So does 2088 mark the point that we run out of fossil fuels? The simple answer is no. Some new reserves will be found which will help extend this deadline slightly, but these can’t last forever. New reserves of fossil fuels are becoming harder to find, and those that are being discovered are significantly smaller than the ones that have been found in the past.
Take oil, for example, we’re probably already on a downward slope. Sixteen of the world’s twenty largest oil fields have already reached their peak level of production (the point at which they are producing their largest annual oil yield), whilst the golden age of oil field discovery was nearly 50 years ago.
Renewables offer us another way, a way to avoid this (fossil fuelled) energy time bomb, but we must we start now. As the Saudi Oil Minister said in the 1970s, “The Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil.”