The Freakonomics item I excerpted yesterday? Navy Bob will have none of it:

Interesting articles cited by Dubner, but he makes the same error every other energy pundit seems to make — that new or more efficient ways to produce electricity will somehow replace oil.
There’s no connection between oil and electricity. Schemes to produce more electricity from tidal and wave power and transmit it more efficiently through ultra-high-voltage power lines will not reduce oil consumption or imports by a single barrel. They’re dreamed up for environmental reasons (or potential cost savings in the case of more efficient transmission.). Oil is not burned to produce electricity except in isolated and insignificant amounts. The electricity that flows through transmission lines to our homes and factories comes from coal, nukes, dams, natural gas, and the occasional windmill and solar panel. We could increase electricity production a hundredfold from all sources, and we’d still need the same amount of oil. Oil is produced and imported to make fuel for vehicle engines — gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel. All the other petroleum products produced from a barrel — heating oil, bunker C, lubricating oil, grease, waxes, Vaseline – are essentially leftovers. If they were all eliminated, we’d still have to import the same amount of oil to make fuel for transportation. Electricity does not go into vehicles’ fuel tanks. And until we get lighter, cheaper batteries with much greater capacity, it never will.