what do you think the next energy source is after fossil fuels run dry?

Question

take into account fossil fuels will most likely run out in about 80 to a 100 years and the worlds population will be phenomenal and that is a lot of people per square mile

Answer 1

Your mom's breath

Answer 2

With coal reserves over 100 years and large untapped reserves of tar sands and methane hydrates, there is more than enough fossil fuel to completely wreck the atmosphere for human use before we run out.
We will be able to meet the energy needs of an advanced society of 10 -12 billion people a century from now through a combination of some fossil fuel use, renewable fuels, solar and other alternatives like wind and tidal, nuclear and considerably more conservative use of energy. Solar and efficiency technologies give the most gain for dollar spent. The costs of cleaning up the residues from our present system and the long term residual damage done will be lower the sooner we get started on the transition.

Answer 3

The most likely and feasible energy source in the future will be solar, since it the human race will die out long before the sun does. Private companies able to produce reliable and efficient power cells will be the ones "controlling and marketing" the use, but only so far as supplying the means to convert sun power into electricity. (I don't think even the most diehard conspiracy-type person can find a way for any government to tax solar rays.) Nuclear power will also become increasingly important, but not until a means of dealing with spent fuel and other contaminants has been devised. Chances are quite good that we will be relying on "alternative" energy sources long before the earth's stores of oil, gas, coal, etc. are used up.

Answer 4

Nuclear. It is possible that photovoltaic will become competitive, but it needs an improvement in watts per dollar of about a factor of ten to really score. Nuclear power is competitive now; the primary problems with it have been political, not economic.

Postscript: A previous responder mentioned hydrogen. Hydrogen cannot be an energy source because it is never found free. It can be used as an energy transfer medium, but it is awkward to use for that for a number of technical reasons that were well discussed in a Scientific American article some months ago.

Post-postscript: Another responder has proposed increased use of ethanol. This is a non-starter -- it takes a gallon of ethanol fuel to make a gallon of ethanol fuel, so using it is a total waste.

Answer 5

Well, practically we'll be "out" of oil in about 40 years depending on who you believe but even among the optimists - it's not gonna last 80 years.

Based on overall planetary production/exploration output, we passed the "top" of Hubbert's Peak in about 2000-2003 and are now in decline, the question is one of simple speed to the point where oil/gas is no longer economically able to be produced.

The Earth will never have NO oil it would just be in places where it's too expensive to get at.

After oil becomes too expensive to run our cars/factories etc.

Natural Gas - LNG is the next big thing - the problem is that its just like the last big thing only we've got about 50 more years of LNG than oil - based on how we currently use oil.

Coal - Once it's clear that oil is a "problem" to produce , and more efficient coal preprations can be developed, we have about
100-200 years or so years of coal available.

It's important to mention at this point that continuing to use these fuels will have potentially bad impacts on the planet. (see the end of oil).

Nuclear - will likely come back to popularity (at least in the US) in a BIG way, I suspect in 15-25 years we'll get over 40% of our power from nuclear.

Solar / Wind - This could be but probably won't be more than about 20-25% of our total energy generation on the geographic/weather limitations of both of these power-sources.

Fusion - Provided we don't pooch ourselves in the next 15 years or so or cancel the project etc, and if scientists should get the ITER (research fusion reactor) to work, and can make it cheap enough, every major city on the planet will have a LARGE fusion reactor providing gigawatts of power to cities as needed. It's likely that the reactors will be extremely expensive but produce very little ash/pollution themselves and the ash wouldn't be particularly radioactive either.


Hydrogen - IF and this is the BIG IF someone discovers a way to make a catalyst engine without using platinum or some other extremely expensive resources, then Hydrogen could be what our grand-children drive to work on.

Biodiesel/Ethanol/Biomass etc - These are mostly gimick methods of energy production mostly each with their own expensive setups and drawbacks.

Asuming the environment doesn't kick us in the butt between now and 100 years from now. I'd say that if the US looses more than 2 or 3 more of it's major cities to "freak" hurricanes like Andrew, Gilbert, Katrina or Hugo OR has a crop-failure lasting 2 or more years the "evidence" will become too compelling even for the most strident global warming deniers to resist doing something about, and if it's not too crippled economically, we can look forward to an agressive development of these technologies.

Until then - don't expect too much unless someone get's really lucky and develops a Mr. Fusion.

Humans! - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5968977073007258412&q=animation+humans%21&hl=en

Answer 6

We will just have to use far less fuel.

Even if we converted every non-food arable capable acre to bio fuels we would produce no more than a fraction (about 10%) of what the world demand would then be. We have only 25 years or so of known uranium for current levels of fission use. And we have yet to prove large scale fusion is even viable.

Answer 7

hydrino / blacklightpower
I think it is at blacklightpower.com


But we might be told it is a fusion reactor.

for those who do not understand "hydrogen" is not a power source it is an energy storage medium. Of course fusion and hydrinos are exceptions to this but when you hear about the "hydrogen economy" it is just media fluff. Electric vehicles are actually LESS efficient and produce MORE greenhouse gases because off losses in the battery system. They are good at helping with local smog. Hybrid vehicles can be good as well.

Answer 8

NASA's planned moon base announced last week could pave the way for deeper space exploration to Mars, but one of the biggest beneficiaries may be the terrestrial energy industry.

Nestled among the agency's 200-point mission goals is a proposal to mine the moon for fuel used in fusion reactors -- futuristic power plants that have been demonstrated in proof-of-concept but are likely decades away from commercial deployment.

Helium-3 is considered a safe, environmentally friendly fuel candidate for these generators, and while it is scarce on Earth it is plentiful on the moon.

As a result, scientists have begun to consider the practicality of mining lunar Helium-3 as a replacement for fossil fuels.

Link: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/space/0,72276-0.html

Answer 9

I think nature will decreae our populations to a more sensible level so we don't need so much fuel.
Than I think long before that time nations which have no fuesl such as japan and german will began to see the light and brong electrical cars, electrical generators where by they become self serving with out the need for fuel.
I can see the time when enough people will be killed out right by nuclear explosions (either war or power plants ) that they will say enough of this stupitidy of an energy source which will leave you with a deadly waste which lasts for hundreds of thousands of years.
Eelctrical energy ios here , it could be in place to make mor eelectrical now, but oil companies are holding it back for that almighty buck.

Answer 10

The sun would most likely be the next source of fuel because think about it when will the sun go away and they are thinking of more and more ways to utilize the suns power every day so i'm pretty sure that will be the next source of energy.

Answer 11

well, there are a lot of technologies that we have today that we will probably just use more...

biodiesel is just getting started....we'll use more electricity from nuclear power alone. maybe solar and wind technology will grow more, but that has seemed so stuck for the last 40 years....hopefully better batteries and fuel cells will be developed to store solar and wind energy more efficiently. a lot of energy is lost in transmission over copper wires due to resistance, so maybe engineers will figure out how to cut down on this.