The era of cheap energy is over

The price of oil is more than $110 per barrel, coal costs more than $75 per ton and natural gas prices are climbing. To those who hope to see a return to $1.50-per-gallon gasoline or a reduction in heating and electricity bills, I have bad news: The era of cheap energy is over.

We’ve had a century of declining energy prices due to an abundance of oil, natural gas and coal. Supply has kept up as our consumption of fossil fuels doubled, doubled again and now is 10 times higher than it was in 1900. If energy prices stayed low, we would double our consumption again by 2050.


Optimists hope that newfound supplies, such as the oil recently discovered in North Dakota, will drive down prices again. But no matter how much fossil fuel we might reasonably expect to find, if our consumption doubles every 30 or 40 years, the wells still will run dry.

There is a lot of finger pointing at the rapidly developing economies of China and India, since they are driving up demand for energy. But if you want to see the real culprit, look in a mirror.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette