, heating for refining, trucking, etc). Those are huge users of energy (though much in forms other than electricity). Oil refinement alone accounts for ~4% of all energy use(not just electricity) in the US.
EVs are so efficient, transitioning to them will probably consume less energy than just the energy we currently spend producing and distributing gasoline. We'll probably need to add to electrical infrastructure, but compared to the savings that is easily justifiable.
How many tons of coal do we need to burn to convert everything to renewables? How many mountains / forests / bodies of water do we need to destroy to get the raw materials to complete the shift to renewables?
My question is: When the shift has been completed, how many of today's natural habitats will still be standing? I'm not asking how about solar's efficiency.
You need to be precise with how you talk about the shift in energy demand due to EVs. It's not a net energy increase. EVs are far more efficient than gas vehicles. I assume what you mean is increased electricity demand. You can back this out based on typical driving metrics - 250wh/mile is a typical efficiency for electric vehicles. If each driver does 10k miles/year and there are 200M drivers in the US, then this equates to a 13% increase in electrical demand for full adoption[1]. You could probably add on 2% more for efficiency losses in transmission and charging, so call it an additional 15%. That's effectively worst case as it assumes no reduction from the removal of the current infrastructure(ie pumps for gas pipelines, heating for refining, trucking, etc). Those are huge users of energy (though much in forms other than electricity). Oil refinement alone accounts for ~4% of all energy use(not just electricity) in the US.
EVs are so efficient, transitioning to them will probably consume less energy than just the energy we currently spend producing and distributing gasoline. We'll probably need to add to electrical infrastructure, but compared to the savings that is easily justifiable.
[1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=250+wh%2Fmile+*+10000+...