Response to Linked In Comments 17 September 2016

Most comments to the original post concern non-energy generating uses of oil plus the difficulty of powering marine craft and planes without using hydrocarbons.

General opinion is that the combustion engine used in terrestrial vehicles will be replaced by electric motors with the electricity generated from low or no carbon usage power stations. Electric vehicles are far more energy efficient than conventional combustion engines, see Chapter 20 - Better Transport of David MacKay's excellent treatise, Sustainable Energy-Without the Hot Air ( www.withouthotair.com )

However, the transition away from hydrocarbons is unlikely to be rapid or imminent because:

"We are not on track to a zero carbon future.  Long term investment is not happening.  Carbon sequestration companies are not thriving, even though advice from climate and economic experts is that sucking carbon dioxide from thin air will very probably be necessary to avoid dangerous climate change.  Carbon is not being captured at any coal power stations (except for one tiny proto-type in Germany).

Why not? 

The principal problem is that carbon pollution is not priced correctly. And there is no confidence that it's going to be priced correctly in the future.  By correctly, this means the price of emitting CO2 should be big enough such that every running coal power station has carbon capture technology fitted".

So the demise of hydrocarbon combustion is not imminent, as most of you have concluded.

But, the beginning of the end has started simply because the majority of the World now concludes we cannot continue burning hydrocarbons as we have in the last 100 years.

MacKay illustrates how the UK could replace hydrocarbons  in Chapter 27 (Five Energy Plans for the UK) where the fifth plan appears to be the most realistic comprising a significant baseload of Nuclear power (for the hugely increased electrical demand for vehicles etc) topped up by markedly smaller contributions from tidal, hydroelectric, waste, pumped heat, wood, solar, biofuels and wind.

The technology exists; however, until the huge cost of fossil fuel pollution is properly accounted for, which in effect prices hydrocarbons out of the market, the transition to a low-carbon world will be long and slow.

The transition has started as evidenced by the 2015 Paris Accord; hence the beginning of the end for the fossil fuel era.

Any estimates as to when the tipping point away from hydrocarbons will occur?

This century, or the next?