ABSTRACT
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, harnessed energy became a pivotal point in the Western way of life, making a major contribution to development and the sustenance of a higher standard of living. At the same time, however, as people became more affluent and more numerous, the uses of energy proliferated and new sources had to be found which continues to be absolutely true in the twenty-first-century globalized world. In an aggregate sense, within each region as well as within branches of human activity, the distribution of peaks and valleys in energy usage changes over time, but the general trend is upwards. The exact percentages of surge in energy requirements vary by country, but among Western nations the pattern does not differ widely. Developing nations, however, have a changing pattern. Let's take the United States as an example of total energy consumption, starting with the nineteenth century when it was still a developing nation.
