ABSTRACT
Peak oil was previously considered a peaking of global oil production as low-cost oil resources diminished under exponentially increasing oil demand. Today it is regarded as a future in which global oil production declines as the world transitions from greenhouse gas–emitting sources of energy. To combat climate change, a systematic retooling of the global energy system is required, ranging from deploying a wide range of technologies to extract energy from the Earth’s limited sources of renewable energy, to changing the technologies that society uses to consume energy. With renewable energy resources being unevenly distributed, every nation has their own endowment and specific energy needs to consider. Sustainability educators play an essential role by conveying the scale of this problem, the dependencies of each renewable energy resource, their specific technological implications, and the challenge of making this global energy transition a reality.
