Alternatives to petroleum

In the United States in 2007 about 70% of petroleum was used for transportation (e.g. petrol, diesel, jet fuel), 24% by industry (e.g. production of plastics), 5% for residential and commercial uses, and 2% for electricity production. Outside of the US, a higher proportion of petroleum tends to be used for electricity.

Alternatives to petroleum-based vehicle fuels

Alternative propulsion refers to both:

• Alternative fuels used in standard or modified internal combustion engines (i.e. biofuels or combustion hydrogen).
• propulsion systems not based on internal combustion, such as those based on electricity (for example, all-electric or hybrid vehicles), compressed air, or fuel cells (i.e. hydrogen fuel cells).

Currently, cars can be classified into the following groups:

• Internal combustion engine cars, which may use
  • petrol, fuel and/or biofuels (e.g. alcohol, biodiesel and biobutanol)
  • compressed natural gas used by natural gas vehicles
  • hydrogen in hydrogen vehicles.

• Advanced technology cars such as hybrid vehicles which use petroleum and/or biofuels, albeit far more efficiently.
• Plug-in hybrids, that can store and use externally produced electricity in addition to petroleum.
• electric cars

Alternatives to using oil in industry

Biological feedstocks do exist for industrial uses such as plastic production.

Alternatives to burning petroleum for electricity

In oil producing countries with little refinery capacity, oil is sometimes burned to produce electricity. Renewable energy technologies such as solar power, wind power, micro hydro, biomass and biofuels might someday be used to replace some of these generators, but today the primary alternatives remain large scale hydroelectricity, nuclear and coal-fired generation