There's a nice article in the National Geographic Magazine about energy resources of today and what may be in future. It gives a nice overview about some of the options but the most important quote is this one of NYU's Martin Hoffert:
Without a big push from government, he says, we may be condemned to rely on increasingly dirty fossil fuels as cleaner ones like oil and gas run out, with dire consequences for the climate. ”If we don't have a proactive energy policy,“ he says, “we'll just wind up using coal, then shale, then tar sands, and it will be a continually diminishing return, and eventually our civilization will collapse. But it doesn't have to end that way. We have a choice.”
Even as fossil oil is getting more and more expensive, alternative fuels (like biodiesel or ethanol), or alternative devices with higher efficiency in using fossil fuel (like fuel cells) are even more expensive. And far worse, there's much development to be done to get competitive. The oil companies will invest in new technologies for sure—to exploit oil deposits which are unattractive nowadays. To develeop completely new technologies needs a much higher investment than to invest slowly in the improvement of a well-known one.
Recently you hear more and more talk about alternative fuel from big oil companies (let it be biofuels or hydrogen economy), though. It could be the push from some goverments (like the zero emission cars in California). Or they “just” want to get into a good starting position never mind how soon or late fossil fuels will be replaced anything else.
There's another point that's almost never talked about. What will happen if we use all the fossil fuels somewhere available (coal, oil, gas)? Can you imagine how much carbon there's stored inside and how much carbondioxide this will set free if burned? And even if you store the carbondioxide somewhere (one of the craziest ideas) how much oxygen you'll need to burn all of this fuel? Then you don't have to care about warming of the atmosphere any longer…
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