Fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas -- currently provide more than 85% of all the energy consumed in the United States, nearly two-thirds of our electricity, and virtually all of our transportation fuels.   Moreover, it is likely that the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels to power an expanding economy will actually increase over at least the next two decades even with aggressive development and deployment of new renewable and nuclear technologies.

  From the U S DOE 1999

 THE LIFESTYLE U.S. CITIZENS ENJOY, THE ENVY OF  MUCH OF THE world, was built in large measure on reliable, affordable oil and natural gas supplies. Over the past century, these valuable resources have been instrumental in transforming America’s economy from agrarian to industrial to high-technology, steadily improving our standard of living. • Energy remains the lifeblood of our economy, powering our factories and communities, heating and cooling our homes, and moving people and goods. We rely on oil and gas to supply two-thirds of our energy needs. Fuels derived from oil and gas provide virtually 100 percent of our transportation demand, and an ever-increasing proportion of our electricity

My comment: What a difference 9 years make. We are now close to four dollars for a gallon of gasoline and the price of natural gas goes up every year. Where will it end?  Nuclear energy any one?

From Barry W. Brook University of Adeliade

 Because nuclear ‘fuel’ is cheap, inexhaustible and packs a huge energy punch

Fossil fuels are finite and will not last long

Coal, oil and gas collectively represent a huge store of energy; the accumulated product of millions of years of sunlight harvesting by ancient forests and marine plankton. Yet, vast as these fossil carbon stockpiles are, we are rapidly using them up. Most of the coal is buried so deep that we will never access it – if we were not concerned with the carbon emissions that result from burning coal, we still might only end up using 10 to 20 percent of the estimated 15 trillion tonnes of coal that has been deposited in the Earth’s crust. Why? Because coal is an energy source, and if you need to use more energy to dig it up than you get back from burning it, well, there’s no point. It just takes too much energy to mine deep coal seams. A rough estimate is that, at today’s level of use, there may be two centuries of minable coal left worldwide, and if we continue to burn more each year, even less.

The situation for oil is more immediate. Some industry analysts are saying that we’ve already passed the point of maximum global oil production – at a figure of 85 million barrels per day. Others, including the International Energy Agency, suggest that, with sufficient investment in exploration and improved extraction methods, we may not hit ‘peak’ oil production for a few decades. Either way, this extremely valuable resource is running out, and given the huge demand from an expanding transport sector, the world’s oil wells seem certain to run dry within the next 50 years. 

The price of electricity increases continually due to  increasing cost of fossil fuels.

 According to the EIA. Approximately two-thirds of all electricity generated in the U.S. during 2005 was coal and natural gas. According to industry source Platt’s, delivered coal prices increased almost 113 percent, from $54.95/standard ton in 2004 to $117/standard ton in 2005, while the Energy Information Administration reported that natural gas prices jumped approximately 68 percent around the country over the same time period. With such substantial increases in fuel costs, it should surprise no one that electricity prices are increasing as well.