Nevertheless, they will never come close to replacing all the current, fossil fuel-powered vehicles.
A comparison of our cumulative emissions projections to historic emissions from fossil fuel combustion highlights the magnitude of the threat from continued global development along historical trajectories.
Even though it has long been known that the global inventory of fossil fuel is finite, no serious action had been taken to face this problem.
The question of structural change is not really serious for those who believe that transition away from fossil fuel based energy supply will suffice to de-carbonize the economy.
There is no systematic empirical evidence that highly indebted developing countries exploit more their subsoil fossil fuel and mineral resources or produce more cash crops for exports than other countries.
For these regions, if economic depreciation (as a proportion of the total value of fossil fuel extraction) were to exceed 67, 50 and 24 per cent respectively, would change sign.
Whereas these studies have been retrospective, we use a dynamic general equilibrium model to investigate global and regional sustainability over the period 1985 - 2050, focusing on fossil fuel extraction.
This however will be weighed against the effect of more expensive fossil fuels, as a result of the fossil fuel tax.
