Replacement
A third, and more likely alternative is that oil will be replaced with renewable energy during the first half of the 21st century. There is more solar energy that reaches the surface of the Earth each hour than the amount of energy consumed by the world in a year. The challenges of using that energy, which can be obtained either from wind power and/or solar power, is that it needs to either be stored for when it can be used, or transported, through transmission lines, to where it can be used, as neither is dispatchable - there is no control over when the sun will shine or when the wind will blow, although concentrated solar power plants using thermal storage can store energy efficiently for up to 24 hours.
Read more about this topic: Oil Depletion
Famous quotes containing the word replacement:
“Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)