资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

The nature of oil as a finite and non-renewable resource determines that the world oil production will eventually peak. Alternative fuels are energy to fill in the gap for transportation. The types of the alternative transportation fuels include electricity, gaseous, liquid, and solid energy carriers. Understanding what type of alternative fuels will dominate alternative transportation fuel market is critical for policy-makers to make sound decisions to develop alternative fuels. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the general trend of alternative fuel market by applying principles that govern the biological and technological evolutions. Existing transportation infrastructure favors liquid alternative fuels over electricity and hydrogen. The human nature of satisfying their needs with least effort also favors liquid fuels over electricity and hydrogen. And continuing supply of oil will reinforce existing transportation infrastructure, which will continue to make it impossible for electricity or hydrogen based transportation system to compete with current liquid fuel based transportation system economically.