有關資源及能源危機

An energy crisis is any great bottleneck (or price rise) in the supply of energy resources to an economy. It usually refers to the shortage of oil and additionally to electricity or other natural resources.

Economy
In a market economy, the price of energy supplies such as oil, gas or electricity is driven by the principle of supply and demand which can cause sudden changes in the price of energy if either supply or demand changes. However in some cases an energy crisis is brought on by a failure of the market to adjust prices in response to shortages. In other cases, the crisis might be influenced by the lack of a free market. Some economists have argued that the 1973 energy crisis was worsened by price controls.

Future and alternative sources of energy
It is possible that the world is heading towards a global energy crisis due to a decline in the availability of cheap oil and recommendations to a decreasing dependency on fossil fuel. This has led to increasing interest in alternate power/fuel research such as fuel cell technology, hydrogen fuel, biomethanol, biodiesel, Karrick process, solar energy, geothermal energy, tidal energy and wind energy , and fusion energy. To date, only hydroelectricity and nuclear power have been significant alternatives to fossil fuel (see Future energy development), with big ecological problems (residues and water spending). Hydrogen gas is currently produced at a net energy loss from natural gas, which is also experiencing declining production in North America and elsewhere. When not produced from natural gas, hydrogen still needs another source of energy to create it, also at a loss during the process. This has led to hydrogen being regarded as a 'carrier' of energy rather than a 'source'.

There have been alarming predictions by groups such as the Club of Rome that the world would run out of oil in the late 20th century. Although technology has made oil extraction more efficient, the world is having to struggle to provide oil by using increasingly costly and less productive methods such as deep sea drilling, and developing environmentally sensitive areas such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The world's population continues to grow at a quarter of a million people per day, increasing the consumption of energy. The per capita energy consumption of China, India and other developing nations continues to increase as the people living in these countries adopt more energy intensive lifestyles. At present a small part of the world's population consumes a large part of its resources, with the United States and its population of 300 million people consuming far more oil than China with its population of 1.3 billion people.

Efficiency mechanisms such as Negawatt power can encourage significantly more effectve use of current generating capacity. It is a term used to describe the trading of increased efficiency, using consumption efficiency to increase available market supply rather than by increasing plant generation capacity. As such, it is a demand-side as opposed to a supply-side measure.
See more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_crisis