The Energy Information Administration released its far forward looking report on energy sources and consumption in the country. Alternative and biomass sources play a smaller part in our country's future then the current amount of news about them might lead one to believe, leaving our fossil fuel friend coal to do most of the heavy lifting. The report doesn't talk directly about any possible reduction in energy consumption, although I guess it might be implied in reduced rates of energy demand increase.

I guess we are a growing country, so we can't expect energy saving technologies and our better instincts to overcome our growing needs for power, right? I suppose to a large degree, much of the energy in this country is used by long lived assets such as buildings which cannot normally just be replaced when the latest technology comes out. It is highly unlikely that our transportation infrastructure will be scaled down, we can hope that the deficiency of the most common modes of our transportation increase, but again we run into the problem of long lived assets.

I guess we will all just have to be happy with chipping away at the margins of energy consumption, and maybe wait for the next big breakthrough in fusion power.