We are running out of oil. What do you think the next energy source will be for the world?

Question

Who will control it? Who will bring it to market?

Answer 1

Unfortunately it will undoubtably be coal. Cheap and abundant.

We'll all be so desperate because we didn't start to change our energy programs away from oil when we had the chance (like right now), we'll turn to coal.

Also nuclear, but it will take a lot longer to get up and running.

Other things are just too expensive to be the major source, although they're useful in reducing our need for oil, and could be more so.

Of course using coal will make global warming a lot worse and cause bad problems down the road.

We'll be so desperate we'll burn it anyway.

Answer 2

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 3

The big money is on nuclear, hydrogen, biofuels, wind, solar, and nano-generated energy.

Nuclear we already have and, especially in Europe, new reactors are being built and commissioned on a yearly basis. Nuclear fision (a cleaner, more efficient nuclear reaction) is on the horizon, and that will be a wonderful development when it arrives. Nuclear technology is highly regulated around the world, so don't expect 3rd world countries to obtain it any time soon.

Hydrogen is here now, and it works very well, but its fuel cells are still very expensive. Compare a Honda Civic that you can fill up at your corner gas store (MSRP $25,000) with a prototype hydrogen-fueled Honda Civic (MSRP $1.2 million). This technology will become cheaper and it seems that at least for transportation, it's the way of the future. Hydrogen energy is also very clean (Hydrogen in, water out) and is freely available to all; its a gas in our atmosphere.

Biofuels are also in current use. Not very versed on them but think of them as a pile of organic material that produces heat as it decomposes, and that heat becomes energy. There are many cities around the world that are using their landfills to produce biofuels from organic material found in garbage.

Wind is the real deal only it's very variable. The key to reliable wind power production is to build wind farms in offshore locations. Here we're talking about thousands of wind turbines in the middle of the sea/ocean. Scandanavian countries are especially keen on this kind of energy, but if you don't have geographic locations inside your borders that have consistent wind, you're not getting much done there. Also, setting up these offshore wind farms and then transferring the powere generated back to the mainland is not a cheap endeavor.

Solar is also picking up because solar cells are being introduced now with higher and higher efficiencies (i.e. more of the sunlight that hits the solar cell is being turned into energy). As is the case with wind, solar energy on a large scale requires farms of solar cells, but there are tens of thousands of homes worldwide that have solar panels on their roofs, this could be a growing trend as the solar cells get even more efficient.

Nano-generated energy is still in the future and requires a few paragraphs just to introduce it. Nano-technology is the technology of the super small. Think of robots that are microscopic entering your blood stream and fighting off cancer cells. This scenario is a few decades in the future, but what's here now is nano-materials; i.e. materials that are built from the microscopic level up to have certain qualities such as elasticity or super strength. Should we get to the super-small robots though, there is consensus in research circles that the potential is there to harnass the thermal energy that these nano-machines generates and funnel it for other uses.

We're running out of oil pretty quick. Most estimates say that by 2030 - 2035 most of the world's oil will be gone. Fossil fuels may still be in demand (coal, natural gas, oil sand, etc) but there is an unmistakable move towards cleaner, more efficient, and less political energy sources.

Answer 4

First, there is only a small portion of oil that is converted to fuel. About 30% in the US. the rest is used for the production of plastics. Hear anybody proposing alternative sources of plastics lately?

Second, it is true that we keep finding additional sources of oil. Current global oil reserve estimates put oil as 708 billion barrels. The global annual usage rate is about 31 billion barrels. Gives us enough oil for about 25 years.

Recently estimates of world oil supply jumped to about 1 trillion barrels see here
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Oil_watch/World_Oil%20_Table.html

still gives us say 35 years at current usage. But usage is increasing. And if you consider Canadian sand/oil fields and Alaskan oil fields, maybe we've got 70 years of oil left.

Can't keep continuing like this can we?

so to answer your question, in the near future, cars will be designed to run on electricity (produced via nuclear power, and hydroelectric power, supplimented by solar and wind), hydrogen fuel cells, biodiesel, and ethanol. homes will be run on natural gas (of which the US has the worlds leading reserves for awhile) and electricity from the same sources.

Bill gates will bring it to market. In which case it will take 5 minutes to turn on anything electrical whilst you're bombarded with advertisements for microsoft. And anything using power will crash sporadically a few times per day.


***update***

nomad. where on earth did you get the idea that uranium is running out?

look here...
http://www.oecd.org/LongAbstract/0,2546,fr_2649_201185_36910363_1_1_1_1,00.html

claims that current cheap proven mines can supply 85 years worth of Uranium. but 10x that is readily available for exploitation.

Uranium is a very common material. It's everywhere. The decay of uranium in the earths crust is one reason that center of the earth is hot.

Answer 5

We have been running out of oil forever. Every prediction about when we will run out has been WRONG. We are still discovering new sources of oil. There are several alternative energy sources out there and every single one of them has problems. But if the enviromentalists have any say in it, it will be controlled by the government and taxed out of the reach of the average person.....

Answer 6

People have to understand that nothing can fully replace oil.

Nuclear energy is dependant on uranium which will last only 45 more years (at current rates of consumption). So nuclear's out.

Solar and wind will never be more than a small fraction of the world's energy supply because they suffer from four fundamental physical shortcomings that prevent them from ever being able to replace more than a tiny fraction of the energy we get from oil: lack of energy density, inappropriateness as transportation fuels, energy intermittency, and inability to scale. So solar and wind's out.

There are a number of problems with hydrogen fuel cells. Many of these are engineering problems which could probably be worked out in time. But there is one basic flaw which will never be overcome. Free hydrogen is not an energy source; it is rather an energy carrier. Free hydrogen does not exist on this planet, so to derive free hydrogen we must break the hydrogen bond in molecules. Basic chemistry tells us that it requires more energy to break a hydrogen bond than to form one. This is due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and there is no getting around it. We are working on catalysts which will help to lower the energy necessary to generate free hydrogen, but there will always be an energy loss, and the catalysts themselves will become terribly expensive if manufactured on a scale to match current transportation energy requirements.So hydrogen's out.

Coal won't work because of the difficulty and energy it requires to liquefy it to make synthetic oil. You see we'd have to make oil from it because oil is what plastics are made of essentially, and agriculture is absolutely dependent on oil for pesticides and fertilizers. Coal is also giving us diminishing returns. Extracting coal is becoming more and more energy intensive and soon it will take more energy to take the coal out of the ground than the coal will provide. So coal is out.

I'm telling you, NOTHING can replace oil. Industrial civilization is *******, and nothing would make me happier than to see it crumble.

Answer 7

Well they are people researching a oil made out of animals fat
they might use that if we run out of gasoline
But i think if we run out of gasoline and start using oil of animals fat people will have to eat less meat

Answer 8

Brazil is producing their bio-diesel out of corn... while in the Philippines they are encouraging the 'mananang-gal' to share their 'expertise and know-how' to resolve the problem.

Answer 9

I read the Henery Ford made a car out of Hemp and would run on it also.

Answer 10

I think that it will run out of solar power because we have large quantities of it.