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Abstract: For all but the last 250 years, mankind was almost entirely dependent on renewable energy, mainly from biomass and wind. Then the era of fossil fuels downed and we shifted away from renewables. But excessive use of fossil fuel has now precipitated existence-threatening climate change and ocean acidification. So the world is once again reverting to renewables in a big way. It is as if the human quest for energy has come full circle. But will this ‘home coming’ bail us out of the global environmental crisis? This paper says it will not as long as we do not drastically reduce the largely conspicuous and wasteful consumption. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A variety of energy sources will compete to provide the energy services that humans will require over the next 100 years. The balance of these sources will depend upon the availability of fossil fuels and the development of new technologies including renewable energy technologies, and will be one of the keys in projecting greenhouse gas emissions. There is uncertainty about each of the energy sources. With oil, for example, there are two alternate views of future reserves, one that reserves are geologically limited and that supplies will declinewithin a decade or two, the other that there are enormous quantitiesof hydrocarbon in the earth`s crust and that reserves are a functionof developing technology and price. With solar voltaics, as a secondexample, there is optimism that the technology will become increasingly competitive, but there is uncertainty about the rate at which costs can come down and about ultimate cost levels. This paper reviews the reserves of fossil fuels and the prospects for nuclear power and the renewables. It also reviews the main energy conversion technologies that are available now or are expected to become increasingly available through time. However, it should be noted that, over a time horizon of 100 years, there may be quite radical changes in both production and conversion technologies that cannot be predicted and it is quite possible for some as yet unheard of technology to be developed andto transform the markets. The paper has been written to aid the development of new scenarios for the emission of greenhouse gases for theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]