The whole fossil fuel dynamic is changing where tree huggers like the STEMO family are buying economical devil's juice vehicles which along with the steady rise in the number of milk floats and stupid levels of tax, particularly in Europe, means the amount of fuel used by vehicles has dropped dramatically. Greedy European governments taking the lead from John Major and the UK thought they could put the tax up forever on fuel only to find the Laffer curve applies to this as well, so the consistently miss their tax take targets. Each time they put the tax up they get even less tax in, which is why Osbourne has frozen it.

When oil was at $130 a barrel the Saudis were very concerned as at this price it made it economic to develop much more economical vehicles and to develop the use of alternative fuels, they became not just viable but cheaper and volume production and new technology will mean they would lose their oil market. They were right, as last year the installation of the amount of new renewable energy sources was at an all time high despite low oil prices, with the renewable energy production costs also dropping. The next generation of batteries will have higher energy densities, longer life and charge much faster. There are also many new technologies in development to allow us to store energy at lower EROEI values and device cost than is currently possible, which is renewable's achilles heel.
The good news with renewable energy is that there will be enough for the next 3 billion years, while the non-tree huggers can enjoy running their V8s and V12s.
