But that potential pales beside the never-ending demand for crop-based fuels.

Maintaining safe speeds and being electric, self-driving cars would drastically reduce pollution levels and dependency on non-renewable fuels.

This is similar to what's happening in the coal and oil industries, a situation that fuels much of the current political discontent in this county.

But renewable energy will have to displace fossil fuels to a much greater extent in the future to avoid unacceptable climate risks.

Customers can bring shoes of any brand into an Adidas store to be shredded and turned into alternative fuels for energy creation instead of being burned as trash.

Direct subsidies to research and development have been adopted by some governments but are a poor substitute for a carbon price: they do only part of the job, leaving in place market incentives to over-use fossil fuels and thereby add to the stock of atmo

He and other scientists say there are basically two options to replacing fossil fuels: generating energy with renewables or embracing nuclear power.

Natural gas and coal—also fossil fuels—have similarly seen price declines that look to be long-lived.

Renewables account for only a small share of global primary energy consumption, which is still dominated by fossil fuels—30% each for coal and oil, 25% for natural gas.

Today's battery breakthroughs come as the world looks to expand modern energy access to the billion or so people without it, while also cutting back on fuels that warm the planet.

Unfortunately, the current low prices for oil, gas, and coal may provide little incentive for research to find even cheaper substitutes for those fuels.

President Trump has underlined fossil fuels – especially coal – as the path to economic growth.

The strategy also aims to ensure that carbon in woody material removed from the forests is locked away in the form of solid lumber or burned as biofuel in vehicles that would otherwise run on fossil fuels.

While fossil fuels – coal, oil, gas – still generate roughly 85 percent of the world's energy supply, it's clearer than ever that the future belongs to renewable sources such as wind and solar.