At the beginning of the second millennium, the world witnessed tremendous developments in energy technology, including those that helped to uncover the vast oil and natural gas resources in North America. In addition, the emergence of this technology is promising news suggesting that a new era of energy abundance and diversity is approaching and that today energy can be extracted from the deep ocean floor, clay rock layers, nuclear fission, biofuels, wind, and sun. Most importantly, each of these energy sources continues to be developed and used to develop ways to reduce their impact on the environment.
As energy supplies develop, demand-side fundamentals are subject to their drivers, many economies continue to falter, even after several years of the oil crisis in 2014. Others, including China, have continued to expand significantly, albeit at a more modest pace, and meet rising energy demands is an ongoing challenge.Recognizing the volume of supplies needed to meet the needs of all the world’s people, the use of oil alone – which represents only one-third of the world’s energy consumption – is currently approaching 95 million barrels per day, enough to operate a car 100 billion miles, or about four million times the world. Since the second millennium, the major industrialized countries and even some middle-income and developing countries have taken a serious turn to the use and development of renewable energy in various areas and industries that deal with human life and the attendant special and general needs.
