Most conversations regarding the planets energy resources and their appropriate place in today’s society reveal extensive ignorance on the subject and deliberate misinformation by both sides of the argument;, the energy producers and the environmentalists. Any honest appraisal of the future of global energy must begin with a full and balanced understanding of resources and their uses.

The earth provides us with two basic natural energy resources, fossil fuels and renewable flows of energies stemming from the heat of the sun, as solar energy and the winds which circle the planet, as well as the movement of water and the internal energies of the planet (geo-thermals). Fossil fuels are the products of the conversion of biomass, which, through fossilization, yields coal, oil and natural gas.
Coal became the world’s most important solid fuel during the 1890s, when their energy content surpassed that of the traditional fuels of the day (wood and crop residues). Today, coal provides less than 25 percent of the world’s total primary energy supply. A ton of coal has an energy equivalent to about ½ ton of crude oil. The energy content of all crude oils and liquids produced by their refining is very similar: about twice as large as that of coal and almost three times as large as that of cord wood. Crude oil became the world’s most important primary fuel during the 1970s and now it provides about 40 percent of the world’s total primary energy supply. Natural gases are usually mixtures of methane, ethane and propane. Their energy content (under normal atmospheric pressure) is only 1/1000 that of crude oil. Compared to oils, they are also much more expensive to transport in pipelines and even more so by tanker trucks. But the cleanliness of their combustion has made them the best choice for domestic heating and recently also for electricity generation; natural gases