Most panels are from China. Panels have a very long lifetime. Over their lifetime they generate way more than their price in oil. Europe is not a huge producer of oil and relies on imports to sustain its usage. Sourcing panels is effectively reducing the amount of money leaving Europe in the long term.
China. With that said, they have so much solar PV capacity that they’re barely breaking even, even when exporting tens of GW of PV panels a month. I argue it’s a net positive the solar PV printers in China are kept in business to maintain their annual output, the world needs as much solar PV as it can produce as fast as possible.
It's enough to fund more than a 10% increase in installed solar capacity in the EU, so if all that energy were to be used to save money, double solar capacity every 7 years - or 10 years if assuming that 3% of all panels are retired annually.
If we're talking about money not spent, aren't savings almost unlimited just from mechanization? The train, the car, the shopping cart, the dishwasher may be saving us all several economies worth of work on a daily basis
This capital saved (~$50B/year) can be recycled into more renewables, storage, transmission, and EVs to further drive down future petroleum demand, creating even more savings into the future. Stocks vs flows. Price of clean tech keeps rapidly falling, investment will continue to ramp. Think like a flywheel.