Energy alternatives are under constant focus and for several reasons — from high prices to the trust deficit on supplies from Middle East and the issue of Peak Oil — all seem to be contributing to the trend, in one way or the other.

In his annual State of the Union speech before the Congress, President Obama called for an end to federal subsidies for oil companies, proposing instead, to use the money to promote biofuels and electric vehicles.

“With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” Obama said in his address.

He also set a goal of having 80 percent of US electricity from clean energy sources — solar, wind, clean coal, natural gas, nuclear power — by 2035.

Renewable fuels could replace oil as the main transport fuel in Europe by 2050, an 80-page document from the European Commission’s Expert Group on Future Transport Fuels said.

‘With proven oil reserves likely to last another 40 years and an EU target to cut CO2 emissions by 80-95 percent by 2050, meant that uptake of alternative sources must increase quickly,’ the report emphasized.

“Decarbonization of transport and the substitution of oil as transport fuel have the same time horizon of 2050,” it said.

“Oil, the main energy source for transport, supplying nearly 100 percent of road transport fuels, is expected to reach depletion on the 2050 perspective,” the report said. Biofuels could technically substitute oil in all transport modes, and that other alternative fuel sources were also important. These included electricity/hydrogen fuel cells, synthetic fuels from biomass, methane from natural gas or biomethane, and LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas).

“The next 10 years are crucial for this 2050 vision. The upcoming White Paper on the European transport policy for the next decade should outline a transport action program until 2020.”

“The division between fossil fuels and renewable is dead, and so is the idea that there will be one energy (source) that is more important than others. The world needs all the energy solutions,” Areva chief executive Anne Lauvergeon said at a conference in Riyadh last week. Areva claims itself to be the global nuclear industry leader, now expanding rapidly into renewable energies — wind, solar, bioenergies, hydrogen and its storage.

And interestingly, Saudi Arabia, the OPEC kingpin, often termed as the global gas station, is also looking at variables and alternatives — rather seriously.

Saudi Arabia plans to develop nuclear energy for domestic use,” Prince Turki Al-Faisal told Reuters in an interview in Davos. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are keen to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes, as they struggle to keep up with their rapidly rising power demand. “We have started to take the required steps to utilize several energy sources locally, in particular solar and nuclear energy,” Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi told delegates at the Global Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh last week.

Anticipating significant rise in domestic energy demand over the next 20 years that could see an increase in domestic oil consumption to about eight million barrels a day, approaching its current output, Saudi Arabia needs to resort to other sources of energy too — otherwise it would have little left for exports, analysts here underline.

“The demand for electricity is steadily increasing — it was 40 gigawatts in 2010 and is expected to reach 120GW in 2032,” says Hashem Yamani, the former commerce minister, who currently heads the Atomic and Renewable Energy Research Center at King Abdullah City.

And this meant that the local demand for oil, which is currently about 3.2 million barrels per day, could rise to eight million barrels per day in 2028, he said.

“This will ultimately limit the crude export capacity of the kingdom, and hence our development,” he said. “That is why we are determined to change our current total dependence on oil to an energy mix that would include nuclear and renewable too.”

Yamani added that the kingdom could produce renewable energy — solar and wind — within eight to 10 years and nuclear energy by 2020. “We are consulting everybody who has technology in these areas — Koreans, British, Americans, Japanese and French.

Last week, Areva signed an agreement with the Saudi Bin Laden Group enhancing cooperation in the fields of solar and nuclear energy. “We are very sensitive to energy developments in Saudi Arabia, where there is a willingness to move toward nuclear power,” Areva CEO said in Riyadh.

The company is also developing, in partnership Saudi Aramco, a pilot project on solar thermal energy. The company has also proposed “boosting existing power plants that run on fuel oil or coal with a mixed system,” which the company had already tested in Australia.

Saudi Arabia has already signed a cooperation agreement on civil nuclear technology with the United States in 2008, and has held talks with France and Russia on similar agreements.

However, does it mean the end of the crude driven civilization? Not really — in more than one senses. While the contribution of other sources of energy would definitely grow, and grow rather rapidly, in the global energy mix, crude would continue to be the dominating force for many, many more decades to come, one could say with some confidence.

A new report from the RAND Corporation released on the day President Obama delivered his State of the Union speech recommends the US Defense Department end its investment in advanced biofuels. The report advises Congress that alternative fuels are costly and untested, which would waste tax payer dollars and military time that could be used more efficiently.

Alternative fuel advocates, the US Navy and many environmental groups strongly criticized the report, stressing that promoting domestically produced fuels will enable technological advances to benefit the citizens of the US in the long run and remove the US military’s dependency on foreign fossil fuels.

And the debate goes on and on. Yet one could be said with some certainty — the era of mixed fuel seems just round the corner. Indeed when Sheikh Zaki Yamani, the industry heavyweight underlines that coal did not end, coal era came to an end, it seems to be valid today, in the current set up too.