I disagree. There are some countries out there that are making signifigent strides.. (The US is not one of them). Germany has moved a lot of their power production to solar.
There are also some emerging technologies that might be interesting.
For example
http://www.proterro.com/ has bioengineered blue-green algae to produce to 'sweat' sucrose instead of having to extract it. This allows them to produce sugar at about 5 cent a pound.. and they are building a pilot facility in Flordia that does so
http://www.proterro.com/...t-International-Sugar-Journal.pdf
Now, if this takes off, they can make ethanol, or there are companies that use sugar to convert it directly to gasoline. Depending on the success of that, we can get source of carbon neutral gasoline that does not depend on fossil fuels.
Then, there is the advances in Fuel Cells.. ... Redox power has found a way to make fuel cells operate at a much lower temperature, which lets them make them using steel casing, instead of more exotic and expensive alloys (potentially.. they are bringing products online this year).
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There is also the potential for the graphene super capacitors to make battery storage much more effective and cheaper.. and also the quest to make cheap hydrogen production.
There are a lot of exciting technologies that are showing up.. and one or the other is likely to succeed (much to the oil companies dismay).
Right now, it is looking to see which of these technologies can make it in the market place. They all have their advantages, and all have their pit falls. But, with oil only getting harder to extract from the gorund and more expensive, one of these technologies will succeed.