If oil didn’t exist, we’d invent it. That may sound like oil-company PR from the 1950s, but it’s true: Petroleum’s unique chemistry offers a combination of features—ease of storage and transport, safety, energy density—unmatched by any other energy form. Indeed, no alternative-energy project has yet come close to these attributes. That’s why petroleum still fuels 95% of global transportation and is the world’s biggest traded commodity—even now, during the Covid crisis. You won’t learn any of that from Robert Vitalis, a professor...

Source: Wall Street Journal August 23, 2020 20:37 UTC