ENERGY FOR PEOPLE: Fossil Fuels

In today's industrialized world, most of the work we want or need to do is powered by fossil fuels—coal, natural gas, and petroleum. Petroleum is made into products like gasoline, kerosene, and diesel fuel. We burn fossil fuels in automotive engines, in furnaces which heat our homes and industries, and in power plants which produce the electricity that runs our machines and appliances.

Coal, natural gas, and petroleum are called fossil fuels because they were formed from the remains of plants and microscopic marine animals that lived and died millions of years ago. Rather than decaying as most living organisms do, large deposits of these plants and animals were trapped under the earth's surface. Over many years, and under the right conditions of heat and pressure, the fuels were formed.

Fossil fuels are called "nonrenewable" because we are consuming them much faster than they were created. The conditions for storing energy in coal and petroleum don't exist now, and even if they did we wouldn't have time to wait.

NEXT: Where do we get electrical energy?