World Energy Resources and Consumption

Abstract

Throughout the thousands of years prior to the industrialisation of societies, mankind’s requirements for energy have been met primarily by muscular effort, wind and water currents, fuel wood, direct solar warming and other ‘renewable’ sources, punctuated only occasionally by the use of minor outcrops of coal and oil for the high-temperature fires needed to make terracotta and similar materials. However, the tempo of industrialisation has reversed this pattern, with major withdrawals on the irreplaceable ‘capital’ resources of time-stored solar energy, in the form of fossil fuels derived from vegetable and animal organisms, and minor contributions only from the renewable energy ‘income’. In the absence of some virtually inexhaustible capital resource, it would appear that the world will eventually have to return to an energy income basis, and that it would be wise to invest some of the present ‘capital’ for research in anticipation of this event. The immediate concern therefore centres on the time scale still available for all the necessary preparations to be made, the vital question being the likelihood or otherwise of some energy deficiency arising before the full exploitation of the income flow. This in turn depends on both the overall extent of the remaining fossil fuel reserves, and the rate at which they are being consumed.