The wind can also be used more directly, as it were in former periods. Sails can be mounted on large ships, especially on large cargo carriers. However, the sail rigs will probably look quite differently than those of the old vessels, and be operated automatically by computers.

Many countries have special natural energy resources that lend themselves to easily exploitation. Geothermal energy is one of these. Iceland is extensively using geothermal heat directly or to produce electricity. This technology can probably be extended for use in areas where the geothermal heat is somewhat more hidden, but still relative close to the surface.

Heat pumps are installations using a reversed refrigerator technology to carry heat from the outside environment to the inside of a building where it is concentrated to a higher temperature. The heat can then be used for warming the building or other applications. Heat pumps need some electricity to work, but extract more energy from the outside that they consume. More extensive use of heat pumps can give a great amount of the energy needed for heating,.Heat pumps can also be used to fetch geothermal energy of low temperature and concentrate it to a higher temperature without digging very deep.

Hydroelectric power plants using the natural fall of water from high to low areas have long been a major source of electric energy, and many of the existing plants can be made more efficient. To some extend new plants can also be built, but there is a limit also on this technology before the impact on the environment gets too heavy.

Unfortunately it is not possible to avoid using more nuclear power than today if the energy crisis shall be solved. There are however new developments in this area that makes nuclear power less dangerous. Scientists are right now developing a new type of reactors that will use thorium as a fuel and that will be work subcritically. The reactions in these reactors cannot go out of control. The waste also will cease to radiate after some hundred years, and not many thousand, so the storing of waste will be less problematic. But still there will be waste that must be handled safely.

Most alternative energy sources produce electricity, but it is not always practical to use the electricity directly. It is however possible to use the electricity to produce hydrogen, and the hydrogen can then be used as a clean fuel in applications where electricity does not fit.

In the long run, use of fusion power will probably be the permanent solution. But commercial fusion plant will probably still not be available in the next forty years.There is however a joker that might show up to be salvage of the world's energy problem, namely cold fusion. This seems to be a real phenomenon, and not a misunderstanding as many thought and still thinks. But one does still not know if this phenomenon can be used practically to produce useful energy.

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