Introduction

Abstract

Can you imagine life without television, cars or computers, without being able to prepare your food every day, without lighting in the house, without heating during the cold seasons of the year, etc.? But all this is the result of creative activity of scientists and inventors, especially during the last 200 years. All this may disappear during the first half of the present century, following the drastic depletion of natural reserves of fossil fuels. Increased energy consumption leads to a continuous increase in the volume of extracting fossil fuels, which provides more than 85% of energy use today. Currently, the annual energy consumption is equivalent to more than 11 billion tons of conventional fuel or 459 EJ (459 10¹⁸ J), of which only 15.4% is of non-fossil origin. As the world population increases, and the level of energy endowment of the economy grows, simultaneously, this figure is steadily increasing, which fact will have serious consequences. Most acceptable fuels, economically, – oil and natural gas – are supposed to be about exhausted in 30–50 years.