Question: Which of all the fossil fuels is being used up the fastest?

Ahmed Osman answered on 20 Nov 2014:

Hi KarenM,
Thanks for this brilliant question
For sure oil will finish firstly.
Clearly fossil fuel reserves are finite – it’s only a matter of when they run out – not if. Globally – every year we currently consume the equivalent of over 11 billion tonnes of oil in fossil fuels. Crude oil reserves are vanishing at the rate of 4 billion tonnes a year1 – if we carry on at this rate without any increase for our growing population or aspirations, our known oil deposits will be gone by 2052.

We’ll still have gas left, and coal too. But if we increase gas production to fill the energy gap left by oil, then those reserves will only give us an additional eight years, taking us to 2060. But the rate at which the world consumes fossil fuels is not standing still, it is increasing as the world’s population increases and as living standards rise in parts of the world that until recently had consumed very little energy. Fossil Fuels will therefore run out earlier.

It’s often claimed that we have enough coal to last hundreds of years. But if we step up production to fill the gap left through depleting our oil and gas reserves, the coal deposits we know about will only give us enough energy to take us as far as 2088. And let’s not even think of the carbon dioxide emissions from burning all that coal.

Hope this helps 🙂
thanks
Ahmed