First, there is the issue of improving fuel efficiency of current motor vehicles. With the completion of lowering sulfur compound levels to well under 40 parts per million in gasoline and diesel fuel by September 2006, this makes it possible to have direct-injection gasoline engines with 15-20% better fuel efficiency than today's gasoline engines and the widespread use of diesel engines, which sport 35-45% better fuel efficiency than equivalent gasoline engines!
Second, we could build gigantic ponds to grow a special type of algae that could create enough biomass to be refined into diesel fuel and kerosene on an enormous scale. And because the fuel is derived from a biological source, it also burns much cleaner, too.
Third, improvements in fuel cell technology may allow the transition away from using gasoline and diesel fuel after 2010. That will mean by 2020 the average motor vehicle will have essentially water vapor as its exhaust emission!
Fourth, we may see the large-scale implementation of a new generation of vastly safer nuclear reactors using pebble-bed technology that are just about impossible to "melt down."
Finally, we could see amazingly exotic means to generate electricity come on the market. The idea of a zero-point energy power generator may not be so far-fetched after all, if Nick Cook's book The Hunt for Zero Point is correct in its assessments. If such a device does exist and could be produced economically, motor vehicles could essentially run the life of the car without having to be recharged or refuelled! Also, it means we could switch from a centralized power plant to a situation where every building and household becomes a power generator on a distributed basis.
"Also, it means we could switch from a centralized power plant to a situation where every building and household becomes a power generator on a distributed basis."
Yes, that technology is mostly all ready here, and it does not need, as I seem you are talking about a "eternity machine" (I am not sure this is the correct english word) a machine that produces more energy than she gets from her fuel. Such an engine has been a dream for ages for many, but it will newer succeed, it is physically unimaginable.
But every household can become power generator on distributed basis by using existing tecnology, wich is allways becoming better and better. Solar panels on the rooftops (or incorporated into the rooftiles as will probably be the not so far future), glass windows that can pass the light through, but can change the heat into electricity, thus both reducing the need for big, power hungry wentilation system in houses, and producing electricity for the system. And little by little we will incorporate into our dayly use other energy saving means, wich do not have to be so much a change from our current way of life. The next step is that hybrid technology will become standard in most cars, reducing our thirst for oil and gazoline greatly and oil will stop beeing used to produce electricity when solar panels on each house roof and other small scale means of producing electricity for the houselds, by the housholds will become commonplace, like f.e.:
"Renewable Devices Ltd. of Scotland is marketing rooftop windmills that look like large weathervanes but can generate 4,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year (the average family uses 10,000 to 15,000kwh)"
You can see a picture of one in the paper, it is nothing like the big wind mills that generate all the controversy in the world by beeing nosy, bird killing gigants ruining the landscape it dots. No, it is small but in enough numbers, specially in windy areas it can be a good power source, wich of course has to be backed up by traditional means when the other means are not enough. But big social changes are not neccasery going to follow though we little by little try to be more energy conscious on small scale. I just say good luck, as I know that it is becoming essential for most countries in the world to find a solution, we can not be upon the mercy of the middle east forewer.
That's over, and there's "no free lunch": algae pools require feeding, movement of the feed to the pools, people to tend the pools, control of the effluents, etc. The pools occupy surface area that reduce farmable land (which will assume greater importance soon) and they take potable water that is also needed for other human and agricultural uses.
The world is at the edge of a new period, a less pleasant period.