Burning Up

The 20th century witnessed growing awareness of the impacts of large-scale energy use on the environment. Contemporary energy policy issues are dominated, directly and indirectly, by major concerns at both local and global levels of the environmental degradation caused by fossil fuel combustion. Concerns over the health impacts of small particle air pollution, climate change, and oil supply security have combined to encourage radical changes in automotive engine and fuel technologies that offer the potential for achieving near-zero emissions of air pollutants and GHG emissions as well as the diversification of the transport sector away from its present heavy reliance on gasoline. Currently, coal and gas technologies exhibit a clear absolute cost advantage over the bulk of currently available renewable technologies (with the exception of some hydro, geothermal, and biomass applications) in electricity generation, although "best performance" wind power has recently approached similar cost levels. The economic, environmental, and social objectives of sustainable development policies require secure energy supplies.