What will be our main source of energy 20 years from now?

Question

What will be our main source of energy 20 years from now?

Answer 1

Petroleum, still. There haven't been enough breakthroughs yet to replace oil.

Answer 2

The same things as today, just the share of the market will change. Gasoline will probably be cheaper in some places because so few people still drive gasoline-fueled cars, which are already far too expensive.

American electricity producers will still be burning coal, natural gas, and boiling water (or such) in nuclear reactors. Most of the good places to dam up for hydropower have pretty well all been tapped. There will be wind generating farms in the central plains and off the coasts. The Great Basin deserts will have solar farms sprouting, but they are likely to be reflectors concentrating sunlight to boil water (or such). The ethanol people will have retooled to brew cellulose-eating microbes because of the grief that the alleged (but not real) starvation of the worlds poor by brewing corn and related sugar-type fermentation. (The efficient process involves more time and the current attempts fail because they have to cook the bugs good in order to get them to keep eating and breeding, so the amount of water and heating is prohibitive compared to sugar digesting microbes). The world's poor will still be starving (bureaucrats in Haiti will still leave food rotting on the docks while they continue their red tape and turf wars, and Mugube's top general, who will have replaced him as head of Zimbabwe will still be oppressing their people because of tribal supremacy issues, etc.).

Fusion will likely NOT be perfected, although they may be much closer than some might expect, as they are today. Hydrogen might not be the fuel solution, but just as with photovoltaics, building all the needed batteries to power cars might be too much to replace combustion engines. We might be rediscovering steam because of certain low-energy efficiencies that can be made. Ceramic coated flywheels and compressed air will have a run or two.

All said and done, there will be a mix of things in use about then, but petroleum will increasingly more the domain of plastics and chemical companies. Oil will be see as comparatively plentiful because so many will have grown too tired of shoveling money at middle eastern fat cats. So China will then be feeding at the petroleum trough like a greedy pig in slop. (Careful, I'm not calling Chinese pigs, so don't get bent out of shape for if I said Americans did that all the heads would be nodding in agreement, the thing is that China will be doing then what we have done now).

Answer 3

20 years from now I'd say it'll be geothermal energy. It's very cheap, environment friendly and abundant.