Obviously it would be nice to go without using as much power... but realistically, it just isn't going to happen.
The world is pretty thirsty for power, and if we can't take it from what the sun is giving us, our grandchildren are probably going to be quite literally in the dark.
We have to pay to construct the solar power plants. Generally solar panels take a huge amount of fossil fuel to construct & rare Earth minerals from all over the globe. We're also necessarily taking that sun away from other life that wants it (of course we're already doing this via roofs so a few solar panels won't hurt things much more).
Well, we're getting better at the solar thing; much like anything worthwhile, it's just going to take a lot of work and study before we're awesome at it.
And putting some panels on every roof of every building isn't stealing that sun... if anything, it's probably better than plain dark roofs that cause cities to be hotter than the surrounding area.
We're always hearing about "the next breakthru in efficiency right around the corner!!1!" but I'll believe it when I see it.
The problem with that is that most increases in efficiency are small things. They add up, but it's slow. If there were something that magically gave us an extra 25% efficiency or something crazy like that, we probably would have at least figured out how to get it if not how to put it into practice.
Instead we're looking at power plant designs that will get us another percent.
Are you kidding? Oil is amazingly efficient. It's been a true gift (and a curse) & there's no other fuel that comes close in terms of efficiency & versitility.
No, I'm not kidding. We're horribly inefficient.
We don't make a lot of our electricity from oil. And 50% efficiency would be a dream for a fossil plant. Nuclear plants are even less efficient (but as I said, their operating costs are so much cheaper that we're okay with 35% being really good for the time being).
Sure, oil is versatile... but we're limited in what we can do to get more energy and more power. The laws of thermodynamics and material properties are cruel twin mistresses.
Not even close.
And that's something I like about solar: the sun shines on everyone for free, so you don't need to worry so much about the fuel economics.